America Ferrera’s ‘Barbie’ Speech Made Even the Men Cry on Set, Says Greta Grewig: They Have Their Own ‘Tightrope, Which Is Also Painful’

variety.com:

Zack Sharf Digital News Director SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Barbie,” now playing in theaters nationwide.

America Ferrera’s epic “Barbie” monologue left the entire set in tears, Greta Gerwig recalled in a new interview with The Atlantic.

Even the male cast members were left emotional, which the director reasoned was because they have their own speech to make. “When America was giving her beautiful speech, I was just sobbing, and then I looked around and I realized everybody’s crying on the set,” Gerwig said. “The men are crying, too, because they have their own speech they feel they can’t ever give, you know?

And they have their twin tightrope, which is also painful. There’s something about some of these structures that are just, you know, ‘Somebody make me stop!’ That’s sort of, I suppose, the feeling behind Ken.” Ferrera previously revealed to Vanity Fair that it took two full days to film the monologue, in which her character Gloria, a Mattel executives, inspires Barbie to get back on her feet by railing against the many double standards women face on a daily basis. “It was probably 30 to 50 full runs of it, top to bottom,” Ferrera said about filming the monologue. “By the end, [co-star Ariana Greenblatt] recited the monologue to me because she had memorized it because that’s how many times I had said it.” “Neither one of us went into it feeling like it’s got to grow and crescendo to this big moment where you burst into tears or you’re laughing so hard you cry,” Ferrera added. “There were no targets to hit.