Photo:Matt Winkelmeyer/GA/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty; Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images for Warner Bros.
Matt Winkelmeyer/GA/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty; Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images for Warner Bros.
Barbiemarked the first time filmmakerGreta Gerwigworked withKate McKinnon, but it turns out the pair’s friendship goes way back.
“We were in an improv group together. She was much better, better at it than I was,” Gerwig says of McKinnon’s comedic abilities in college. TheLittle Womenfilmmaker graduated from Barnard College at Columbia University in 2006; McKinnongraduated from Columbia itselfthe same year.
“We made really wonderfully strange musicals together when we were in college,” the filmmaker recalls of the pair’s college theater exploits. “We were just 19 making a weird musical together and thinking like, ‘I hope someone will wanna work with us one day.’ Then cut to 39 and to just be calling her and saying, ‘Do you wanna be in this big thing?'”
“We just both started laughing because there was something about it where in some ways, hopefully we’ve grown and changed and developed as artists and in other ways we’re doing exactly what we were doing at 19,” she adds, noting that she considers their success “sort of special.”
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“But she was always the most talented person I knew and that still holds true,” she adds of McKinnon, who eventually broke out in the comedy world when she joinedSaturday Night Live’s cast in 2012.
Gerwig and McKinnon performed together at Columbia University’s famed annual Varsity Show during their college years. A 2005 edition of theColumbia Spectatorstudent newspaper lists McKinnon as Zeus in that year’s production, while Gerwig played a character named Helen Degrassi.
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Comedian and actress Jenny Slate (Marcel the Shell with Shoes On) also appeared in collegiate productions with the pair during her time at Columbia; she graduated two years before McKinnon and Gerwig, according toColumbia College Today.
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The film, which stars Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken in addition to McKinnon’s Weird Barbie, has made $188 million at the domestic box office and $382 million total worldwide through Tuesday, according toBox Office Mojo.
Barbieis in theaters now.
source: people.com
