10 Unbelievable Movie Facts That Are Somehow True
3. The REAL Reason Emma Mackey Was Cast In Barbie
Joining the likes of the sensational Margot Robbie, Issa Rae, Kate McKinnon, Alexandra Shipp, and many more as the titular Barbies found wandering around Barbieland in Greta Gerwig's critical and commercial hit, Sex Education's Emma Mackey eventually brought Physicist Barbie to life on screen.
Along with being a brilliant actor, of course, there was actually another major and quite fascinating reason Gerwig and Robbie decided to hire Mackey as one of the walking, talking dolls in this 2023 masterpiece.
Joining the many folks online who felt that Mackey was Robbie's doppelgänger, the star of this fantasy comedy tale told Buzzfeed (at 2:30 in the video below) that herself and Gerwig pretty much had the British-French actor play a Barbie because they thought it would be funny.
They had a whole joke planned about how the two looked similar, too, but after the pair both got dressed up as their Barbies on set, and the brown-haired Mackey stood next to the blonde-haired Robbie, it soon became clear that they didn't actually look that similar at all.
In the end, that gag was dropped from the movie.
As far as casting stories go, being basically brought into a movie because of a joke that didn't even make the cut is pretty wild.