The least popular Barbie of them all, Allan, is the real star of Barbie. While everyone is talking about Margot Robbie and her approach to playing Barbie or Ryan Gosling and his portrayal of Toxic Masculinity Ken, the real star of Barbie is Allan. He has so many unanswered questions. Michael Cera plays the controversial figure Allan in Barbie. Allan was intended to be Ken’s friend, but when Ken’s enormous personality takes over, Allan just sort of fades into the background. Allan’s character assists the Barbies when they most need it, demonstrating that occasionally all that is required is for Michael Cera to appear and everything will be alright. Cera, though, almost didn’t participate in the production for a small period.
In a recent interview with GQ, Cera said, “It was kind of a very last-minute casting.“My manager got a call checking on my availability for it, and he called me and he said, ‘I got a call about this movie. It’s the Barbie movie. Greta Gerwig’s directing it, and it’s filming in London for four months of something, so I told them you probably wouldn’t want to do it because you probably don’t want to go to London.’” Cera might have sacked his manager at this point, but he decided to take matters into his own hands and get in touch with Gerwig.
“I somehow got Greta’s email address,” Cera said. “I emailed her like, ‘Can I be in it? Can I do that part?’And she was like, ‘Let’s get on a Zoom right now. Here’s a Zoom link, I’ll be on there for the next hour.’ So she was just hanging out on Zoom, like, ‘Click the link whenever you’re ready.’ And then we talked about it, and it just all happened really fast from there.”
Cera continued, “Allan is a sad figure. He’s just a person that doesn’t really have any place in the world. It just wasn’t selling. The world just didn’t need for Ken to have a friend… Barbie is good, we can get a lot more Barbies in here, and friends of hers. But we’ve got Ken, and we don’t need to go deeper in that direction. So Allan fell by the wayside a little bit.”