In Greta Gerwig’s eagerly anticipated Barbie movie, Dua Lipa stars as a blue-haired character called Mermaid Barbie, and has recorded a new song, “Dance the Night,” for the soundtrack. But Dua says as a kid, she wasn’t much of a Barbie Girl.
Speaking to Dazed magazine, Dua says she did own Barbies, but explains that she was “much more the kind of girl that would go to the playground, make up dance routines and sing.” Asked if she did what many other girls do to their dolls — cut their hair — Dua says, “Yes, actually, that was more what my Barbie was used for.”
However, she didn’t actually give Barbie the full chop.
“Not all of it,” Dua says of her dolls’ hair. “Just in bits. It depended on the styling.”
Dua tells Dazed that the movie will “challenge” our ideas of what Barbie represents. “Barbie, the doll, has this idea of what perfection should be,” she says. “The film – and there’s a lot of diversity in the cast – is touching exactly on the buttons that maybe it presses, and shows a different story.”
As for her song, “Dance the Night,” Dazed says it “deploys every rule in the disco-funk playbook.” According to Dua, that’s no surprise.
“Greta said that the whole film was inspired by disco,” she explains. “There’s a lot of very glittery and pop moments in it.”
But since she’s playing Mermaid Barbie — did Dua have to film her parts underwater?
“Not necessarily,” she says mysteriously.
Guess we’ll have to wait and see what she means when the movie opens July 21.
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