Ryan Gosling Sells 'Barbie' Role Better Than Any Marketing

Ryan Gosling turned plenty of heads when his look as Ken from Greta Gerwig's Barbie film plopped online. While making the rounds for his Netflix film The Gray Man, Gosling has done a fair share of the heavy lifting for Barbie too. During an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Gosling talked a bit about The Gray Man and a bunch about his role as Ken. This includes Ken's place in the world.

"I was surprised how some people were kind of clutching their pearls about my Ken as though they ever thought about Ken for a second before this," Gosling tells Fallon. "They never played with Ken, nobody plays with Ken...He's an accessory, and not even one of the cool ones."

That's some harsh truth about Ken and his friends from the world of Barbie, he's only ever around to be fodder for the titular doll. But according to Gosling, the movie is going to handle everything hilariously and he was impressed.

"Best script I've ever read," the star of the best-adapted screenplay The Big Short told the late-night host. "I walk out in the backyard, and you know where I found Ken, Jimmy? Facedown in the mud next to a squished lemon."

It is safe to say that Ken is not exactly setting the world on fire and he's just clean-cut and outfitted for rollerskating because of his connection to Barbie. And the script should be spectacular given Gerwig's involvement, following up her Oscar nomination for Little Women in 2019 with this film. Shang Chi star Simu Liu also revealed the script had pulled him into the film as well.

All of this lines up with what Gosling has said about his take on Ken in interviews since the photos of him and Margot Robbie went viral. He didn't spoil anything about the film, just spoiled the existence of Ken by pulling the thoughts from his mind and manifesting them into reality when he says Ken has "no money, he's got no job, he's got no car, he's got no house."

"Those are not plot details, those are just objective facts about Ken," Gosling said "That's the Ken life." If anything, Gosling is doing the heavy lifting of selling Barbie to audiences that might not see a Barbie film outright.