Panic attacks are no joke in everyday life, but add the pressure of a big Hollywood movie into the mix and it takes them to a new level. Actress Alexandra Shipp found this out firsthand recently on the set of Barbie.
Shipp plays Writer Barbie in the movie, a character who has a passion for baking. Just kidding, it’s writing, obviously. She previously appeared as Storm in the X-Men movies, and she’s in Tick, Tick… Boom! and Love, Simon. In a recent interview in Interview Magazine, she explained just how the movie got her into panic mode.
Shipp said she had no idea what she was in for when she walked onto the set of Barbie, which is coming out soon and was directed by Greta Gerwig.
“I just started crying because it’s everything every little girl has ever dreamed of. They built an entire Barbie cul-de-sac, and we were just walking around it and she was like, ‘Alex, this is your house.'”
Her response: “Are you [expletive] kidding?”
She had a “three-story Barbie Dream House” and a “little Barbie sports car.” It was all too overwhelming, she said.
“Little me was having a full-blown panic attack. So when it came to how we were supposed to be moving, we were like, ‘What do you want?’ And [Gerwig] was like, ‘I want you to feel natural because it’s Barbie Land and though you are made of plastic, you can be as human as a doll could possibly be.’ We tried to find a soft, healthy medium.”
She also revealed that Gerwig didn’t really give her much direction in terms of her look.
“[Gerwig] was really excited about everybody looking the way that Barbies should look, which is every shape and size. I saw some of the film last week and it’s really beautiful to see us all together looking like a gaggle of girls, but also a gaggle of dolls.”
To get that plastic Barbie look, artists put “makeup all over our arms and our legs and our chest. We looked and felt like Barbie dolls.”
Barbie hits theaters on July 21, 2023.
Published: Jun 27, 2023 06:07 pm