Barbie director Greta Gerwig has defended Golden Globes host Jo Koy’s much-criticised joke about her movie.

During his opening monologue, the comedian compared Barbie and Oppenheimer, the two halves of the Barbenheimer craze, by saying that Christopher Nolan’s movie is “based on a 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project” while Gerwig’s was based on “a plastic doll with big boobies”.

The quip fell flat in the room and was panned by viewers on Sunday, but Gerwig defended the jibe during an appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday.

“Well, he’s not wrong. She’s the first doll that was mass produced with breasts, so he was right on,” she said, reports Deadline. “And you know, I think that so much of the project of the movie was unlikely because it is about a plastic doll… Barbie by her very construction has no character, no story, she’s there to be projected upon.”

She added, “Barbie has been around since 1959… she’s been a villain and she’s been a hero, but it felt like, in a way, even though it’s so seemingly superficial that it was such a rich place to start.”

Barbie, the highest-grossing movie of 2023, was nominated for nine Golden Globes and won two – Best Original Song for Billie Eilish’s What Was I Made For? and the inaugural Cinematic and Box Office Achievement award.

Reacting to the latter win, Gerwig shared, “It felt very fitting… for all of us, the thing that we wanted most of all was to connect with people and to have people share an experience in the cinemas, in the movie theatres. It felt like even though this is a brand new award, it felt like it was the award to honour that and that was always what we wanted to do.”

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