This ‘Barbie’ Character Needs Her Own Spinoff Film...and She’s Not One of the Dolls

It’s the main mic drop moment of the entire Barbie movie: When America Ferrera, who plays Gloria, a Mattel employee and mom, delivers a monologue about the painful plight of being a woman in America circa now.

It begins like this: “It’s literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful and so smart and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.” (You can read Gloria’s monologue in full here.)

For audience members—male and female, per Gerwig in an interview in The Cut—this is the moment when tears begin to streak their cheeks. I had a similar experience, but it was compounded by another factor: The sheer joy I felt for Ferrera, the actress, mom and trailblazer whose career I had followed for years.

It’s also why I think that should we be gifted a Barbie sequel down the road, it better have Ferrera front and center. Heck, Gloria deserves her own spin-off film.

More about why I’m so invested in Gloria via Ferrera: Flash back to the early 2000s when Ferrera co-starred in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 1 and 2 which I watched in theaters, of course. But Ugly Betty, a show about an “ugly duckling” editor who charts her own path in the image-obsessed magazine industry, is where Ferrera got her big break, earned an Emmy—the first Latina to do so in the lead actress category—and truly captured my heart.

As Betty Suarez, Ferrera was a wholesome rebel, a woman who was comfortable in her own skin, her own choices, her own kindness. But the clincher was that Ferrera always seemed to embody those exact ideals on and off-screen.

After Betty, her career wobbled a bit—she went on to land recurring parts in series like The Good Wife (another show I adored) before striking gold again in Superstore, a show with a premise that felt a bit meh, but one I continued to watch week after week for one reason: Her.

In between, Ferrera became a mom two times over with hubby Ryan Piers Williams, who cameos hilariously as her on-screen spouse in Barbie. She fought for women and immigrants during the 2016 election. She consistently uses her voice to stand up for those who are underrepresented. To meet her—which I had the privilege of doing back in 2016—is to love her and everything she stands for. As an actress, but also a public figure, she uses her power for good.

Now, back to Barbie: Perhaps this is why Gloria’s empowering speech in that penultimate scene was so easy to experience as a true and authentic rallying cry. (Spoiler alert, but Gloria’s words are so powerful that they’re used to ‘wake’ the other Barbies who were brainwashed into submission to ‘Kendom’ and the patriarchy.) With Ferrera cast to deliver them, that plotline was believable.

Like before with Betty, Ferrera continues to make a mark off-screen, too. After all, one of the most shared memes from the press tour is the one where she remarks that if she had the chance to revisit Barbieland again, the main thing she’d take with her is the all-female Supreme Court. Boom.

So, does Gloria deserve a spin-off? One where she moves from an assistant position to one where she overtakes Will Ferrell in his role at the helm of Mattel? Or guides Barbie in her life post-gynecologist, where together they fight for the rights of women in a time where men are doing everything within their power to exert control?

Let’s just say I’d shell out $15 to see it—just so long as Ferrera is involved.