If the cameo was designed for the pair, my guess is Ronan would’ve been one of the Barbies and Chalamet her corresponding Ken. I’m quite disappointed this cameo didn’t pan out — so is Gerwig, who admitted it was odd to make a movie without her go-to young actors: “But I love them so much. But it felt like doing something without my children. I mean, I’m not their mom, but I sort of feel like their mom.”
The truest sign of how close Gerwig and Ronan are? The former trusts the latter to embody herself onscreen. The lead of “Lady Bird,” played by Ronan, is a college-bound Catholic schoolgirl in 2000s Sacramento, i.e. a stand-in for Gerwig’s younger self. In “Little Women,” Ronan plays Jo March. I’d say of the four March sisters, Gerwig relates the most to Jo — they’re both writers trying to make it in a man’s world, after all. The tell is that Gerwig rewrites the story’s ending to make Jo into a published author, the original novel’s ending being presented as the ending of Jo’s own book.
In “Lady Bird,” Chalamet plays Kyle, the aloof faux-philosophical f***boy who Ronan’s Christine loses her virginity to. In “Little Women,” he’s Laurie, who infamously doesn’t end up with Jo despite a stirring love confession. Ronan and Chalamet’s characters never quite get together in Gerwig’s films. Whether they keep the pattern running or not, I do hope that Ronan isn’t too busy with producing, and Chalamet with his Muad’Dib duties, for them to work with Gerwig again.
“Barbie” premieres in theaters on July 21.