Greta Gerwig Fought To Save ‘I’m Just Ken’ Song In ‘Barbie’ But Worried The Sequence “Could Just Be Terrible”

Though the film is titled “Barbie,” there’s no denying the breakout performance from the blockbuster is from Ryan Gosling as Ken. And if you point to one moment in the film to showcase just how great Gosling’s performance is, you can talk about the “I’m Just Ken” song sequence. But according to the film’s director, Greta Gerwig, that was a moment she had to fight for during the development of the movie.

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Speaking at the BFI London Film Festival (via Variety), Greta Gerwig talked about “Barbie” and how she developed the “I’m Just Ken” moment in the film. According to the director (who also co-wrote the script alongside Noah Baumbach), the song was just listed as a “dream ballet” in the script. This was something that didn’t necessarily resonate with the studio during the development of the film.

“It just said in the script, ‘And then it becomes a dream ballet and they work it out through dance,’” Gerwig said. “There was a big meeting that was like, ‘Do you need this?’ And I was like, ‘Everything in me needs this.’ They were like, ‘What do you even mean? What is a dream ballet?’ And I was like, ‘A dream ballet? Where do I begin!’”

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To help her flesh out the “dream ballet,” Gerwig looked at the iconic film, “Singing in the Rain.” She assumed that people weren’t utterly confounded by that film, so the song in “Barbie” should land just fine.

“I was like, if people could follow that in ‘Singing in the Rain,’ I think we’ll be fine. I think people will know what this is. So that was the big reference point,” she added. “Even though everything felt right to me and was giving me so much joy in the way we were doing it, it was also like, ‘Oh no, this could be just terrible, but now I’m committed.’”

Obviously, there’s nothing about “Barbie” that seemed like a sure-thing. Yes, Gosling and his co-star Margot Robbie are massive stars. And Gerwig has been consistently great as a filmmaker. But she really swung for the fences with “Barbie,” particularly with the tone of the film and the production design, which shows that all of the worry and concern paid off in ways Gerwig could have never imagined.

You can hear the song and see clips from the production during the scene below: