Michael Cera recalls his casting as Allan in ‘Barbie’, says it was ‘a very last minute’

Apart from Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, one of the biggest standouts in the movie was actor Michael Cera in the Greta Gerwig directorial 'Barbie'.

Los Angeles: Apart from Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, one of the biggest standouts in the movie was actor Michael Cera in the Greta Gerwig directorial ‘Barbie’ where he portrayed the character of the Allen doll. The actor revealed that the casting was very last minute.

According to Deadline: “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.'”

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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!'”

Michael Cera had already anticipated the potential of ‘Barbie’ given Greta-Gerwig’s big name in Hollywood as an established director. As such, the actor got Gerwig’s email 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.”

Aside from the Ken doll in Mattel’s Barbie toyline, there is another doll called Allen who was introduced in 1964 and is a bit of an obscure figure for many years to come.

He was marketed as Ken’s friend who could also fit into all of Ken’s clothes, leading to Allan re-emerging 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.