Greta Gerwig has revealed she had to cut a “fart opera” scene from Barbie.

During a joint interview with her longtime editor Nick Houy on IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, the director revealed that they had to cut their fart sequence because test audiences didn’t find it as funny as they did.

“We’ve always tried to get in a proper fart joke and we’ve never done it,” Gerwig said. “We had like a fart opera in the middle (of Barbie). I thought it was really funny. And that was not the consensus.”

Houy added, “It was in the wrong place, too. We need to work it into a more significant narrative moment next time.”

Gerwig and Houy shared that they tried to sneak a fart joke into their previous two movies – Lady Bird and Little Women – but they ultimately got cut around two-thirds of the way into the editing process.

Explaining why they tested Barbie so much in front of audiences, Houy stated, “Barbie was so much more a comedy than Lady Bird and Little Women. So we were just, like, ‘Let’s put it in front of people and see how they react.’ Everyone’s different and every screening’s different and we’ve definitely learned, over the years, that you really have to let things have their fair chance and then act accordingly. Once you know it’s dead, you have got to get it out of there.”

Barbie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, opened on 21 July and has surpassed $500 million (£389 million) at the global box office within a week.

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