There’s a whole Sliding Doors world of different Barbie movies. From previous attempts by Diablo Cody, Amy Schumer, and even Sharon Stone in the 1990s, to a veritable buffet of alternate actors who were nearly in the Greta Gerwig-Margot Robbie hit. Matt Bomer, Timothée Chalamet, and Saoirse Ronan were all offered but unable to film roles, and now we have a new bit of casting tea: Olivia Colman actually made it so far as to be hired and record a scene — in which she vies to take over narration duties from Helen Mirren over voiceover — but the scene was ultimately cut. Olivia, though, is not broken up about it. “I got paid for the job, and then no one could say I was sh-t in it.” This Barbie has a good agent.

Olivia Colman looked on the bright side of being cut out of the smash hit “Barbie.”

Colman performed a scene in which she tried to steal the role of narrator from Helen Mirren as they argued over who is Britain’s grande dame of acting, Mirren recalled last month.

Although the exchange was “very funny,” Mirren said, it didn’t make the final cut.

Colman told IndieWire on Wednesday she knew something was up when she was patched into a call with director Greta Gerwig and producer David Heyman.

“I thought, ‘Oh, I know what this must be [for],’” Colman said. “It made perfect sense, because [the scene] didn’t add to the story, it was just fun. Maybe they were running over, I don’t know. But it was kind of perfect for me, because I got paid for the job, and then no one could say I was sh-t in it.”

Sure, having a part in a $1.4 billion box office juggernaut like “Barbie” would have its perks, but Colman has a fun story to tell and a career that’s still humming along.

She’s riding a career wave from her Emmy-winning stint as Queen Elizabeth on “The Crown” and has a new film called “Wicked Little Letters” coming out.

[From HuffPost]

From what Olivia describes of the scene, I have to say I think they made the right call to cut it. A little narrator-off doesn’t add to the story. (Controversial opinion: I think even the Ken beach-off was not necessary, at least for as long as the sequence lasted.) And while it may be funny to us now to listen to Helen Mirren and Olivia Colman have a very polite British spat, I wonder how well the bit would age? It makes the movie more specific to a moment in time, whereas I felt the themes in Barbie had a timeless quality. You know, the timeless story of women having to walk a tightrope to be taken seriously but not too seriously, and to have others value us and also figure out how to value ourselves along the way, and to make a work of art that exceeds all creative and financial expectations… and still not be recognized by your peers. The struggle is eternal.

Photos credit: James Warren / Bang Showbiz / Avalon