Amy Schumer isn’t part of the Barbie movie anymore, but she still went to see it — and she’s a fan.
“Really enjoyed Barbie and Oppenheimer but I think I should have played Emily Blunt‘s role,” Schumer, 42, joked via Instagram on Monday, July 24, alongside a photo of herself in a straw hat. “Do better Hollywood.”
Schumer was seemingly one of many filmgoers who committed to a Barbie and Oppenheimer double feature — otherwise known as Barbenheimer — over the weekend. Unlike most movie fans, however, Schumer had a personal connection to one of the films. She was originally supposed to star in a different version of Barbie that was in development before Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig took over the project.
Schumer’s involvement in the movie was announced in December 2016, but she dropped out three months later, citing scheduling conflicts. “The film has so much promise, and Sony and Mattel have been great partners,” she said in a statement at the time. “I’m bummed, but look forward to seeing Barbie on the big screen.”
Last month, however, Schumer admitted that she actually exited Barbie because of creative disagreements with the original team behind the film.
“I think we said it was scheduling conflicts, that’s what we said,” she explained during a June appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen. “But yeah, it really was just creative differences. But you know, there’s a new team behind it, and it looks like it’s very feminist and cool so I will be seeing the movie.”
When host Andy Cohen asked whether that meant the original version of the script didn’t “feel feminist and cool,” Schumer replied, “Yeah! Yeah.”
Last year, Schumer claimed that Sony, which was then producing the movie, had a very different version of Barbie in mind. (The Gerwig version was ultimately produced by Warner Bros.)
“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, adding that she knew something wasn’t clicking when she received a pair of Manolo Blahniks to celebrate her role in the film. “The idea that that’s just what every woman must want, right there, I should have gone, ‘You’ve got the wrong gal.’”
Fans may never know what a Schumer version of Barbie would have looked like, but the Gerwig version is clearly a hit. The movie — which hit theaters on Friday, July 21 — shattered box-office expectations, raking in a record-breaking $155 million over its opening weekend to land the biggest debut of the year. Barbie‘s success also marked the biggest opening weekend ever for a movie directed by a woman.
Oppenheimer, meanwhile, finished the weekend in second place with an impressive $80.5 million opening.
