Michael Cera has revealed that Ben Affleck was originally supposed to appear in a fight scene in Barbie.

During an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the Barbie actor made the revelation as he recalled preparing for the 2023 movie’s fight scene in which his character Allan strangles a construction worker with a shovel.

“I wasn’t even supposed to fight in the movie,” the actor told host Josh. “It was supposed to be Ben Affleck.”

At the time, Ben was working as an actor and director on his biographical sports drama Air.

“I think Ben wanted to do it, but he was directing his movie. But they didn’t find that out until like the 11th hour,” Michael explained of the missed cameo. “They’re like, OK, ‘Ben’s out, something has to happen here. So you’re going to fight them.’ And so I had to jump in with the stunt team.”

Michael did not clarify whether Ben was tapped for a larger role before he was cut.

In addition to Ben, director Greta Gerwig’s regular collaborators Timothée Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan were originally going to have small parts in Barbie but they had to drop out due to scheduling issues.

In a separate interview with Variety on Thursday, Helen Mirren, who played the Narrator, revealed that she shot a scene with Olivia Colman but it was cut out of the final film.

“It was a very funny scene with Olivia Colman sort of playing drunk and us clashing about who is the real grande dame of British actresses,” she shared. “She comes in and tries to take over the role of the Narrator and I had to fight her off.”

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