Margot Robbie Tells Cillian Murphy an ‘Oppenheimer’ Producer Asked Her to Move ‘Barbie’ Release

The Barbenheimer phenomenon was one of the defining cultural moments of 2023. For Variety‘s Actors on Actors special, Barbie‘s Margot Robbie and Oppenheimer‘s Cillian Murphy sat down for a chat to discuss their two films and how movie-watchers set up double features to see the films back-to-back.

“People kept asking me, ‘So is each marketing department talking to each other?’ And I was like, ‘No, this is the world doing this! This is not a part of the marketing campaign,’” Robbie said. “You can’t force that or orchestrate that.”

“And I think it happened because both movies were good,” Murphy responded. “In fact, that summer, there was a huge diversity of stuff in the cinema, and I think it just connected in a way that you or I or the studios or anybody could never have predicted.”

In the interview, Robbie — who is also a producer on Barbie — admitted that one of the producers for the Christopher Nolan film even called her to push back its release so the two wouldn’t coincide.

“I remember one of the producers, Chuck Roven called me, we had worked together on some other projects, and was like, ‘I think you should move your date,’” Robbie said. “I was like, ‘We’re not moving our date, if you’re scared to be up against us then you move your date.’”

“He was like, ‘We’re not moving our date, I just think it’d be better for you to move,’” she continued. “And I was like, ‘We’re not moving, I think this is a great pairing. It’s a perfect double billing, Barbie and Oppenheimer.’”

Murphy replied: “It was a good instinct!”

In the interview, Robbie said Greta Gerwig was always her first choice to direct Barbie, so much so that “I just wasn’t going to let her say no.” She didn’t realize, though, that Gerwig being tied to the film would lead to it becoming a cultural phenomenon.

With Oppenheimer, Murphy marked his sixth film working with Nolan, explaining that the two of them together always “seems to work.”

“Emma Thomas, his wife, the producer, called me because Chris doesn’t have a phone. So she put me on to Chris, and he said in his very understated British way, ‘I’m making this movie of Oppenheimer — I’d like you to play the part,’” Murphy said. “I had just finished something; I wasn’t doing anything. I did realize then that it was different than the other jobs I’d done with him, because it was the story of Oppenheimer’s life. And then when he eventually gave me the script, it was written in the first person, which I’d never read before.”

“It was very clear that he wanted it to be truly subjective storytelling. And that did add to the feeling of ‘Oh, fuck, this is a biggie,’” he added.

Robbie said that prepping for her role as Barbie was “so weird,” explaining that her “usual tools” didn’t apply, not even working with acting, dialect, and movement coaches. It took Gerwig showing her an episode of This American Life about a woman who “can’t introspect” but is extremely smart.

“She kind of thinks about exactly what’s in front of her — a spotlight to what exactly is in front of her at the time,” Robbie said.

From Rolling Stone US.