Margot Robbie Takes You Inside The Barbie Dreamhouse | Architectural Digest

Welcome to Barbie's dream house. Come on in. This is my breakfast table and the kitchen. We're in the living room right now. Here's a fun little bar and the slide that goes from the bedroom down into the pool. Not super practical but nothing is for Barbie. It's just fun and gorgeous and it's see-through so we can see each other. All the Barbies in their own Barbie dream houses wake up in the morning and they can wave at each other. This is like the product of so many discussions and so many references and I can't even tell you the meetings we've had about pink. We like sat with all these different kinds of pinks and we were like what is the pink and how do the pinks interact because I didn't want it to be so classy that it didn't. Like when I was a little girl I liked the pinkest brightest things but this is our white. This is our palest pink that's our white. It was pretty incredible seeing this set for the first time. It was kind of surreal because it spent so long looking at the miniatures and the models and the drawings and the design you know of what it was going to look like and then when you see it firsthand in real life it's all there and it's like it's I don't know it's it was really exciting. When we first stepped onto this set we all were just it's like we're in the real deal so we don't have to imagine it all it's just there in front of us. How special is that? Because Barbie was invented in 1959 it felt like we could ground everything in that look 1950s soundstage musicals. Gene Kelly or Vincent Minnelli like those kind of wonderfully fake but emotionally artificial spaces. One thing that like those the soundstage musicals did so well were beautiful artificial skies. There's a sort of surrealness of the gradation of color. We're getting a blue sky we're painting white clouds on it and when you light them you can light them into these intense colors so you can light pink and orange from the bottom and blue from the top you can really go kind of expressionistic with it. Sarah Greenwood our production designer, Katie and her whole team have just done the most extraordinary job putting this together. A lot of the things you see are actually handmade. It's pretty incredible what they can do how they can design things in miniatures and then replicate them. Our main time frame was from the invention of Barbie through to now. The timeless pieces which also has an echo to the actual toys that are in the dream house that Mattel make today. It's very simple and clear and beautiful and that was one of Greta's keywords it has to be beautiful it has to be beautiful as well. Walking into those environments and feeling the kind of artistry and the love and the playfulness it just was so exciting. You know the one thing that was a surprise were all the little monkeys if you see any monkeys around. I didn't ever see them in the drawings and I got to set and I just get a kick out of it. I love the bubble bar. My favorite design feature is obviously the slide that goes to the pool and now we do a whole bit in Barbie's day where she slides down the pool to go down and have her breakfast. Taking it probably from the late 50s to it through the 60s was a big influence of that sort of modernist furniture that was coming through. The kitchen's great so we have a mixture of you know things that are physically there but then also decal because again playing into the world of toys and and how it would look if it was a Mattel product. Our kitchen being a great example of that so on the back here you have just a decal you know so it is intentionally 2D and it's that thing where we want things to be obviously artificial but still very satisfying. Come and see the pool. There is no water in Barbie land there's no water or fire there are no elements. It's actually funny to see how many people avoid walking. Everyone walks around the pool. Even though it's fake it's really beautiful which is kind of like everything in Barbie land. Let's take a look upstairs. We are right next to Barbie's wardrobe and this is where she brushes her hair. Ivana our hair makeup designer and I have had a lot of fun on this job. There's been a lot of wigs. All the Barbies really can change their hair in a kind of unrealistic impossible magical ways. In one scene she might have hair up here and then the very next scene it's a giant long ponytail. I want everyone to feel like they can reach onto the screen and touch everything. I mean so emotionally just remembering like standing in Toys R Us looking Barbies with the plastic sheet over it and everything in you wanted to take it off and take everything apart and touch everything. Just talking about Greta wanting to go inside the box that's actually Barbie's wardrobe. This is the beautiful wardrobe that does open and there's this was a design thing that we were very excited about. We were saying that the wardrobe in Clueless like the bar was set so high and we would really like to do something that is as cool as that. Barbie each day her outfit is already magically here in her wardrobe she opens the doors all she needs to do is look at it gives a spin and then it's on her body. She walks off and outfit for the next day is sitting in the wardrobe behind her. This is Barbie's toothbrush. This is how she brushes her teeth. This is her shower. There is of course no water in Barbieland but she showers nonetheless. I actually just would look up the old Radox commercials and try and replicate that. Good night Barbies I'm definitely not thinking about death anymore. Come up and see Barbie's bedroom. She wakes up with perfect hair no morning breath her pajamas are impossibly ironed and beautiful still and she feels great energized for another perfect day in Barbieland. So the way Barbie gets into her car she walks to the edge and she impossibly floats down into her car. Credit said you know no one actually walks their Barbie down the steps to get into the car you just take them from one thing and just plop them into the next thing. And as you can see Barbie has a pretty amazing view of Barbieland from here and she can see where all her friends are. Barbie Emma's house, Barbie Anna's house, Barbie Alex's house and over there is where Skipper and Midge live in little Skipper's treehouse thing which you may have noticed was replicated from the actual toy. We consider it a heritage site. So now Barbie is ready to start her perfect day. This is where she gets her mail by the way. All the writing in Barbieland is actually just gibberish it's just scribble the way kids kind of write endless amounts of you know nothing but it's all very beautiful. Thank you for coming to see the dream house. I have to get back to set now. Bye!