When I heard that The Bear star, Julia Roberts-esque fashion icon, perfect Letterboxd user, and all-around sweetie angel Ayo Edebiri would be writing—and potentially starring in—a live-action Barney movie for Mattel and A24, I initially felt…conflicted.
On the one hand, the Hollywood children’s-IP bubble feels like it has burst; Barbie fever came and went two summers ago and Lena Dunham isn’t even making that Polly Pocket movie anymore. On the other, I mean it from the bottom of my heart when I say that I would watch Ayo Edebiri do anything, including her taxes and/or filing her nails. Edebiri was by far my favorite part of the 2023 film Theater Camp (I still use her line “I don’t like this type of…voice” on a regular basis), and that same year she crushed it in Emma Seligman’s Bottoms as a nerdy lesbian trying to fight-club her way into kissing girls. (Another perfectly delivered Edebiri line: “Once, a girl tried to kill me with rat poison, so I took her outside and I punched her ’til she died.”)
