After a worldwide fan event tour, Barbie made its debut at the film’s world premiere in Los Angeles on Sunday, on a pink carpet, transformed into a real-life Barbie Land.

Greta Gerwig, who directed and co-wrote (with partner Noah Baumbach), the film looked back on its origin.

Oscar nominated star Margot Robbie said than when she first read it was sure it would never get made.

“We wrote it at such a specific time, in the midst of lockdown and everything else, and I was like, I don’t even know if there’s going to be movies again, but if there are, let’s write the most outrageous, anarchic, hilarious thing,” she said. “Let’s imaginary go out with a bang. It was something where I decided I had to direct it once the script was written and it was really like I just wanted to make that one, that was the one. So I was like if we can’t do it that’s fine, but I hope they let us.”

Gerwig weighed in on the viral response to Robbie’s Barbie foot, which stays arched: “I did always think of the arched foot as like a bat signal, but everybody was like ‘I’ve heard the bat signal, I’ve answered the call!’”

Issa Rae who stars as President Barbie, joked, “thank god they weren’t taking off my shoe in the film because the arch wouldn’t be as graceful. I was surprised, I was like, ‘Margot, that was your foot?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah.’ The confidence you have to have in that, it just says everything about her. Everything you need to know about her is the fact that she has her own arched foot effortlessly in that movie. And it’s already an iconic foot. I would’ve still been there if it was me, they would’ve been like, ‘Alright, take 230, just please get it right.’ I’m a flat-footed girl.”

Gerwig addressed the Barbie vs. Oppenheimer rivalry that has developed, as the two films both feature superstar casts and release in theaters on July 21.

“It’s all love — double up, double up twice,” she said of the two movies. “I think you’ve got to see what the experience is, Barbie then Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer then Barbie. I think you’ve got to take all of the journeys.”

Christopher Nolan’s film is “about an atomic bomb, people are gonna die. I want to end my weekend, I want to have mimosas and drinks and cocktails after Barbie, I don’t want to like sulk.” “That’s just my plan, as long as you’re seeing Barbie I don’t care.”

Of the movie’s Easter eggs, Robbie teased: “there’s moment when Ruth Handler, who created Barbie, and the Barbie I play meet, and when she hands her a cup of tea, our hands touch like the Michelangelo — it’s a biblical reference but Greta snuck her in there.”

The star spends time on rollerblades once she gets to the real world. America Ferrera shares those scenes with Robbie, joked of the skating, “I was like, Why are you so good at this? And I was like, ‘Oh yeah, you played Tonya Harding, got it.’”

When Ferrera saw the Barbie Land sets for the first time: “it just evoked deeper childhood nostalgia for imagination and play and beauty. I just got emotional, started crying. The world Greta created is unbelievable–she’s such a visionary.”