Margot Robbie recounts ‘Barbie’ becoming a ‘cultural’ phenomenon

Margot Robbie recently spoke out about Barbie’s billion-dollar success and why she did not see it coming.

The Greta Gerwig-direction, which raked $1.4 billion at the global box office, was released alongside Christopher Nolan’s biopic Oppenheimer.

Margot, who starred in and as Barbie, told Cillian Murphy during Variety’s Actors on Actors interview that the audience surprised her by turning the movie into a “cultural phenomenon.”

“I didn’t know it was going to turn into a cultural phenomenon that it ended up being,” she told the Irish actor who then asked her, “When did you realize that that’s what it has become?”

Read More: Barbie’s Margot Robbie reveals ‘Oppenheimer’ producer’s tactics

The Australian actress replied: “I knew there’d be big reactions and it was all the way along it was like, ‘Okay I think people are picking up that we’re trying to do something interesting here,’ you know the fact that it was Greta Gerwig making a Barbie movie.”

Margot added that when pictures of her and Ryan Gosling rolling-blading at the Venice Beach went viral, the reaction was “wider” than she expected.

“I was like ‘Yeah people are going to notice’ but it went kind of crazy and it started to occur that it might be even bigger than I’m thinking,” she said.

Read More: Margot Robbie, Cillian Murphy join forces for another Barbenheimer phenomena

The Barbenheimer phenomenon hit the theatres on July 21 with Barbie becoming the biggest blockbuster of 2023 whereas the Robert J. Oppenheimer biopic amassed $953 million at the global box office.