Margot Robbie and Cillian Murphy Have a Lot of Thoughts on Barbenheimer
Margot Robbie and Cillian Murphy just tapped into the Barbenheimer conversation.
The stars of this year’s two biggest films recently got together for a filmed conversation, published as part of Variety’s “Actor on Actor” series. During their nearly hour-long chat, Robbie and Murphy delved into the origins of “Barbenheimer,” a cultural event organically instigated by fans excited to watch both Robbie in Barbie and Murphy in Oppenheimer this summer. The viral phenomenon got its start after studios revealed that both movies would be released in theaters on the same day, July 21.
“Christopher Nolan was always determined that [Oppenheimer] would be released in the summer as a big tentpole movie,” said Murphy, who stars in the biopic as titular physicist and “father of the atomic bomb” J. Robert Oppenheimer. “That was always his plan, and he has this kind of superstition around that date. [His movies always come out] in or around the 21st of July, or it could be always the 21st. They always come out then.”
“I mean, it’s a good date. We picked that day, too,” said Robbie, who played the iconic Mattel doll in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. “I remember one of your producers, Charles Roven, called me ’cause we worked together on some other projects. He was like, ‘I think you guys should move your date.’ I was like, ‘We’re not moving our date. If you’re scared to be up against us, then you move your date.’ He’s like, ‘We’re not moving our date. I just think it’d be better for you to move.’ And I was like, ‘We’re not moving. I think this is a really great pairing, actually. I think it’s like a perfect double billing, Oppenheimer and Barbie.’”
“That was a good instinct,” Murphy noted. “I think that both of these films show the appetite that the audience has for cinema.”
Robbie added, “The fact that people were going and being like, ‘I’ll watch Oppenheimer first, then Barbie.’ I was like, ‘See?’ People like everything. People are weird. People have specific and wide-ranging tastes.”
Murphy agreed with that sentiment. “Audiences don’t like being told ‘You should see this, you should see that.’ They will decide, and they will generate the interest themselves,” he said. “And I think what happened with both of our movies was a case in point of that the audience decided that this was correct and this was right.”
Robbie also brought up one of the most viral Barbenheimer moments: Murphy’s seeming ignorance as to what a meme is.
“It’s out there on the internet that you’re not that aware of memes and things like that,” she said to her fellow actor. “First of all, is that true? And second of all, if that is true, were you even aware of the Barbenheimer phenomenon, or were you just blissfully unaware because you use a dial-up phone or something?”
“I have two teenage boys, so they keep doing this,” Murphy said before miming the gesture of holding up a phone screen. “And I do know what a meme is. Now I know that there are memes about me not knowing what a meme is.”
“It’s a great meme,” Robbie replied. “It’s like Inception of memes. A meme within a meme.”
Murphy continued, “I genuinely at the time did not know, but people forget it was a long time ago. … I think children started that stuff, right? But now it’s become this sort of meme that’s eating itself. I am aware, but it’s mostly because of people either sending it to me or showing saying ‘Look, you got to look at this.’ … I mean, it was impossible to avoid any of that stuff. It was incredible and it was self-generated.”
The duo shared their disbelief over how quickly and organically Barbenheimer took hold in the cultural zeitgiest.
Robbie said, “People kept asking me, ‘So the studios, each marketing department, [are] talking to each other?’ And I was like, ‘No, this is the world doing this. This is not a part of the marketing campaign. This is just happening.’”
Murphy added, “I think it happened because both movies were good. There was a sort of diversity offered by both movies. 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. … The fact that people were going dressed up as Barbie or dressed up as Oppenheimer to go and see the movies multiple times, it’s so flattering and kind of overwhelming and so great for cinema.”
Watch their full conversation below.
You Might Also Like
