Warning! This post contains spoilers for Barbie.
America Ferrera’s scene-stealing Barbie monologue took “probably 30 to 50” takes to perfect.
In Greta Gerwig’s hit movie, America plays Gloria, a human woman who meets Barbie when the iconic doll, played by Margot Robbie, escapes Barbie Land and arrives in the ‘real’ world.
The former Ugly Betty star has earned major praise from viewers for her delivery of Gloria’s powerful monologue, which sees the character grapple with the double standards and societal pressures that women face.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, America opened up about what it took to capture the lengthy speech on film.
“We shot it over two days,” she told the magazine. “It’s part of a much bigger scene with lots of characters in it. I had to do it many, many times for other people’s coverage and to get through the whole scene.”
She admitted that while it “felt like 500” takes in total were required to nail the big moment, the actual total was likely closer to “30 to 50 full runs of it, top to bottom”.
By the time they’d finished filming, America revealed that her co-star Ariana Greenblatt, who plays Gloria’s daughter Sasha, “recited the monologue to me because she had memorised it because that’s how many times I had said it”.
America went on to praise director Greta for giving her “so much freedom” to deliver the speech the way she wanted.
“There were moments in shooting the movie where Greta had really written something in a very specific way that she heard in a very specific way in her head with particular cadence in a particular speed or particular inflection,” she said.
“I thought maybe this would be like that, but it was the opposite. She wanted me to completely make it my own and find it as we did it.”
The Barbie movie has already proved a major success at the box office. According to film industry bible Deadline, it earned a massive $356 million (approximately £306 million) internationally during its opening weekend.
The film earned $162 million (approximately £126 million) in the United States, the best ever US opening for a film by a female director, overtaking 2019’s Captain Marvel.