How ‘Barbie’ Pulled Off That Viral Arched Foot Shoot

Now that Barbie is looking like a monster hit, it’s fair to ask: Just what was it that hooked people and made them decide they needed to see this thing in a theater? The Barbie name certainly did a lot of the heavy lifting, and the general look of the film, which turned the classic Barbie toys into a live-size world of its own, certainly helped too.

But don’t overlook the role played by the film’s clever trailers, and especially that viral shot of Barbie as she steps out of her heels and her foot maintains its perfect arch, just like actual Barbie dolls do when you take off their shoe accessories. As it turns out, that was no foot double or CGI trick; Margot Robbie revealed in a a recent interviewexactly how Barbie pulled this impressive but very simple shot.

“I walked up, we had little sticky bits on the floor for the shoes so they wouldn’t come off, so I could get my feet out of them,” Robbie explained. “And I was holding on to like a bar. But that’s it. It wasn’t like a harness or anything like that. I just walked up. Kind of held on to the bar above camera, stepped out.”

All told, Robbie said it only took about eight takes to get it exactly right.

I have to say, having seen the movie, I assumed there was more to it than that, whether it was some kind of platform that she stepped onto that was then digitally erased in post-production, whether there was some kind of heel she was wearing that they cut out. Nope! She just stood there, held onto a bar for support and nailed it. That’s truly great acting, I guess. And that’s what’s bringing people to the theater.

Barbie is in theaters now.