Kate McKinnon's Weird BARBIE House Was Inspired By the PSYCHO Movie House

The Barbie movie is full of fun Barbie and Ken characters from years past. For someone that was raised on Barbie, it was so cool to see the different professions and the different styles and outfits of the dolls I grew up with come to life. The aesthetic of Barbie’s house and accessories was so cool, and so thoughtfully done. But one of the weirder set pieces in the film was the Barbie house belonging to the character Weird Barbie, played by Kate McKinnon.

Weird Barbie isn’t an official Mattel doll, but the product of what happens when a Barbie is played with too rough. Her hair is cut, her face is drawn on, and she’s almost always doing the splits. So the film’s production designer, Sarah Greenwood, and set decorator, Katie Spencer, had to come up with just the right weird house for this character.

The pair told Variety that Weird Barbie’s house is a favorite of the production designer. It was also one of the last set builds Greenwood and Spencer worked on and “that was one of the last things we shot,” says Greenwood. Although Weird Barbie’s house is kooky mid-century modern in contrast to the “Psycho” house’s Victorian style, the Alfred Hitchcock classic provided inspiration from the skewed stairs leading up to the door.

“One of my early references is that you go up the stairs, and there’s the ‘Psycho’ house, and we brought in other elements.” Its design was deliberately skewed with everything pushed out of shape and out of order,” she says.

And like the rest of the Barbie houses, Weird Barbie did have a pool, but it wasn’t shown. “It has a swimming pool in front, and we painted a shark at the bottom of it,” Greenwood reveals. Adds Spencer, “We added Weird Barbie’s cat. Like everything else, it’s camouflaged. But her cat is 4 ft. 6” and it’s a cutout looking at the shark.”

The whole set design was incredibly fun to look at, and it added majorly to the film.

Barbie is now playing in theatres.