The woman who inspired the Barbie doll is upset that the actress Margot Robbie and the film’s director Greta Gerwig did not get nominated for Academy Awards for their work on the summer blockbuster.
Barbara Handler, 82 – the daughter of Mattel co-founder and Barbie inventor Ruth Handler – is who the doll was named for when it first hit shelves in 1959.
Handler spoke with TMZ Tuesday about her reaction to the director and actress getting snubbed as nominees were announced at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, California.
The exclusion on both fronts provoked massive pushback from fans, as well as the film’s Ryan Gosling, 43, who was nominated for his acting efforts in the motion picture.
Handler said ‘she feels there’s something wrong about Margot and Greta not getting Oscar nominations,’ the outlet reported Tuesday.
Barbara Handler, 82, who inspired the Barbie doll, is upset that the actress Margot Robbie and the film’s director Greta Gerwig did not get nominated for Academy Awards for their work on the summer blockbuster. Pictured in 2002
Robbie and Gerwig were pictured on the set of the film, which was a huge hit with critics and fans
Handler ‘doesn’t understand the snubs,’ the outlet reported, noting that after watching the film two times, she ‘loved it even more the second time’ and ‘feels there’s something wrong’ with Gerwig, 40, and Robbie, 33, getting shut out of nominations in their respective categories.
Handler felt Gerwig and Robbie weren’t ‘getting the recognition they deserve’ from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for their efforts on the film, and ‘feels they both should be rewarded,’ the outlet reported.
The motion picture, which took in $1.4 billion at the box office, received eight nominations overall, including for Best Picture; Ryan Gosling for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role; and America Ferrera for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role.
Gerwig – who was past nominated for an Oscar for Best Director for Lady Bird in 2018 – did receive a nomination Tuesday for Best Adapted Screenplay, along with co-writer Noah Baumbach.
Robbie stands to be honored if Barbie wins Best Picture, as she’s a producer on the film along with David Heyman, Tom Ackerley and Robbie Brenner.
Robbie has past been nominated twice for her acting efforts: In 2020 for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for her work in Bombshell; and in 2018 for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in I, Tonya.
Handler said that she feels the movie should win for Best Picture due to its popularity and profitability. In April, she told TMZ that her mother Ruth, who died April 27, 2002 after surgery amid a battle with colon cancer, would be happily shocked to see the doll become the focal point of a big budget Hollywood film.
Ruth Handler was the first president of Mattel, which she founded in 1945 with her husband Elliot Handler.
Barbara Handler was pictured in Hollywood in 2002 when the doll was awarded a spot on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
The director and actress were pictured onstage January 14 at the Critics’ Choice Awards in LA
In inventing the Barbie doll, Ruth sought to bring to life the paper dolls Barbara played with. She opened up about coming up with the concept in her 1994 memoir Dream Doll: The Ruth Handler Story.
‘I discovered something very important: They were using these dolls to project their dreams of their own futures as adult women.… Wouldn’t it be great if we could take that play pattern and three-dimensionalize it?’ Ruth said of the paper dolls.
Ruth said in her book that her spouse Elliot and their former business partner Harold ‘Matt’ Matson were skeptical that the product would be a success.
‘”Ruth, it won’t work,” I was told flatly,’ she said in the book.
She added that there was also pushback to capturing the character’s femininity via her shape.
‘I really think that the squeamishness of those designers – every last one of them male – stemmed mostly from the fact that the doll would have breasts,’ Ruth said. ‘Even Elliot, who has an uncanny knack for correctly predicting what others will buy, feared that no mother would buy her daughter a doll with a chest.’
In 1956, Handler noticed a novelty doll during a Switzerland vacation that bore a resemblance to her earlier idea.
She said, ‘Here were the breasts, the small waist, the long, tapered legs I had enthusiastically described for the designers all those years ago.’
Robbie led the cast of the summer blockbuster based off the famed toy brand
She took one home and had Mattel VP Jack Ryan work on adapting the doll for a young American audience. The famous toy debuted on store shelves three years later, with 300,000 dolls sold in its first year, according to the company.
Mattel SVP of Barbie design Kim Culmone described to People how the idea wasn’t an easy sell at the end of the 1950s.
‘Ruth was able to sell Barbie in a toy industry that was hesitant to think of a doll that a girl could use to project her hopes and inspirations,’ Culmone said.