Michael Cera says Ben Affleck was originally tapped to do the Barbie fight scene

Cera didn’t offer many more details, except that “I think Ben wanted to do it, but he was directing his movie,” he shared. Unfortunately for Cera, they didn’t find out Affleck was out until “the 11th hour” and had to tap him in at the last moment: “They’re like, ‘Okay, Ben’s out, something has to happen here. So you’re gonna fight them.’ So I had to jump in with the stunt team,” he recalled. “I had just gotten over COVID and they had me training, and I almost died. Just doing the warm up! I had to lay down in my trailer and they sent the nurse to see me, and I was sent home. So then we had a second rehearsal, and I learned it. That’s the story basically.”

The Scott Pilgrim star added, “That was never part of Allan’s journey. In the rehearsal, we did the thing where I murder the guy with the shovel and it was just a joke, and we were like ‘Greta’s not going to let me murder someone in the movie.’ And it’s in the movie!”

Much of that probably comes from Gerwig’s implicit trust in Cera, whom she previously said had a “deep understanding” of Allan. “I remember right after you read the script and then we Zoomed, you said, ‘I sort of hope, like, Allan’s just like behind people slightly out of focus,’” the director said to Cera at a previous Q&A. “And I was like, ‘That’s Allan!’”

The respect between the pair is mutual. At Thursday’s event, Cera remembered “the script being very visual,” but when he finally stepped onto the Barbie set, “I’ve never been so in complete disbelief about the production,” he said. “I was like, ‘How much—how much money is this costing?’ I just couldn’t believe everything I was seeing. And then Greta being so calm and exuberant and inventive in the eye of a production that side was like, completely staggering to me. I was like, ‘Okay, this is going to be good. She knows what she’s doing.’” If only Ben Affleck could’ve been there to witness it all!