'Barbie' star Margot Robbie and director Greta Gerwig kicked off filming with a 'girly' sleepover wearing matching pink outfits

• Greta Gerwig told The New York Times that she and Margot Robbie had a "Barbie-themed" sleepover.
• Gerwig said she wanted to do "something totally girly" to kick off filming for the comedy-drama.

Greta Gerwig said that ahead of shooting "Barbie," she and lead star Margot Robbie got together for a "girly" sleepover in which they played games and wore pink sleepover outfits.

In a new interview with The New York Times, the "Little Women" director opened up about the experience of filming the highly-anticipated movie about the iconic Mattel doll, which is hitting theaters on July 21, 2023.

While she didn't reveal anything about the closely-guarded plot of the film, Gerwig did say that she kicked off filming in London, England, with a "Barbie sleepover" with Robbie and some of the other women and men working on the movie.

Explaining why she decided to bring her cast and crew together for a slumber party, Gerwig said: "I really love building companies of actors almost like a theater troupe."

"I wanted that kind of energy because it was a really big cast," she continued. "It was like, well, let's do something totally girly."

Sadly, Ryan Gosling, who stars as Barbie's boyfriend, Ken, in the film, didn't participate.

Gerwig also said she invited the cast to watch weekly movie screenings at the Electric Cinema in Notting Hill while filming in the UK capital to give them a better sense of the kind of tone she was trying to achieve in the movie.

Some of the films she showed include "His Girl Friday" and "The Red Shoes," per The New York Times.

Gerwig said the message she was trying to convey with the screenings was: "Don't worry. People have made really wild movies before."

Elsewhere in the interview, Gerwig shared her reaction to the viral sensation caused by photos of Robbie and Gosling dressed in vibrant workout gear rollerskating through Los Angeles' Venice Beach earlier this year.

"I couldn't believe Ryan and Margot were just out there in full neon," she said of the paparazzi photos which were shared widely online.

"It was like we were in this bubble, and all of a sudden they were doing it in public in front of everyone," she continued. "Everything was so extreme and they were really going for it. Just 100% commitment."

In September, Robbie said on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" that she was left "mortified" by the attention shooting that scene attracted.

"We look like we're like laughing and having fun, but dying on the inside. Dying. I was like, 'This is the most humiliating moment of my life,'" Robbie, who also serves as a producer on the film, said.

Robbie admitted to Fallon that she didn't think photos of her and Gosling would break the internet in the way they did.

"So I knew there was going to be a little bit of attention, and probably some photos would get out there, but not like it did. It was like, mad. It was like, hundreds of people watching," the actor said.