Margot Robbie Brings Radiant Rose Barbie Alive in Red Balmain Dress at the Critics Choice Awards
Dua Lipa isn’t the only Barbie cast member to dress like a rose for the Critics Choice Awards. Best Actress nominee Margot Robbie attended the ceremony in her own rose-adorned look: a custom red Balmain column dress. She acessorized with Lorraine Schwartz jewelry. Her husband, Tom Ackerley, posed with her in a rare red carpet appearance for the couple. Fans speculated that she could be referencing 1996’s Radiant Rose Barbie with the outfit as the top part greatly resembles the Barbie’s red dress.
Barbie is up for 18 awards at the ceremony tonight. Robbie herself is up for Best Actress for her work in the film.
Robbie spoke to Deadline in a cover story released earlier this week about how they approached making a movie about Barbie given people’s different opinions about the doll.
That’s not to say we all sat down trying to figure out the puzzle as you describe it. All I knew going into it was that there was an opportunity here to do that thing. It took a really smart person like Greta Gerwig to find the story, and figure out how to unpack all those things. I knew she wouldn’t be glossing over the spiky bits, which was important in our writer/director. I knew she wouldn’t be interested in doing that. She always wanted to explore both the good and the bad, because you don’t get a fully formed experience without looking at both.
But at the same time, and most important of all, it was about finding a person—and I always knew it should be Greta—who would be able to do it without mocking anything. Overall, it was important that it not be mean-spirited. It always had to come from a place of love. And I think it was about making it feel hopeful. It felt like we could hold the spiky bits and the warmth in the same hands.
At the end of the day, the movie is kind of not really about Barbie. Greta’s the genius that looked at it and went, “Aren’t humans so strange? They made a doll, then they got mad at the doll. That’s just insane.” And it’s true; we created Barbie and then we got mad at Barbie, because then we didn’t have to get mad at ourselves. We could shout at her; we could project onto her all of the perceived failings in the world, and we could direct the blame at her. It’s an inanimate object [laughs]. Isn’t that just so crazy?
I can’t claim any of these thoughts were fully fleshed out when I went after the rights for Barbie. But I knew someone would have those thoughts, and I recognized the opportunity and the kind of playground that someone smart like a Greta Gerwig could have fun in.
