Emerald Fennell Dishes on Playing Barbie's 'Permanently Pregnant' Midge for Greta Gerwig (Exclusive)

This Barbie is predicting that Greta Gerwig will be remembered as “one of the greats.”

Actor-filmmaker Emerald Fennell, who stars as Midge in the hit film Barbie, tells PEOPLE she admires its writer-director “so enormously.”

“I think in 50 years' time she'll be the name at the top of the list,” says Fennell, 38. “She's so exceptional.”

And if Gerwig’s past Oscar-nominated work directing Lady Bird and Little Women weren’t enough, Fennell says her first read of the Barbie script (cowritten with Gerwig’s partner Noah Baumbach) confirmed the assessment. 

“It's the best script I've ever read, ever,” Fennell remembers. “I was like, Holy sh--. This is so good. It's so unique, it's so beautiful. It's so cleverly written. There's so much stuff in the script alone that tells you everything about the movie.”

Led by Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, the live-action adaptation of the titular Mattel dolls has taken Hollywood by storm, becoming 2023’s biggest box office success and distributor Warner Bros.’ highest-grossing film. Gerwig has broken records as the first solo female director of a billion-dollar earner and biggest opening weekend of all time for a female director.

Is Fennell surprised by Barbie's widespread success? Not in the slightest, she tells PEOPLE. 

“Boys and men of a certain type have had their childhoods pandered to, catered to, beautifully crafted, billions of dollars spent on them. And that's great, that's wonderful, that's fine. And they are used to this experience. But for the first time ever, it was somebody, it was Greta, Margot, all of these people saying, ‘The things that you love too, we care about and are real and valid and worth taking time over.’”

That’s why the self-described “Barbie fanatic” found seeing the colorful Barbieland set in person for the first time “incredibly moving,” recalls Fennell. “I realized then that nobody had ever cared about my childhood before. Nobody had ever cared about the things that we all cared about before.”

She even “got a little bit teary, because I recognized everything,” she admits. “And I'm British, I don't cry, really, in even the most dire circumstances.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Fennell’s Oscar-winning 2020 hit Promising Young Woman — which, like Barbie, was produced by Robbie’s production company LuckyChap Entertainment — had a similar point to make about gender, adds the filmmaker. 

“Promising Young Woman was very much for me about why — not just women exclusively, but the stuff of girls, the stuff of girlish childhood, let's say — why we never take those things seriously,” explains Fennell. “Why there is a way that serious movies look. Serious movies are brown and gray and serious, and frivolous movies are pink and beautiful and frothy. And that's just the way it is.”

Gerwig, she continues, “and people like Margot, everyone at LuckyChap, what we were trying to do with Promising Young Woman is coming up and saying, ‘No. F--- you. This is really important. Just because you don't think it is, that's not real.’”

It’s why audiences have flocked to Barbie and why it will be remembered as “a masterpiece,” as Fennell puts it. “I'm so grateful to even just be in it, waving in the background, just for a second. It’s worth it, because what an extraordinary work of art.”

Fennell plays one of the inhabitants of the film’s utopian matriarchy Barbieland, but unlike Issa Rae, Kate McKinnon, Alexandra Shipp, Hari Nef, Dua Lipa and more, she’s not a Barbie. First introduced in 1963 as Barbie’s best friend, Midge dolls have been discontinued more than once throughout the years — including in 2005, when a pregnant version of Midge, complete with magnetically removable baby belly, was deemed inappropriate. 

For any fans wondering, Fennell confirms that yes, Gerwig cast The Crown actress as the quaint, quiet Midge because she’d appeared in the public eye pregnant. (Fennell shares two young sons with producer Chris Vernon.) 

“Because I'd been pregnant making Promising Young Woman, and then pregnant to accept an Oscar, it seemed as though I was some permanently pregnant woman,” she says with a laugh. 

“I could see how unbelievably hilarious it was for me to then, having just stopped being pregnant, put on a pregnancy suit and be pregnant again,” she adds. “Because Midge has been pregnant for 50 years, God bless her! Poor f---ing thing.”

Fennell’s new movie Saltburn, starring Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi, is in theaters now.