When we first wrote about Margot Robbie as Barbie, the only evidence was a few paparazzi frames from a Los Angeles set: a pink gingham dress, a pink convertible, a woman on roller skates in Venice Beach. It looked like a gamble wearing a very good wig. It is now one of the biggest films Warner Bros. has ever released, and the story of how it happened turns out to be less about a face and more about a business plan.
The first version of this piece, from July 2022, said Robbie “did not have to go through the casting” because she was “simply invited.” That was wrong, and it is worth correcting, because the truth is better.
She was not cast. She pitched.
According to her 2023 Vogue cover story, Robbie went to Mattel herself in 2018 and met the company’s new chief executive, Ynon Kreiz, to argue that her production company, LuckyChap, was the right home for Barbie. Her pitch, as Vogue tells it, was to honor the doll’s 60-year legacy while taking on the people who actively dislike her. Once the rights were secured, she brought in Greta Gerwig, who agreed on the condition that she and Noah Baumbach write the script. LuckyChap, which Robbie runs with her husband Tom Ackerley and Josey McNamara, then sat between the writers and what the Vogue piece calls “two ginormous companies,” Mattel and Warner Bros.
My read: the old headline about a “real new generation Barbie doll” missed the point entirely. The most Barbie thing about this project was not how Robbie looked in pink. It was that a woman walked into a meeting and said she would run the thing. (We have covered the Ackerley side of the story here; the friend zone, it turns out, had a very productive business arm.)
What the pink actually earned
Barbie opened in July 2023 and finished with roughly $1.45 billion worldwide, the highest-grossing film of that year and, by the studio’s own count, the biggest in Warner Bros.’ 100-year history. It earned eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, where Robbie is credited as a producer. Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera were nominated in the supporting categories, and Billie Eilish and Finneas took home Best Original Song for “What Was I Made For?”
Robbie herself was not nominated for Best Actress, and Gerwig was left out of Best Director. The internet took this more personally than she did. At a SAG-AFTRA screening in January 2024 she said, “There’s no way to feel sad when you know you’re this blessed,” and added that Gerwig should have been nominated. That is the correct order of priorities, and a rarer one in awards season than it should be. Shortly after, Warner Bros. signed LuckyChap to a multi-year first-look deal, which is Hollywood’s way of saying sorry without saying sorry.
The beauty routine, minus the guesswork
The 2022 version of this article spent a lot of words ruling on whether Robbie’s face was “a gift from nature,” and a few more on rumors about her skin and her diet. I am retiring all of that. None of it came from her, and an actress’s face is not a fact-check assignment. What she has chosen to show is on the record: Vogue filmed her morning routine, and it is still the best primary source for anyone who wants to copy it.
Here is my opinion, for what it is worth: the routine matters less than the lighting, the stylist and the fact that the film’s look was designed by professionals to resemble a toy. The pink pedicure everyone is still trying to recreate in 2026 was a costume, not a skincare result. Enjoy it as one.
After Barbie: a son, a road movie and Wuthering Heights
In November 2024, People reported that Robbie and Ackerley had welcomed their first child, a son. The couple has not shared his name or birth date, and Robbie has kept the subject brief. Promoting A Big Bold Beautiful Journey with Colin Farrell in August 2025, she told Entertainment Tonight that explaining parenthood to people who have kids is unnecessary “because they get it,” and to people who don’t, “it’s probably just really boring to hear.” Then: “It’s the best.” That is the whole statement, and I find it more convincing than a cover story.
In February 2026 she returned in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights opposite Jacob Elordi, another LuckyChap production. It opened at No. 1 in North America over the Presidents’ Day weekend, with about $83 million worldwide in its first days, to reviews that were divided at best. Divisive suits her. Barbie was divisive too, right up until it wasn’t.
Will there be a Barbie 2?
Not soon, and not from her side. In late 2023 Robbie told the Associated Press, “We didn’t build it to be a trilogy or something,” and that she couldn’t imagine what would come next. In September 2026 Mattel Studios’ Robbie Brenner said at TIFF that the company hopes a sequel happens “at some point,” but that its current focus is an animated Barbie film with Chris Meledandri’s Illumination. Any reports of a stalled live-action deal over salaries come from unnamed sources, and we will treat them as such until someone with a name says otherwise.
My take
Four years ago we called her the perfect doll. She turned out to be the person holding the box, the rights and the release date. The roller skates were fun; the Polo Lounge meeting was the real stunt.
Sources
- Vogue: Margot Robbie cover story on how Barbie was made (2023)
- Vogue on YouTube: Margot Robbie’s beauty routine
- Deadline: Margot Robbie on a potential Barbie 2 (AP interview)
- PinkNews: Margot Robbie responds to the Oscars snub (SAG-AFTRA screening, citing Variety)
- Variety: LuckyChap signs first-look deal with Warner Bros.
- KBTX/Gray: Barbie’s eight Oscar nominations
- People via Yahoo: Margot Robbie on becoming a mom
- AP via The Nightly: Wuthering Heights opens at No. 1
- Wuthering Heights $83m global debut
- Yahoo: Mattel’s Robbie Brenner on a Barbie sequel and the animated film
