Elizabeth Banks was motivated to star in the new film The Beanie Bubble by the universal experience of women being “supporting players” to the males in their relationships.
The Pitch Perfect 2 actress and director plays Robbie, the woman who starts a company with Beanie Baby founder Ty Warner (played creepily earnestly by Zach Galifianakis) when he is still a poor toy salesman.
They are depicted in the film enjoying the rewards of their success with the stuffed toy collections – and even going into a relationship together – after their first hardships with the firm, but danger is plainly on the horizon.
With Warner as the real but elusive man behind the company, Ty Inc. – portrayed by Galifianakis as more of a ‘essence of a person’ – Robbie is a composite character based on a fictionalised version of Patricia Roche, the now-eccentric-billionaire’s original business partner and one-time girlfriend.
The film is based on Zac Bissonnette’s 2015 book, The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute, in which the author delved into the rise and fall of Beanie Babies and their creator through multiple interviews with Ty Inc. sources and original superfans, who first led the secondary market demand online for the limited release toys.
Banks, 49, admits she’missed out’ on the Beanie Baby craze in real life because she was a bit too old – and busy by other things – to pay much attention to the fascination that grabbed youngsters (and some of their parents) in the late 1990s in the United States.
‘Everyone knows what a Beanie Baby is, and I had a younger brother – he’s 12 years younger than me – and he collected them, but he probably only had 20 or 25 of them,’ she claimed ahead of the Sag-Aftra strike.
(Which still appears to be a sizable assortment of soft toys…)
‘I’ve never bought anything on eBay, and I’ve never sold anything on eBay,’ the actor added. I still had dial-up internet at the time, so I missed out on a lot of the hoopla.
‘I was in my 20s and I was living in New York City, and I was trying to become an actor and I was working 24/7 and partying at night and living my life – so I missed this.’
However, for her, the larger issues at work in the Beanie Baby tale and how they mirrored America at the time, including gender relations in society, were more important.
‘I honestly felt when I read this story it was less about the actual Beanie ‘bubble’ and more about corporate America generally and these themes of these mythological male figures that we – I mean, still to this day [with] Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson – these guys that take up so much of our energy and act as if they’re the whole show when, of course, we all know that there are hundreds of people working for them, underneath them, that get no credit, none of the money, none of the glory.’
‘I just loved the idea that we could tell a story about the little people who overcome and get their redemption, behind these mythological figures,’ she shared.
The Hunger Games actress particularly found her character’s ‘redemption really inspirational’.
‘And I deeply felt it when [Warner] took the company from her because he took her identity, he literally took her whole sense of self.’
Touching on her wider point, Banks added: ‘I think a lot of women can relate to feeling like a supporting player in the lives of men, whether it’s their bosses or their husband or their fathers – whatever it is – I think in a society that’s really set up for men to succeed, most women feel like supporting players a lot of the time.
‘I just loved the idea that I could explore that moment of recognition for Robbie and then her building herself back up out of that – that she didn’t just have to take it, that she really could figure out how to manipulate the system that was screwing her over.’
Banks, who directed Cocaine Bear earlier this year, also recalls her favourite day on set as a drunken pool sequence filmed with Galifianakis, which she admits surprised her.
‘I was very nervous about that scene, I hate playing drunk, I think it always can come off like… I don’t know. But I felt very free with Zach, and very carefree in the pool, and I just love the chemistry that we created together and the dynamic,’ she explained.
‘I didn’t expect he was going to be floating in that chair thing that they got for him! So, it was really fun – I thought it was really important that he be above her because the power dynamic is such that they are never equals in the movie.
‘Then they got that pool float and I just thought that it set up the perfect dynamic – that will be the day that I take away, as I really fell in love with working with Zach on that day.’
The Beanie Bubble releases on Apple TV Plus and in select cinemas on Friday, July 28.
