The Cut Barbie F-Bomb That Would Have Made Quite The Opening Statement

"Barbie" is, without a doubt, one of the weirdest movies to ever make it into the billion-dollar club. Greta Gerwig's candy-colored blockbuster features a horse-based patriarchy, the ghost of Barbie creator Ruth Handler, and an extremely well-executed Snyder cut joke. It's a fantastical, offbeat movie thinly disguised as a mainstream comedy, but it's clear from the very beginning — that "2001: A Space Odyssey" homage opening! — that "Barbie" marches to the beat of its own drum.

According to director Greta Gerwig, though, the movie was initially set to announce itself in a totally different way — by letting Helen Mirren drop an F-bomb in its opening moments. Gerwig spoke about the cut joke on the ReelBlend podcast, and revealed that it was actually meant to tie into a bit about famed physicist Marie Curie that was cut completely from the movie.

"Suffice to say, there was a sort of extended joke with Marie Curie which didn't end up being part of it," Gerwig told the podcast. "But, yes, there was a page one F-bomb that just sort of that set the tone for the whole thing." The joke was first alluded to in a Vogue profile of star Margot Robbie, which noted that she and her husband Tom Ackerley were totally shocked by "a certain joke on page one" of the script."We just looked at each other, pure panic on our faces," Robbie told the outlet, noting that once she finished the script, her first thought was "This is so genius. It is such a shame that we're never going to be able to make this movie."

But somehow, Robbie and Gerwig did make this movie. Though the profane joke didn't make the final cut, plenty of strange stuff still made it in, from Mattel's discontinued pooping dog to an extended bit about the Kens "beaching" each other off. From the sound of it, Mirren's F-bomb wasn't nixed because the studio had objections, but because the entire bit with Curie was eventually axed, too. Still, it sounds like it still could've been a wild, tone-setting moment. "What the line was was, it was actually Helen Mirren saying to Marie Curie, 'Pipe the f**k down, Marie Curie,'" Gerwig revealed to ReelBlend, adding, "That was like my favorite, because you know you only get like one F-bomb."

The final version of the movie does feature one censored F-bomb, when the Kens ride into Kendom, only to realize that the Barbies have resumed control of their dream houses, making them dreamier than ever. "That's because they're dream houses, motherf***er," Issa Rae's President Barbie declares in a moment that inspired cheers in my theater. Her curse word is, hilariously, bleeped out with a Mattel logo covering her mouth. Gerwig confirmed that Rae gets the film's sole F-bomb, but still clearly has a soft spot for the idea of posh-accented Mirren dropping a curse word in the film's opening moments.

"We knew we only got one F-bomb and we were like 'Well, let's use it at the very beginning,'" she explained. "There's just something to me about Helen Mirren saying, 'Pipe the f**k down, Marie Curie.'" The filmmaker also confirmed that Mirren did in fact record the line, but it was taken out somewhere in the edit. "There's audio somewhere in the world of her saying, 'Pipe the f**k down, Marie Curie' with like a proper British voice,'" Gerwig assured podcast listeners. Though it sounds like the F-bomb could've stayed in, she does note that it was the number one line in the script that took people aback. "That was, I would say, the line that everyone was like, 'Ohh no, no no.'"

Watching "Barbie," it seems clear that Gerwig had more creative freedom than most filmmakers working with IP-inspired projects. The movie has had its fair share of criticisms for the ways in which it buys into capitalism, celebrating specific Mattel toys and portraying greedy execs as bumbling fools rather than actual villains, but there's still an undeniably weird edge to "Barbie" that feels unique. Alas, the Mirren F-bomb will have to live on alongside other discontinued Barbie ideas, like Sugar Daddy Ken, pregnant Midge, and a whole host of deleted or unshot scenes.

"Barbie" is now in theaters.