Margot Robbie can’t imagine anyone else being able to write and direct a Barbie movie like Greta Gerwig.

In the upcoming movie, which was co-written and directed by Gerwig, Robbie plays the iconic Mattel doll alongside Ryan Gosling as Ken.

Speaking at the Los Angeles premiere of Barbie on Sunday, the Australian actress insisted that Gerwig was the perfect person for the job.

“I don’t think most of us would’ve been involved if it wasn’t someone like Greta at the helm, but particularly Greta,” she praised, according to footage shared by Deadline. “What she does with her films… she’s so smart, but she also can really deliver on the humour and the emotion and we knew we wanted all of that in the Barbie movie. I can’t imagine anyone else doing it but Greta.”

Robbie produced the movie for her LuckyChap Entertainment banner, and her husband and fellow producer Tom Ackerley recalled the moment they first read Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s script in 2020.

“Margot and I were sitting in the coach next to each other and we both read the script… every so often (we said), ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe they did that,’ and it just kept getting better and better and better and better,” he told Deadline. “And we closed them and were like, ‘Well, we’re never going to be able to make that movie.’ And then we Zoomed with Greta and Noah the next day, we were like, ‘Thank you guys, love the script, it’s going to be impossible to make so let’s get to work.'”

The Lady Bird director explained that her partner was absent from the premiere because he is “passionately supporting” the ongoing writers’ strike.

“From the first line to the last cut, this movie is his as much as anyone’s. He is a Barbie girl. Nothing in Barbie happened without him, and nothing in Hollywood happens without writers,” she stated before the screening.

Barbie will be released in cinemas on 21 July.

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