America Ferrera Reacts to Young Girls Doing Her Epic Barbie Monologue: ‘Hilarious but Also Super Sad’

America Ferrera Barbie the monologue immediately struck a chord with women when it hit theaters. But it also speaks to the younger generation, the actress revealed recently.

In this week’s issue, the actress, 39, tells PEOPLE that she recently met a “young girl” who used the now-popular monologue — a speech about the “impossible” task of being a woman today — at an audition for a theater program.

While “funny” in a sense, Ferrera says it’s “also super sad that 11-year-old girls resonate with that monologue and already feel like they know what he’s saying.”

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The emotional speech comes at a pivotal moment in the film when Ferrera’s character, a Mattel employee named Gloria, tells a distraught Barbie (Margot Robbie) that she’s good enough — and explains why it’s “literally impossible to be a woman.”

“You never have to grow old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall, never fail, never show fear, never cross a line,” Gloria says in the film. “It’s too hard, it’s too contradictory, and no one gives you a medal or says thank you.”

The remarkable speech, which ultimately inspired the other Barbies in Barbie Land to snap out of Ken’s patriarchal brainwashing, also struck a chord with another demographic – mothers.

“I’ve had a lot of moms come up to me and say, ‘I watched it with my kids, and afterwards they said, ‘Why did you cry,'” she tells PEOPLE.

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America Ferrera as Gloria in ‘Barbie’ (left).

Warner Bros

Some members of the film’s crew were moved to tears by the speech, says Greta Gerwig, who directed and co-wrote the film — not only the highest-grossing film of 2023, but also Warner Bros.’ greatest movie ever.

At a recent Q&A, Gerwig, 40, said that while filming the monologue — which Ferrera said she did “probably 30 to 50 full takes” — the director would “watch people stop what they’re doing and just start sobbing “.

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America Ferrera, Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig.

Han Myung-Gu/WireImage

According to Gerwig, who wrote Barbie with her husband Noah Baumbach, she herself wrote the now iconic monologue, but it eventually became a joint work of her and Ferrera.

The duo would “text each other about everything about it” as they refined the speech for several months before coming up with the final version, she told The Cut.

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Barbie is available for streaming exclusively on Max.

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education