Barbie: Greta Gerwig Reveals “Page One F-Bomb” That Got Cut

July 21, 2023, 4:30pm

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie might be based on a toy designed for children, but with the adaptation of the doll earning a PG-13 rating, we know it wasn’t an experience designed for kids. The filmmaker recently recalled how, knowing that a PG-13 rating allows for one f-bomb, she initially got it out of the way almost immediately by featuring it in the film’s opening, but she ended up holding onto the word and cut it from that intro. Whether that version of the film will ever be released is yet to be seen. Barbie is out now in theaters.

“Suffice to say, there was a sort of extended joke with Marie Curie, which didn’t end up being part of (the final cut). But yes, there was a page-one f-bomb that sort of set the tone for the whole thing,” Gerwig recalled to CinemaBlend‘s ReelBlend podcast. “What the line was, it was actually Helen Mirren saying to Marie Curie, ‘Pipe the f-ck down, Marie Curie!’ That was like my favorite (line). … But we knew we only got one f-bomb, and we were like, ‘Let’s use it at the very beginning.’ And there’s just something, to me, (about) Helen Mirren saying, ‘Pipe the f-ck down, Marie Curie.’”

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She added, “The audio’s there, the, ‘Pipe the f-ck down,’ in a proper, British voice. But it was something in the editing that didn’t end up making the cut. That was, I would say, the line that everyone was like, ‘Oh, no, no, no, no.’”

Reports of this joke being featured in the script came from star Margot Robbie herself, having previously recalled that she had a shocking reaction to first reading the script Gerwig wrote with Noah Baumbach.

“We just looked at each other, pure panic on our faces,” Robbie shared with Vogue earlier this year. “We were like, ‘Holy f-cking sh-t.”

She added, “I think the first thing I said to [husband] Tom [Ackerley] was, ‘This is so genius. It is such a shame that we’re never going to be able to make this movie.’”

In Barbie, to live in Barbie Land is to be a perfect being in a perfect place. Unless you have a full-on existential crisis. Or you’re a Ken. From Oscar-nominated writer/director Greta Gerwig comes Barbie, which hit theaters on July 21st. Barbie stars Oscar-nominees Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken, alongside America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera, Ariana Greenblatt, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, and Will Ferrell. The film also stars Ana Cruz Kayne, Emma Mackey, Hari Nef, Alexandra Shipp, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Simu Liu, Ncuti Gatwa, Scott Evans, Jamie Demetriou, Connor Swindells, Sharon Rooney, Nicola Coughlan, Ritu Arya, Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Dua Lipa and Oscar-winner Helen Mirren. Gerwig directed Barbie from a screenplay by Gerwig & Oscar nominee Noah Baumbach, based on Barbie by Mattel.