The woman who inspired the Barbie doll is upset that actress Margot Robbie and film director Greta Gerwig have not been 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 after when it first hit shelves in 1959.
Handler has spoken TMZ Tuesday about her reaction to the director and actress being snubbed when the nominees were announced at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, California.
The exclusion on both fronts sparked massive backlash from fans, as well as the film’s 43-year-old Ryan Gosling, who was nominated for his acting in the film.
Handler said, “She thinks there’s something wrong with Margot and Greta not getting Oscar nominations,” the outlet reported Tuesday.
Barbara Handler, 82, who inspired the Barbie doll, is angry that actress Margot Robbie and film director Greta Gerwig have not been 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 criticism,” the outlet reported, noting that after seeing the film twice, she “loved the movie even more the second time” and “feels something is wrong” with Gerwig, 40, and Robbie, 33. are excluded from nominations in their respective categories.
Handler felt that Gerwig and Robbie did not receive “the recognition they deserve” from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for their efforts on the film, and “believes they both should be rewarded,” the outlet reported.
The film, which grossed $1.4 billion at the box office, received a total of eight nominations, including 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 already nominated for an Oscar for Best Director for Lady Bird in 2018 – did receive a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay on Tuesday, together with co-writer Noah Baumbach.
Robbie is honored when Barbie wins Best Picture, as she is the film’s producer along with David Heyman, Tom Ackerley and Robbie Brenner.
Robbie has already been nominated twice for her acting: 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 she believes the film should win Best Picture because of its popularity and profitability. She said in April TMZ that her mother Ruth, who died on April 27, 2002 after surgery amid a battle with colon cancer, would be happily shocked to see the doll become the centerpiece of a big-budget Hollywood film.
Ruth Handler was the first president of Mattel, which she founded with her husband Elliot Handler in 1945.
Barbara Handler was pictured in Hollywood in 2002 when the doll was given a place on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
The director and actress were photographed on stage at the Critics’ Choice Awards in LA on January 14
When inventing the Barbie doll, Ruth tried 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 about their own future as adult women.…Wouldn’t it be great if we could take that play pattern and make it three-dimensional?” Ruth said about the paper dolls.
Ruth said in her book that her husband Elliot and their former business partner Harold ‘Matt’ Matson were skeptical about the product’s success.
“Ruth, it won’t work,” I was told bluntly, she said in the book.
She added that there was also resistance to capturing the character’s femininity through her form.
“I really think that the prudishness of those designers – all men – came mainly from the fact that the doll would have breasts,” Ruth said. “Even Elliot, who has the uncanny ability to correctly predict what others will buy, feared that no mother would buy her daughter a doll with a chest.”
In 1956, while vacationing in Switzerland, Handler noticed a novelty doll that bore a resemblance to her earlier idea.
She said: ‘These were the breasts, the small waist, the long, tapered legs that I had enthusiastically described to the designers all those years ago.’
Robbie led the cast of the summer blockbuster based on the famous 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 the first year, according to the company.
Mattel SVP of Barbie design Kim Culmone described it People how the idea was not an easy sell in the late 1950s.
“Ruth succeeded in selling Barbie into a toy industry that was hesitant to come up with a doll that a girl could use to project her hope and inspiration,” Culmone said.