Greta Gerwig covers the current digital issue of Elle UK. The shoot is very… British. That’s not a slam nor a compliment, it’s just a statement of fact. They made her look like a lady who lunches (in London). They made her look like she’s one of King Charles’s goddaughters and she also might have had an affair with him when she was 19 and platinum blonde. Gerwig’s interview is in support of Barbie, which she co-wrote and directed. The details about the movie are slim, but that’s not even the point anymore. Some highlights:
She didn’t play with Barbies growing up: ‘My mom wasn’t crazy about Barbie. It wasn’t something that felt, necessarily, approved, which made it more intriguing.’ Her family didn’t have a TV, she wasn’t allowed to wear logos: this was not a world of Barbie Dream House-style all-American consumerism. ‘Part of the reason I think I was so intrigued [by this project] is because, not even intellectually, but from deep inside, I understand the counter-arguments. That feels rich.’
She hopes the film subverts sexist stereotypes. Barbie, she says, is, ‘literally plastic. She’s unchanging. If you threw her out, she just wouldn’t disintegrate. If I could give that persona some humanity, some falling-apart-ness, that – in and of itself – would be be meaningful… In this sort of double mirror of the movie, Margot Robbie is also a person we expect to be perfect. What does that mean that we also do that? Is she allowed to fall apart and be vulnerable?’
Biblical inspirations: ‘It starts off in a place where there is no aging, no death, no shame, no separation. That’s an oldie but a goodie. Because I went to Catholic school, that story of Eve and Adam suddenly realising they are naked really stuck with me,’ she says. She talks about John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and the idea that there is no poetry without pain.
She just had her second baby: She retires to a private room to pump a bottle of breast milk, which is handed to her assistant, between the shoot and the interview. ‘I’m about to be 40. And there’s something about that where you’re like: Oh! I’m properly middle aged now.’ All parts of life feel extremely activated.’ She shows me a picture of her baby on her lap, at his four-month checkup the previous day. ‘He’s a little Schmoo. I don’t know if you can tell energy from the picture, but that’s very much his energy. He’s a wise little baby…. The little guy is sleeping through the night. But I’m still doing that thing where I wake up, every hour to 90 minutes, and just hover. You just keep wanting to look at that baby. So I’m slightly in a twilight state.’
She wore the same boiler suit, in different colours, every day on the ‘Barbie’ set: Now, she says, as she approaches her forties, ‘I want to start being more playfully outrageous.’ She talks about how fun it was to wear long nails and high heels for our shoot. ‘I don’t want to be 80 and look back and say I could have really done it, from 40 to 60, but I chose to be practical! But we will see how far I get with this,’ she says. Either way, it feels as though she is grabbing the current moment with both hands. ‘I’ll probably look back and say, “That was a really an amazing time. And I don’t know how all of it was possible.” But it’s filled with a lot of happiness.’
The second baby is months old and Greta has been wearing shapeless sack dresses throughout the promotion, so it’s not like it’s huge breaking news that she gave birth before the Barbie promotion started. I like how low-key this announcement was though – like, oh by the way, I need to go pump because my baby is four months old. No one pressed her about it either, no one was really talking about it at all. I do wonder about her relationship with Noah Baumbach, especially given that he left Jennifer Jason Leigh when their son was just months old and he abruptly took up with Greta, and now Greta just had two babies back-to-back. I don’t know! It just feels…like none of my business, I know.
Cover & IG courtesy of Elle UK.
I hope Jennifer Jason Leigh is thriving and happy.
Minor correction: Jennifer Jason Leigh moved back to California while she was pregnant. She filed for divorce nearly a year later, perhaps to protect herself and the baby from family court shenanigans (judges have ruled in other cases that a pregnant woman who moves out of state has to return the newborn to the father’s state for visitation).
No offense but that is a completely false timeline.
Jennifer Jason Leigh gave birth alone. Gerwig and Baumbach ran off together while JJL was in labor. Gerwig worked almost daily with Jennifer Jason Leigh on set, Baumbach & her wrote the Greenberg script together. She was visibly pregnant and Gerwig did not care. She was kind and friendly to a 8-9 month pregnant JJL while she was having an affair with Baumbach.
But there won’t be backlash. People love Greta and think she is very pro-woman and feminism is her brand. What she and Baumbach did to another human being, and Gerwig to a fellow woman, was heinous. But when you’re the public’s fave like Gerwig has become, people ignore the stories. Or rationalize them, write them off, but everyone who worked on Greenberg knew what was happening (except JJL). Baumbach was always horrible, but it’s extra disappointing to see a talented female filmmaker be just as cruel. She was 30 when this happened, not young & impressionable at all.
I did not mean to imply JJL was still with Baumbach. She moved AWAY from their home in New York while pregnant, but took some time to establish residency in California before filing for divorce.
‘especially given that he left Jennifer Jason Leigh when their son was just months old and he abruptly took up with Greta’
The author of the article has this part wrong: GG and Noah Baumbach got together during filming of Greenberg while GG worked alongside a heavily preg JJL (script writer of the movie) and Noah Baumbach left JJL BEFORE their baby was born after Greenberg wrapped…..JJL gave birth alone, GG and Baumbach knew this and were fine with this.
I think GG is smart and talented, but you can’t call yourself pro-woman and treat another woman that way…and at the big age of 30 no less…as for Noah Baumbach, he’s always been a pretentious ass & treated the crew of White Noise like crap
I have yet to see Barbie, but I don’t agree she is that talented.
I think she is refreshing in a male dominated industry, but I haven’t really enjoyed her movies, not the direction nor the acting when she did it.
She screams “pick me girl” and yes, I know it’s not that great to criticize women this way, but she just IS the classic stereotype!
She is the muse, she is so smart, she is so different that she left an indie darling actress career to be behind cameras, she is such an artist, she is so not like other women in the industry, she had an epic romance with an older director that just went crazy for her and left his pregnant wife because she is such a special human being, a bright mind! Insufferable, honestly.
Greta should be concerned. Barbie is about to blow up, and even though he is a co writer, this is all Greta until the end of the year into award season.
Noah is gonna be looking for another ‘muse’ real soon.
It just amazes me this dude gets awesome, supremely talanted women and leaves destruction. HIM !!!
It is kind of me to call him mediocre.
Yeah, I can never get past couples who start this way. I can never forget.
I took my daughter to see the movie yesterday at an early preview and it was entertaining and shot beautifully. Fun music and great costumes. The one thing I would say is that there is no subtlety in the message. It could have been about ten minutes shorter if they cut back on saying the same message throughout the last 45 minutes of the movie. There was no way to miss the message (and I approve of the message) but it just took away a bit of the world by having it repeated and re-verbiaged ten different ways in order to drive that point home.
Looking forward to seeing Barbie. Need a fun and silly distraction from real life!
As for the Noah Baumbach and JJL connection, I think I knew that they had been together but didn’t know there was so much drama. Going to do a deep dive into some old gossip now!
I like Greta! (But I like Jennifer Jason Leigh even more! Not that it’s a contest, but it’s hard to think about GG without also thinking about JJL.) And wowwwww, I’d never realized until these photos how much Greta Gerwig and Kiernan Shipka resemble each other.
Ooo I see it!
The JJL situation always tarnishes any positive feelings I have towards GG or NB.
Yes I felt JJL kept her dignity in a horrible situation just like Mary Louise Parker when Billy Crudup dumped her when she was 7 months pregnant for 23 year old Claire Danes. Is Noah’s ego going to cope well with Greta’s succcess and two young babies in the house? Fed up with guys like Jonah Hill and keke’s baby daddy trying to extinguish their partner’s light! Prove me wrong Noah and be a wonderful supportive husband and father like Harry who glows with pride and love at his wife’s accomplishments.
I hope we can stop blaming women for men’s actions. Noah was the one who was married(or so it seemed because the timeline was messy when they first got together) not Greta.
I hope Jennifer Jason Leigh is thriving and doing well.
As to Noah and Greta, they are each supremely talented filmmakers and if you see either one of them talking about film, you really get a sense of what the attraction is there and why they work. They are both total and deep cinephile nerds(Greta talking about Jacques Tati as one of her Barbie influence is so nerdy and hilarious). They have a really deep creative partnership.
That being said, I do think some men struggle when their partners are more successful and famous then them. And we do know Jennifer was more famous than Noah when they were together even though he is a brilliant director and writer. I do wonder if Greta’s increasing fame isn’t the threat to them but the fact that she may be a better director than him? That she is in the same field as him and is proving herself more adept than him? There aren’t that many truly lasting couples where both people are directors in film, especially when the female partner begins to really come into her own creatively. Though that could be really misleading because these pairings have been rare probably because so few women get the opportunity to direct films.
Yeah it’s a delicate dance because you want to place the blame primarily on the man (or the one who cheated) but you don’t want to infantilize the woman (or the one they cheated with) either. She had agency; she made a conscious choice to be with a married man. Mostly, I just don’t understand why, when there’s millions of single people out here, some are still hellbent on being with folks who are already taken.
Agree with both. Yes, it’s his main responsability, but she took choices too. And these were selfish harmful choices.
You can’t gloss over the fact that Greta worked with pregnant JJL while having an affair with her husband.
She is an adult that lied and romanced a married man by choice, and deserves to be called out for it. Same with any other couple that goes through cheating, the “other” person should be called out as well; the coupled cheater should have the consequences, imho.
And yet with GG and NB, the one that took the consquences was JJL 🙁 because people keep on glossing over the start of their relationship and their careers remain intact and growing while maintaining a perfect indie darling couple image
We are going on Sunday and I CAN’T WAIT!! My mom, sister, daughter, and me (and my husband, who hinted strongly that he wouldn’t say no if invited, lmao!) My 15 year-old son is seeing it with friends Tuesday.
I can’t help it, I dislike Greta for the Noah Baumbach situation almost as much as I dislike Noah. I’m just about her age (a few years older) and it seemed like she played the whole thing like they had no choice but to follow their hearts. Grown people ALWAYS have a choice, and there is an honorable way to break a commitment before beginning a new one. I wish JJL no end of happiness and contentment and I’m sorry to say that I still kind of hope GG and NB get what (I think) they deserve.
ETA: Kaiser, as always, you nailed the general vibe of the photo shoot! 🤣
I find her really attractive. She has a “smartest girl in English class” look about her. And I’ve loved a number of Noah Baumbach’s films, so she has good taste.