Why Dan Levy Turned Down Ken Role in Barbie

Seven years before Greta Gerwig‘s version of Barbie premiered, a movie based on the popular doll was already in the works at Sony, with the comedian attached to the project.

And while in 2017, she announced she wouldn’t be able to star in the film due to scheduling conflicts, earlier this year, she revealed the real reason behind her exit.

“I think we said it was scheduling conflicts,” she said during a June episode of Watch What Happens Live. “That’s what we said. But it really was just like, creative differences. But there’s a new team behind it and it looks like it’s very feminist and cool, so I will be seeing this movie.”

The Trainwreck star’s sentiment echoes what she previously shared about the direction she realized the project was going in.

“They definitely didn’t want to do it the way I wanted to do it, the only way I was interested in doing it,” she told the Hollywood Reporter in March 2022.

Noting that she wanted Barbie to be an “inventor,” she said the studio had the idea that a creation of hers would be heels made of Jell-O and later sent her a pair of Manolo Blahniks.”

The idea that that’s just what every woman must want, right there,” she said, “I should have gone, ‘You’ve got the wrong gal.'”