Barbie movie cut out a Margot Robbie and Emma Mackey doppelganger joke

Margot Robbie has revealed that Emma Mackey was actually cast in Barbie movie for a lookalike joke – which ultimately didn't make the edit.

33-year-old Robbie, who plays the iconic doll herself in the eponymous movie conspired with director, Greta Gerwig, to cast 27-year-old Mackey - the celebrity she's often confused for - after deciding they 'thought it would be funny'.

In case you're unsure where the comparisons originally came from, whispers began when Mackey debuted in her breakout Sex Education role.

It then gathered pace on Instagram (where else) when a 2019 post by @morphy_me, posted images of the pair's faces sliced down the middle and seamlessly spliced into one.

Those who hadn't seen the similarity on screen separately were convinced, with one person commenting "I can’t tell who’s who".

Another said: "Tell me again how it isn't the same person."

However, Benji who runs the account was forced to admit that he had used photoshop to blur lines between the two women's faces.

Robbie found all the lookalike fuss so amusing that a reference to the doppelgänger drama almost made the cut in the Mattel-doll movie as an 'IYKYK' gag.

During one of Buzzfeed's infamously disarming puppy interviews with her costar, Ryan Gosling, the leading actor said: "I've been getting told for years that I look like the girl from Sex Education, who's Emma Mackey."

She even suggested that this Easter egg referencing the unrelenting comparisons is one of the main reasons the French-British actress was cast.

"We were gonna do this whole joke about us looking similar," she admitted but admits that ultimately it just didn't pan out the way they'd expected, with Mackey's role as Physicist Barbie requiring her to have brunette hair unlike the iconic blonde Robbie sported.

“Once we got all dressed up as our Barbies, we were kind of like, 'We don't look that similar.' When she's got her brown hair, and I've got my blonde hair, so we didn't put that joke in the movie," she admits.

"But when people come up and say, 'I loved you in Sex Education,' I just say, 'Thank you. Thank you so much.'”

The ingenue has also been forced to address the comments and comparisons.

In a 2022 interview with Total Film, she said she thought they were 'funny' but she'd like people to move past their similarities.

"I think Margot has had the grace and humor to be able to play on that, and allow me to be in the same film as her – bless her. It’s just a joke in real life. I’m like, 'We don’t look anything like each other.'

"I don’t mind it. It’s Margot Robbie. Are you kidding me? She’s the best. I look up to her so much. I don’t mind the comparisons. But it would be nice to move past that."

You can catch the pair and judge for yourself in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie which comes out later this month on July 20.