Barbie Deleted Scene with Michael Cera Paid Homage to Jaws

After a historic summer, Greta Gerwig’s smash-hit film, Barbie, arrives in IMAX today, and previously unseen post-credit scenes are coming with it. In a new interview with Variety, cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto has shared that the new footage is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the movie’s unseen scenes go. Giving insight into what ended up on the cutting room floor, he highlighted one deleted scene that gave Gerwig quite a chuckle: a moment with Michael Cera inspired by Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.

In the film, Cera portrays Allan — the now-discontinued Mattel doll intended to be Ken’s friend — and delivers the movie’s “most reliably funny jokes,” according to Consequence’s Senior Entertainment Editor Liz Shannon Miller, who even suggested that Cera’s memorable performance is Oscar-worthy. According to Prieto, the scene that cracked Gerwig up was a play on the famous dolly zoom from Jaws, with Allan as the camera’s subject.

“We did this shot on Allan that emulated Jaws… he’s terrified [when] Ken hits a wave and then flies in the air,” Prieto told Variety. “There’s a moment where the police officer sees someone being eaten in the water. The camera does this push-in, it’s a move where you use a zoom and you’re dialing into the character while zooming back at the same time. The effect is that the background changes — the shot, and his performance, [were] very dramatic.”

While the reason for why the scene didn’t make it to the final cut is unclear, one thing is certain: Gerwig thought it was hysterical. “[She] could not stop laughing when we shot it,” Prieto said. “[She] kept asking the video assistant to replay it for her just to laugh.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Prieto suggested that the Barbie team could release a blooper reel to share more of the fun that the general public hasn’t gotten to see yet, especially with scenes including Will Ferrell, who played the CEO of Mattel. “With Will Ferrell, come on — they should have bloopers from that because he just came up with the craziest stuff,” he said. “All the actors around him couldn’t avoid laughing. We were all playing, and so many moments of improvisation had to be taken out.”

Earlier in the summer, Gerwig and her longtime editing collaborator, Nick Houy, spoke about another crew-beloved scene that didn’t make it to the final cut of the film: a “fart opera.” As Gerwig explained, the duo had “always tried to get in a proper fart joke,” but evidently felt that their attempt at including one with Barbie was “in the wrong place.” Speaking to IndieWire, Houy said, “We need to work it into a more significant narrative moment next time.”

Barbie will be shown in IMAX for one week only (tickets are available here), but thankfully, the movie is already available to watch at home digitally. Check out our guide on how to stream Barbie.