Life in Barbie's Barbie Land is plastic, fantastic, and very pink. But after one of the dolls (Margot Robbie) experiences an existential crisis, she leaves her utopian, colorful home behind and travels to the gritty reality of Venice Beach. The transition fills Barbie with curiosity and wonder—there are real visual and thematic contrasts between the dual realms, and they become even more apparent when the accompanying Ken (Ryan Gosling) learns that men run this world. As Barbie explores, she realizes that the real thing, despite its flaws, may be more appealing than artificiality.
While much of the fantastical story was filmed on sets in London, production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer also used actual locations around Los Angeles, including in Venice Beach and Century City. The actors spent two-and-a-half weeks there to shoot several key scenes, including one where Barbie and Ken show up on the Venice boardwalk in neon Lycra and rollerblades. Here, Greenwood and Spencer discuss how they used Venice and Palm Springs as inspiration for Barbie Land, filming with Robbie and Gosling on location, and where they hung out in L.A.
In Barbie, Barbie Land functions as a utopian mirror universe to California's Venice Beach.
How did you want to create the distinction between Barbie Land and the real world?
Sarah Greenwood: It was such a crazy thing to try and work out: What is Barbie Land, and what is its relationship to the real world? I know it will appear simple when you see it, but it wasn’t in the beginning. Knowing what real L.A. was like—and that’s how it was always written in the script—helped us end up with a juxtaposition between real L.A. and Barbie Land, where they’re connected. We took L.A. and put it into Barbie Land, but then subverted it so there’s a constant feeding between the two.
Katie Spencer: Barbie Land is the utopian version of what Venice Beach or L.A. could have been.
Following an existential crisis, Barbie leaves Barbie Land for Venice Beach with Ken in tow.
So you used elements of L.A. to design Barbie Land?
SG: We took elements like the Venice Beach lifeguard stations and put them into Barbie Land. You're ultimately cherry-picking what you think are the best things about the real world and putting them into Barbie Land and subverting them a little bit.
KS: And it had to be Venice Beach and not another part of L.A. because the mirror was perfect—Barbie Land is a cracked mirror of the real world.
SG: Down in Venice Beach, I love this idea that there's beautiful palm trees but they're all graffitied. Whereas our palm trees in Barbie Land have pink in the bark and they're all painted beautifully. Our sand is pink and perfect, and the Venice Beach sand is
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You pass so close to towering red rock canyons in southern Utah that you expect to hear scraping or see sparks as you glide by. They loom so dramatically over you that you stare without blinking. And if you’re on board the train Rocky Mountaineer, you have glass domed and sided coaches to take it all in, all of the majestic landscape on the Rockies to Red Rocks journey between Moab, Utah and Denver.
Among the many wonderful things about Greece is that everyone has a favorite island—and everyone is right. For veteran Forbes travel contributor Jim Dobson, that magical isle is Sifnos. Reachable by ferry from Athens in a little over two hours, Sifnos has beautiful beaches, numerous hiking trails along the Aegean Sea and a remarkable 237 churches. Here’s where to eat, stay and play on Sifnos.
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