Whoopi Goldberg Defends ‘Barbie’ Movie, Claps Back at Criticism

Whoopi Goldberg raised up her armor to defend the Barbie movie on The View against harsh criticism from several conservatives.

“It’s a movie!” Goldberg, 67, said during the Tuesday, July 25, episode of the talk show. “It’s a movie about a doll!”

The View cohost fired back against both columnist Ben Shapiro and Senator Ted Cruz’s negative takes on the 2023 release. “I thought y’all would be happy,” Goldberg continued. “[Barbie] has no genitalia, so there’s no sex involved. Ken has no genitalia, so he can’t — it’s a doll movie! And the kids know it’s colorful and it’s Barbie.”

Goldberg’s comments were in response to Shapiro, 39, calling Barbie “one of the most woke movies I have ever seen,” via Twitter on Friday, July 21. Shapiro teased that his review for the “flaming garbage heap of a film” would be available on his YouTube channel.

Cruz, meanwhile, claimed the movie is “Chinese communist propaganda in which the Chinese are asserting sovereignty over the entirety of the South China Sea,” during an interview with The Daily Signal published on July 16.

The politician, 52, alleged that because there is a kids’ drawing in the movie of a “blockish thing that is called ‘Asia’ and then they’ve drawn what are called the nine-dashes” it represents China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Goldberg, for her part, challenged Shapiro and Cruz to try and explain to their own daughters why the doll-inspired film is allegedly controversial.

“You guys, I want y’all to tell your daughters why you’re not taking them to the Barbie movie,” she said on Tuesday. “I want you to explain to them what’s wrong with Barbie.”

The Sister Act star added that she is a fan of Barbie, so much so, that she wore white boots with Barbie heads in the heel for the episode. “Now look, I love my Barbie,” Goldberg explained, before showing off her shoes. “It’s a doll movie, guys. I’m shocked that that’s what’s freaking you out these days.”

Goldberg doubled down on her comments, adding, “It’s a movie. That’s what we do. We make movies about all kinds of stuff. We make movies about people who fly, we make movies about dolls who talk and walk.”

She concluded: “And they hit two things: they talk about the real world that everybody lives in, and they talk about Barbie world. And they’re two different things. And it’s meant to make you just think or pause, it’s not meant to do anything but give you a good time. Go see the movie!”

Barbie hit theaters on Friday and shattered box office predictions by the end of the weekend. The Greta Gerwig-directed film earned $162 million in its first three days.

Margot Robbie, who plays Barbie, was confident the project would resonate with audiences. In fact, she told Collider earlier this month that she told Mattel and Warner Bros. the movie would “make a billion dollars” to get approval to produce the film.

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“Studios have prospered so much when they’re brave enough to pair a big idea with a visionary director,” Robbie, 33, said in the interview published on Thursday, July 20. “And then I gave a series of examples like, ‘Dinosaurs and [Steven] Spielberg’ — pretty much naming anything that’s been incredible and made a ton of money for the studios over the years. And I was like, ‘And now you’ve got Barbie and Greta Gerwig.”