[door opening]
- Welcome to Barbie's dream house.
Come on in.
[upbeat music]
This is my breakfast table and my kitchen.
We are in the living room right now.
Here's a fun little bar
and the slide that goes from the bedroom down into the pool.
Not super practical, but nothing is for Barbie.
It's just fun and gorgeous.
And it's see through, so we can see each other.
All the barbies in their own Barbie dream houses
wake up in the morning,
and they can wave at each other.
[upbeat music]
- This is the product
of so many discussions, and so many references.
And I can't even tell you the meetings we've had about pink.
We sat with all these different kinds of pinks.
And we were like,
"What is the pink, and how do the pinks interact?"
Because I didn't want it to be so classy that it didn't...
When I was a little girl,
I liked the pinkest, brightest things.
But this is our white, this is our palest pink.
That's our white.
- It was pretty incredible seeing this set
for the first time.
It was kind of surreal,
because I'd spent so long looking at
the miniatures, and the models, and the drawings,
and the design of what it was gonna look like.
And then when you see it firsthand in real life,
it's all there, and it's like it's...
I don't know, it was really exciting
- When we first stepped onto the set,
we all were just,
it's like we are in the the real deal,
so we don't have to imagine it all.
It's just there in front of us.
How special is that?
- Because Barbie was invented in 1959.
It felt like we could ground everything in that look
of 1950 soundstage musicals, Gene Kelly or Vincent Minnelli,
those wonderfully fake, but emotionally artificial spaces.
[upbeat music] [laughing]
One thing that those soundstage musicals did so well
were beautiful artificial skies.
There's a surrealness of the gradation of color.
- We're getting a blue sky,
we're painting white clouds on it,
and when you light them,
you can light them into these intense colors.
So, you can light pink and orange from the bottom,
blue from the top.
You can really go expressionistic with it.
- Sarah Greenwood, our production designer,
Katie, and her whole team
have just done the most extraordinary job
putting this together.
A lot of the things you see are actually handmade.
It's pretty incredible what they can do,
how they can design things in miniatures,
and then replicate them.
[upbeat music]
- Our main timeframe was
from the invention of Barbie through to now.
The timeless pieces,
which also has an echo to the actual toys
that were in the dream house that Mattel makes today.
It's very simple, and clear, and beautiful.
And that was one of Greta's key words.
"It has to be beautiful.
It has to be beautiful as well."
- Walking into those environments,
and feeling the artistry, and the love, and the playfulness.
[upbeat music]
[girls cheering]
It just was so exciting.
- The one thing that was a surprise
were all the little monkeys.
If you see any monkeys around,
I didn't ever see them in the drawings.
And I got to set, and I just gonna kick out of it.
I love the bubble bath.
And my favorite design feature is
obviously the slide that goes to the pool.
And now we do a whole bit in Barbie's day
where she slides down the pool
to go down and have her breakfast.
- Taking it properly from the late '50s through the '60s
was a big influence
of that modernist furniture that was coming through.
- The kitchen's great.
So, we have a mixture of things that are physically there,
but then also decal.
because again, playing into the world of toys
and how it would look, if it was a Mattel product,
our kitchen being a great example of that.
So, on the back here, you have just a decal,
so it is intentionally 2D.
And it's that thing where we want things
to be obviously artificial, but still very satisfying.
[upbeat music]
Come and see the pool.
[upbeat music continues]
There is no water in Barbie Land.
There's no water or fire.
There are no elements.
It's actually funny to see how many people avoid walking.
Everyone walks around the pool.
Even though it's fake, it's really beautiful,
which is kind of like everything in Barbie Land.
Let's take a look upstairs.
[upbeat music]
We are right next to Barbie's wardrobe.
And this is where she brushes her hair.
Irvana, our hair and makeup designer, and I,
have had a lot of fun on this job.
There's been a lot of wigs.
Well, all the Barbies really can change their hair
in a kind of unrealistic, impossible, magical way.
In one scene, she might have hair up here.
And then, the very next scene, it's a giant, long ponytail.
- I want everyone to feel like
they can reach onto the screen and touch everything.
So, emotionally, just remembering standing
in Toys "R" Us looking Barbies
with the plastic sheet over it, and everything,
and you wanted to take it off,
and take everything apart, and touch everything.
- Just talking about Greta wanting to go inside the box.
That's actually Barbie's wardrobe.
This is the beautiful wardrobe that does open
and there's all the clothes. - The magical wardrobe.
- This was a design thing that we were very excited about.
We were saying that the wardrobe in "Clueless,"
like, the bar was set so high.
And we would really like to do something
that is as cool as that.
Barbie, each day her outfit is
already magically here in her wardrobe.
She opens the doors,
all she needs to do is look at it, gives a spin,
and then it's on her body, and she walks off,
and her outfit for the next day
is sitting in the wardrobe behind her.
[upbeat music]
This is Barbie's toothbrush.
This is how she brushes her teeth.
This is her shower.
There is, of course, no water in Barbie Land,
but she showers nonetheless.
I actually just would look up the old Radox commercials,
and try and replicate that.
[Margot giggling]
Goodnight, Barbies.
I'm definitely not thinking about death anymore.
Come up and see Barbie's bedroom.
[upbeat music]
She wakes up with perfect hair, no morning breath.
Her pajamas are impossibly ironed and beautiful still.
And she feels great,
energized for another perfect day in Barbie Land.
So, the way Barbie gets into her car,
she walks to the edge,
and she impossibly floats down into her car.
Greta said, no one actually walks their barbie
down the steps to get into the car.
You just take them from one thing,
and just plop them into the next thing.
[upbeat music continues]
And as you can see,
Barbie has a pretty amazing view of Barbie Land from here.
And she can see where all her friends are.
Barbie Emma's house,
Barbie Anna's house,
Barbie, Alex's house.
And over there is where Skipper and Mitch live
in little Skipper's tree house thing,
which you may have noticed
was replicated from the actual toy.
We consider it a heritage site.
[upbeat music]
So, now Barbie is ready to start her perfect day.
This is where she gets her mail, by the way.
All the writing in Barbie Land
is actually just gibberish.
It's just scribbled
the way kids write endless amounts of nothing,
but it's all very beautiful.
Thank you for coming to see the dream house.
I have to get back to set now.
Bye-bye.
[upbeat music]