Amy Schumer has played relatively coy over the years about why she left the Barbie movie before it moved to Warner Bros. and Greta Gerwig took the reins. But on Thursday night’s Watch What Happens Live, she finally confirmed the answer—and went a little deeper than “creative differences,” as she’s put it in the past.
“They said I was too thin,” the comedian joked about her departure. When host Andy Cohen asked why she’d really left the project and whether she planned to see it now, she replied, “I can’t wait to see the movie. I think it looks awesome.”
Schumer added that the last time she and Cohen spoke, she believed she’d blamed her exit on “scheduling conflicts.” When he pressed further, she cited “creative differences.” But now, she added, “there’s a new team behind it, and it looks like it’s very feminist and cool. So I will be seeing that movie.”
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When Cohen asked if the original version she’d been set to star in did not feel “feminist and cool,” Schumer confirmed, “Yeah.”
Schumer was originally set to star as Barbie back in 2016, when Sony still owned the film. At the time, the comedian hit back at trolls who said she was physically unsuitable for the role. “I want to thank them for making it so evident that I am a great choice,” she wrote in an Instagram post at the time. “It’s that kind of response that lets you know something’s wrong with our culture and we all need to work together to change it.”
Months later, in 2017, Schumer revealed she’d left the project due to “scheduling conflicts.” Last year, however, the actress went into more detail while speaking with The Hollywood Reporter.
Originally, as THR notes, Barbie had been described as a story about a woman (Schumer) who gets kicked out of Barbieland for not being perfect enough.
“They definitely didn’t want to do it the way I wanted to do it—the only way I was interested in doing it,” Schumer told THR. While she’d imagined Barbie as a serious inventor, THR reported that the studio wanted her creation to be... a high-heeled shoe made from Jell-O.
During that interview, Schumer also recalled receiving a pair of Manolo Blahniks from the studio as a congratulatory gift for her role. “The idea that that’s just what every woman must want, right there, I should have gone, ‘You’ve got the wrong gal.’”
Gerwig’s version of Barbie, which stars Margot Robbie in the titular role, is slated for release on July 21.
