Barbie is everywhere this week, and I’m ecstatic. The release already broke the record for the most successful U.S. debut for a film by a female director, and my FYP has been completely taken over with everyone’s Barbie-inspired outfits and reactions. One trend that especially piqued my interest was the rumor that Barbie’s namesake, Barbara Handler, would be making a cameo during one of the film’s most tear-jerking scenes. Barbie is depressed on a park bench when she sees an old woman and tells her that she’s beautiful. Her iconic “I know” response had us all riding the fine line between laughing and crying. So who was the old woman on the bench in that Barbie scene?
Many speculated that the actress could have been Barbara Handler, whom the OG Barbie doll was named after. Barbara is the daughter of Ruth Handler, the doll’s creator, whose “ghost” makes a cameo appearance at the end of the film. The real Ruth actually passed in 2002, so she is played by Rhea Perlman, famous for her role on Cheers. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Gerwig referred to the moment as the “heart” of the film. Given how poignant and critical this scene is for the film, it’s no wonder the internet immediately began obsessing over it.
While I’ll admit, this would have been a very meta choice for Gerwig to include Barbara, you may be surprised to learn this isn’t true. The woman in the film is actually Ann Roth, a 91-year-old Oscar-winning costume designer who began working in Hollywood in the ‘60s. She was actually given a profile in the New York Times on July 23 that called her “Hollywood’s Secret Weapon.”
While she wasn’t the designer for the movie (Jacqueline Durran did the costumes for Barbie), Roth is evidently a close friend of Gerwig and has worked on many of her partner, Noah Baumbach’s, films. These include Margot at the Wedding, While We’re Young, and White Noise. She was not at the Barbie premiere, but revealed in her NYT profile that she chose to see it at her local theater in eastern Pennsylvania instead.
The real Barbara Handler, now age 82, has yet to comment on the Barbie movie’s release, and it’s unclear how much involvement she had in the story of her namesake doll. Handler has actually long since distanced herself from the doll, insisting in 1989 that, “If the doll is like me, it is totally coincidental” to the Los Angeles Times. Given the controversy Barbie has endured over the years, I can’t blame her for trying to distance herself. She’s currently retired and has two children from a previous marriage to Allen Segal, whom she divorced in 1970. Segal was a documentary filmmaker and passed away in 2012.
However, Barbara has defended her mother’s intentions to promote women’s rights throughout the years; for instance, in this video tribute, she called her parents “big kids at heart.”
So the rumors about the OG Barbie making a cameo are false, but I think Gerwig’s casting was the superior choice. Roth is living proof of what women had to endure to forge their careers. She embodies what Barbie stands for and is, of course, “beautiful.”