On a sunny late-May morning, Gerwig is sitting at a conference table in the rented Manhattan office suite where she's finishing post-production, in one of the denim boiler suits she started wearing every day during the making of the movie (today's is black), her hair in a loose bun. It's 10.30, and she has a three-month-old baby at home (plus a fouryear-old and a 13-year-old stepson), so she's just now getting to breakfast, which she takes down as she embarks on two more hours of erudite Barbie talk.
Well before Barbie, Gerwig had one of the most fascinating careers in 21st-century Hollywood. First, she brought a new kind of daffy comedic naturalism to screen acting, from early mumblecore triumphs like Hannah Takes the Stairs to a string of brilliant collaborations with her partner, Noah Baumbach, including Greenberg, Frances Ha and Mistress America. She cowrote the last two movies before shifting gears to auteurdom in 2017, writing and directing the exquisite coming-of-age comedy Lady Bird, and 2019's revisionist take on Little Women.
Barbie, which stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling (and was co-written with Baumbach), is her biggest and most mainstream project. But she insists it doesn't feel that way. "I've never been part of anything like this," she says. "But in a funny way, it feels like the fundamentals are the same. Even though it is Barbie and it is an internationally known brand, the movie feels very personal. It feels just as intimate as Lady Bird or Little Women."
I know you tend to resist autobiographical interpretations, but when Barbie says, "I don't wanna be an idea anymore," something about that really reminded me of your transition from a much-discussed actress to a writer-director.
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