America Ferrera Riffs on ‘Barbie’s REAL Love Story

From its beautifully deep critical success to its bombastic run at the box office, all the way up to its eight Academy Award nominations—and, of course, its cultural impact that’s showing no signs of slowing down, Barbie is about as special as it gets.

And with Best Supporting Actress nominee America Ferrera’s recent comments to Deadline, Barbie‘s magic only continues to shine in brand new ways, with the film’s resident monologue master breaking down the ins and outs of Barbie‘s love story—specifically, the one between her character Gloria and Margot Robbie’s eponymous protagonist.

Our earliest conversations were about how the love story, if there was going to be one, was really between Barbie and Gloria. They need each other to move forward to become the fuller version of themselves… Gloria falling in love with possibility again and Barbie falling in love with imperfection. Barbie falling in love with what it means to be human. And they do fall in love with each other in each other’s worlds. They changed each other.

Now, there is something exceptionally, profoundly beautiful about a film that identifies and nurtures its love story completely independently of any romantic context, and it’s hardly any surprise that Barbie does that here. The film’s entire essence, after all, is precisely love as a revolution, and what better way to honor that than by basing the film around a love story that’s precisely about love for love’s sake?

I would even go as far as to say that the romance genre as a whole would benefit from taking a page out of Barbie‘s book; there’s only so much healthy sincerity you can draw out of the premise of two (usually straight, usually very conventionally attractive) individuals being attracted to one another, so why not double down on love’s true, mutinous nature by trying to interpret the phrase “love story” as “a story about the heights we can reach through the counsel of humanity’s beauty, both internally and externally” as widely as possible?

That’s what Barbie did, and look where that got her.

(featured image: Warner Bros. Pictures)