Greta Gerwig on Casting Ryan Gosling as Barbie’s Ken

The lore that’s already been built up round Barbie has taught us that star Margot Robbie was instrumental from the very starting in bringing the fashionable Mattel doll to the big screen. However apparently, co-star Ryan Gosling—who plays Ken—took a bit extra convincing to affix the venture.

Talking to Rolling Stone, Barbie director and co-writer Greta Gerwig explains that Gosling was her solely selection for Ken, although she’d by no means truly met him. “It was solely ever Ryan Gosling, and it was an extended journey. Margot and I simply wouldn’t take no for a solution,” Gerwig mentioned. “From the second that Margot got here to me and I knew we had been making this for Margot, I equally knew we had been making this for Ryan. And I didn’t know Ryan in any respect. I’d by no means met him. I simply was positive, and as quickly as I considered it, it made me so comfortable. Who else might do that? It’s some mixture of Marlon Brando meets Gene Wilder meets John Barrymore meets John Travolta.”

Gerwig calls Gosling “a secretly comedic actor” who succeeds by taking comedy very, very critically. “The method we talked about Ken was as in-depth character work as I’ve ever finished with anybody about something … I don’t know that anybody has ever invested extra in making individuals perceive the plight of this man. It was extraordinary,” Gerwig mentioned. “I felt with each of them that I would direct motion pictures for a very long time and by no means see something that uniquely and gloriously unhinged.”

Head to Rolling Stone to learn the total interview, which additionally consists of the tidbit that Gerwig is completely open to creating a superhero film—“It must be one thing I had a sense for and a relationship to”—although she agrees Barbie is already form of a superhero film: “It’s iconic in the identical method. And it’s form of mythic in the identical method.”

Barbie opens July 21.

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