Helen Mirren recently told Entertainment Tonight that you can’t get too upset about Oscar snubs, especially when your movie is a historic and record-breaking box office phenomenon. Mirren, who won the Oscar for best actress thanks to her performance in “The Queen,” served as the narrator of Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” which earned eight Oscar noms, including best picture, but failed to land Gerwig a best director nomination or Margot Robbie a best actress nomination. These omissions were widely considered the most shocking Oscar snubs of the year, not that Mirren is in too much of an uproar.
“You can’t get upset about things like that, honestly,” Mirren said. “What is fantastic is that ‘Barbie’ was the highest-grossing film that Warner Bros. has ever had in their lives and do you remember who won best film of the year before last?”
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Mirren’s point is that “Barbie’s” relationship to the Oscars is not the reason it will stand the test of time. The movie earned $1.4 billion at the worldwide box office last year, becoming the top earner of 2023 and Warner Bros. biggest box office hit in history. For these reasons, “Barbie” will endure.
“I mean, of course I would have loved to have seen Greta [be nominated], and I think she should win best [director],” Mirren added. “It’s so difficult, it’s not a running race, you know, you can’t — Christopher Nolan’s work on ‘Oppenheimer’ was spectacular, extraordinary. But for me, Greta’s work was so out there, it was so brave, it was something we’d never seen before. I just love the fact that the audience responded the way they did.”
While Mirren’s “Barbie” co-stars and current Oscar nominees Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera have criticized the Oscars for snubbing Robbie and Gerwig, Robbie herself is looking at the glass half full.
“There’s no way to feel sad when you know you’re this blessed,” Robbie said at a SAG-AFTRA discussion after the Oscar nominations were announced. “Obviously, I think Greta should be nominated as a director. What she did is a once-in-a-career, once-in-a-lifetime thing. What she pulled off, it really is. But it’s been an incredible year for all the films.”
Robbie added she is “beyond ecstatic” with the film’s eight Oscar nominations and said: “Everyone getting the nods that they’ve had is just incredible, and the best picture no. We set out to do something that would shift culture, affect culture, just make some sort of impact. And it’s already done that and some, way more than we ever dreamed it would. And that is truly the biggest reward that could come out of all of this.”
Mirren recently spoke to Variety about the scenes she shot for “Barbie” that did not make it into the final cut, one of which featured fellow best actress Oscar winner Olivia Colman.
“It was a very funny scene with Olivia Colman sort of playing drunk and us clashing about who is the real grande dame of British actresses,” Mirren revealed. “She comes in and tries to take over the role of the Narrator and I had to fight her off.”
