Ryan Gosling Suffered Concussion While Filming ‘First Man’

Ryan Gosling recently revealed that he suffered a concussion while filming the new biographical drama film First Man.

While speaking to GQ, Gosling and First Man director Damien Chazelle spoke about the incident, which took place while Gosling was inside of a “multi-axis trainer” that was meant to simulate gravity effects on Gosling’s face for the movie. At one point, something went wrong and the machine began to shake violently.

“Yeah, I don’t remember much from that entire time,” Gosling stated. “You start making sounds that no person should hear themselves make.”

First Man tells the story of the 1969 Apollo 11 mission to the moon and the years that led up to it. It is based on the book, First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong by James R. Hansen.

Gosling plays Armstong in the film, with The Crown‘s Clair Foy starring as his first wife, Janet Shearon.

The cast also features Corey Stoll (House of Cards) as Buzz Aldrin, Pablo Schreiber (Orange is the New Black) as Jim Lovell, and Jason Clarke (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) as Ed White.

Kyle Chandler, Ciarán Hinds, Christopher Abbott, Patrick Fugit, and Lukas Haas all star in the film as well.

Regarding why he wanted to make the film in the first place, Chazelle said that it was the grand reality of what took place that inspired him.

“People walking on the moon feels as grand as Moses splitting the Red Sea. And I think that’s kind of part of what fascinated us, that if you can take something that feels so sort of canonized and shrouded in legend, almost as though it seems unfathomable—and it is to some people, that it ever happened…” he said, getting into the idea that there are some who believe the moon landing was faked.

“Of course, the whole moon conspiracy community is, I think, in some ways a fascinating testament to how hard it still is to process this, even,” Chazelle went on to say. “So if you take an event like that, and then really try to humanize it, really try to ground it, clear the shrouding away, strip the veneer off, and just look at: ‘Okay, from a very practical perspective, how did these machines work? How did this thing really happen, beat by beat on a procedural level, and then on a human perspective, how did human beings actually accomplish this? How was someone like Neil willing to strap himself to the missile and go farther than any human being had ever gone, physically, or almost any human being had ever gone from Earth? And how was [his wife] Janet willing to shoulder that burden as well?’ “

“To try and locate it on a human level,” he continued. “These weren’t gods. These weren’t superhumans. They weren’t mythological heroes—these were just everyday people living, really, on the surface, somewhat ordinary lives.”

First Man opens in theaters on Oct. 12.