Michael Cera was one of the standouts on Barbie giving life to the only Allan in the Greta Gerwig-directed film.
The Arrested Development alum is opening up about how he came to star opposite Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.
“It was a kind of very last-minute casting,” Cera told GQ in an interview before the actors strike. “My manager got a call checking on my availability for it, and he called me and he said, ‘I got a call about this movie. It’s the Barbie movie. Greta Gerwig’s directing it, and it’s filming in London for four months or something, so I told them you probably wouldn’t want to do it because you probably don’t want to go to London.’”
Cera continued, “I was like, ‘What! What do you mean? Call them back!’ He didn’t like blow it or anything, but he’s like, ‘I managed their expectations that you might not want to do it.’ I was like, ‘How can I not do it? I need to do it!’”
Not wanting to lose out on the opportunity to star in the film, Cera got Gerwig’s e-mail via a mutual friend and sent her a message asking her if he could be in the movie.
“And she was like, ‘Let’s get on a Zoom right now. Here’s a Zoom link, I’ll be on there for the next hour,’” Cera recalled. “So she was just hanging out on the Zoom, she’s just like, ‘Just click that link whenever you’re ready.’ And then we talked about it, and it just all happened really fast from there.”
The Allan doll was introduced in 1964 by Mattel as a friend to the Ken doll. He was marketed as Ken’s friend who could also fit into all of Ken’s clothes. Allan would later reemerge in the early 1990s as Alan and as the groom for Barbie’s friend Midge. In the early 2000s, Alan was part of the Barbie Happy Family line that included him with pregnant wife Midge.
Watch Cera’s complete interview in the video posted below.