Michael Cera wasn't in 'Barbie' group chat because he has a flip phone

But he didn’t think his character would “belong” in one anyway: “Allan is sort of in his own little world.”

Margot Robbie in ‘Barbie’

There’s only one Allan… and he was left out of the Barbie group chat.

Why was he excluded, you ask? “I don’t have an iPhone myself,” Cera, who plays Ken’s friend Allan in the movie, told the outlet. “I have a flip phone.”

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 25: Michael Cera attends the press junket and photo call For “Barbie” at Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills on June 25, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images)

Michael Cera

| Credit: Jon Kopaloff/Getty

But Cera noted that he was fine not being part of the Barbie bonanza because he doesn’t think Allan would have been texting all the Barbies and Kens in his spare time either.

“I still think I wouldn’t belong on [the group chat] anyway, because [my character] Allan is sort of in his own little world,” he said. “Greta [Gerwig]’s gift for me when I arrived was a picture disc of NSYNC’s No Strings Attached, which felt like somehow a real guiding light in the backstory of this character.”

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter in February, Cera described his decision to stay away from smartphones as a “conscious choice, because I feel a bit of fear about it, honestly, like I’d really lose control of my waking life.”

He continued, “Right when people started having smartphones, when it was Blackberries, I had lunch with a friend of mine who was my best friend at the time, and he’d just gotten a Blackberry, and for the whole meal he was typing emails, and I was there lonely and bored. So I had an early aversion to them.”

Lucky for Cera, there don’t seem to be any smartphones in Barbie Land, at least according to the film’s trailers. After all, who really needs to send someone a text when you can wave at them from your wall-less Dreamhouse?

What the movie has instead is Robbie playing a version of the titular doll as she embarks on an epic quest from Barbie Land to the Real World. Accompanying her on the journey is Gosling’s Ken, neon yellow rollerblades in tow.

Barbie lands in theaters July 21.