Hari Nef was recently a guest on Emily Ratajkowski’s “High Low” podcast, where she discussed how she auditioned and eventually landed the role in Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie”.
The “Transparent” actress explained how her management initially thought she “had to audition” for the film, but Hari pondered: “Does Barbie have like a college-educated brunette friend?”
However, she approached the audition as she would any other Greta Gerwig movie (“Lady Bird”, “Little Women”) instead of just auditioning for it as an exaggerated and over-the-top Barbie character.
“I was thinking about it just as much, I’m auditioning for a Greta Gerwig movie as I’m auditioning for the ‘Barbie’ movie,” explained the actress who plays Doctor Barbie in the movie.
“And I made the tape with my co-star in the film, Gayle Rankin, in my hotel room on a lunch break. And I got the part just from the tape.”
Nef then continued elaborating on how she didn’t conform to society’s “hyper-feminine, b****y” conception of Barbie. Instead, she worked on adding some emotion and soul to her character.
“These are real people. They’re not this flattened like plastic. When people think of the Barbie brand, they think of hyper femininity, and so therefore they think of b****y or vapid or like super bossy or you know, misogyny basically,” explained the star.
“And I mean that’s, it’s kind of the thing with acting like you, you can always just take something at face value and take a person seriously, especially a woman, like whatever she’s saying, there doesn’t have to be any irony to it. I think irony is the, is sort of the thing.”
