Greta Gerwig’s Barbie took the world by storm, sparking the trend of Barbiecore and setting a box office record. Thanks to the incredible work of production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer, the Barbie Land of our childhood dreams was brought to life, Offscreen Central had the opportunity to talk to Greenwood and Spencer about taking on the challenge to design Barbie Land, the philosophy of Barbie, and major influences and rules for this surrealist world.

Jillian Chilingerian: Hi so nice to meet both of you!
Katie Spencer: Hi Barbie!
Sarah Greenwood: Hi Barbie!

Jillian Chilingerian: The Barbie phenomenon has never left, in that teaser trailer seeing like the Barbie world and then entering it through the film. It’s just something that I’ve never seen before in film and I’m just excited to talk to both of you about your work on that.
Katie Spencer: Thank you. That was a lot of fun, wasn’t it? That’s just a retrospective.

Jillian Chilingerian: Congratulations on the Oscar nominations! Barbie has been such a cultural phenomenon for decades in the zeitgeist. She’s always evolving, so where do you start with the whole Encyclopedia of Barbie to figure out how to build her world?
Sarah Greenwood: Well, there’s a big precious icon that we were kind of asked to work with, which was amazing, wasn’t it?
Katie Spencer: You start with Greta’s script. That’s absolutely where you start. We never had a Barbie so we were not sort of influenced and it’s just so peculiar that neither of us ever had one.
Sarah Greenwood: That wasn’t so big and culturally big in the UK. We have somebody called Cindy, who was a bit lame.
Katie Spencer: It is always with the script and Greta’s script was so compelling and full of character, and her joy of Barbie came through the screen. Absolutely, massively.
Sarah Greenwood: Her enthusiasm and her love of Barbie were just massive and that comes out in the film, it comes out in the script that she wrote. It was completely infectious, but of course, we had a lot of research, we’re not recreating a Mattel toy, we are interpreting Mattel toys to tell our story.
Katie Spencer: There were lots of long discussions and philosophical discussions about the nature of the toy and the nature of the soul. In a way you can look at the film, it’s the most amazing comedy, but it also Barbie choosing to be human to be human means that you only have a certain lifespan, that amazing line of ideas lives forever. I mean, so it was all of that, and then you hone it down, and then you get into the practicality.
Sarah Greenwood: You look at Barbie and you think, oh, it’s quite simple, but to arrive at that simplicity was incredible, and we’ve had lots of amazing, intellectual, philosophical conversations about the nature of the toy and what it is, and the nature of clay and childhood.
Katie Spencer: Which interesting, even if you’re not making a film, yeah.
Sarah Greenwood: It wasn’t about the kind of actual actuality of it, it was all about the joy of Barbie and what she means, and from that you just get kind of filtered out, you get down to what it was about the key things, what are the elements in it and the fact that it hasn’t a wind, it has no rain, it has no air? It has no sun, it has no black, it has no white, it has no chrome. So it seems like there’s a lot of things that aren’t in it, but you take all of those out. And then you’ve got access to things like Weird Barbie’s house is Murakami in a blender. The Mattel boardroom is a six-year-old girl’s pink fluffy heart.
Katie Spencer: It’s like all directors where you need to get into their language and their mindset. We hadn’t ever worked with her before but Jacquline Duran, the costume designer, had done Little Women and she had spoken about how phenomenal she was and everything. So keying into that it.

Jillian Chilingerian: I remember when I watched the film, and people were like, Oh my gosh, was it funny? I cried and had philosophical questions myself, it is more than just it’s a Barbie movie. Using the meaning of the toy to weave in different and human life questions, I think is just so brilliant, and something that people would never expect. The toy aspect reminds me of when I was playing with my Barbies, and they were moving freely everywhere. Regarding the decals, I remember when I would get the houses or whatever different sets came out you would spend so much time setting them up and making sure all the stickers were on properly. It is pristine, but it allows you to kind of create your own journey with the toy. How was it building these dream houses with that in mind of a child?
Katie Spencer: What we spoke about what Greta spoke about was that it cannot disappoint. It can’t be the toy that you didn’t want to get at Christmas and you go, thank you very much, Auntie, I didn’t actually want that.
Sarah Greenwood: It has to be the one that you open the box and it is better than you can imagine. We set ourselves that challenge it has to be the best present, it has to be the best toy ever.
Katie Spencer: Out of all those conversations came all these conversations about what it wasn’t, then you start to know what it is. Since you have those rules, and those parameters, you can step forward. So it looks so simple, but to get to something so simple was like so difficult.
Sarah Greenwood: Once you knew what you were doing, and then you talked about the colors, the palette was so pure, and the fact that we whittled it down to the best pinks and what the colors do against each other. Jacqueline, Ivana, and Rodrigo, everybody’s just working off this palette, and therefore there’s a real cohesion to it. What was amazing was that these colors there was something in the purity of the color that was just uplifting. It is not just in the film, where you’ve got the music and you’ve got everything on top, but just working with those colors working on that set with those dancers having such a laugh actually, it was so funny. On the beach when they’re going into battle, Greta says, Have I gone too far? They are acting in slow motion when they’ve got a horse and they’re doing that based on Saving Private Ryan. She just painted the world pink and with Jacqueline’s costumes, everything is how have you gone too far? If we’ve gone too far, we are way too far.
Katie Spencer: We’re all in it together.
Sarah Greenwood: You watch that and it was just hysterical and that kind of joy that they all brought to it was just fantastic.

Jillian Chilingerian: We have that surrealism of this world but everyone plays it as if this is normal and as the audience, you go in with them and like you’re saying, like the watching and slow motion. It’s like, well, it’s Barbie Land.
Katie Spencer: It was like a pied piper thing following Greta because if you didn’t believe in Barbie Land, then what’s so shocking about Ken coming back in fake fur and putting a TV in, it’s not really that shocking, but because if you believe in Barbie Land, it’s just so wrong.
Sarah Greenwood: It makes you cry, and it makes you laugh, but there isn’t a bad bone in the film. That’s why it was a real Zeitgeist kind of film because whatever your expectations were, you went into it and you just came away going, Wow, that was just so funny, and sweet and charming and lovely and thought-provoking, questioning and I think that’s a rare beast, isn’t it?

Jillian Chilingerian: I watched it with my mom and it’s interesting the different takeaways that we had. How it brought up her childhood memories, and how we were able to bond on that. There are very few movies that you can have that generational.
Katie Spencer: Isn’t that nice that you can have that that moment, and you can look forward to something together and then you can go and talk about it later?

Jillian Chilingerian: Obviously, we don’t have walls in these houses, and I love Weird Barbie’s house, I wish it was real. So I’ve been curious about working within almost those limitations of really using shape and not where it’s just like, you know like it’s just rectangles.
Sarah Greenwood: I mean, that was the thing, wasn’t it? No walls and therefore your wallpaper is your views out to the next houses and there’s a kind of Adam and Eve quality as well. It came down to what you put in with the shapes of the furniture, the fact that there’s a boldness to the shape and also taking away because the Dream House doesn’t have a lot of detail with all the decals, so you have to you have to clarify the whole image. Katie Spencer: Yeah, you make it feel more toy with all sorts of magical details like the water you can walk over.
Sarah Greenwood: I’m glad you kind of brought up the Weird Barbie House because the Weird Barbie House weirdly came to us very early and quickly. It’s got a sense of the Psycho house, the Boo Radley house that they’re all scared of, but not really. It turned into a haven for all the misfits, and the rejects from Mattel. It is based on a dream house, it has still the same principles, but there isn’t a single right angle there. The colors have just exploded with the wonderful costumes and Kate McKinnon.
Katie Spencer: It was the last thing we shot and something so lovely to end the filming on. Kate McKinnon’s characterization and Jacqueline’s costume, the pink dress.

Jillian Chilingerian: Thank you both so much, for watching this movie, you are reentering childhood with so many questions of just the human experience with all these incredible references come together in a visual statement. It made me so happy to see what Barbie Land looks like.
Sarah Greenwood: And there is more to see.
Katie Spencer: Even we still see things. We are glad you enjoyed it. Thank you so much.
Sarah Greenwood: Thank you very much. Lovely to talk to you.

Barbie is currently streaming on Max and back in select theaters.
You can read our review of Barbie here.