Everything
There are some things in life we wait to explain to children. And for Ryan Gosling, that includes his stint as the ‘him-bo’ Ken in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.
Chatting to E! News at the 2024 Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Gosling revealed that while his children played a major part in why he took on the award-winning role, he still has mixed feelings about them seeing him play the part of Ken.
“I don’t know if you should watch your father as Ken,” he told the outlet. “I don’t know what age is a good age to see your father do that.”
“It gets pretty crazy,” he joked.”
Gosling and his wife, Eva Mendes, share two daughters, Esmerelda, 9, and Amada, 7. Though they haven’t seen the film yet, the actor revealed that they got to play in Barbieland when their dad was working on set.
“They’ve seen little parts of it, and they came to set one day when I did a big musical number,” he explained of his filming of ‘I’m Just Ken’.
He also shared how the choice to do Barbie was inspired by his children and their growing interest in the doll.
“[It] was a way to sort of make something both for and with them,” he said. “I knew that they loved it because they kept saying at first, ‘Hey, can we go to Target?’… and then we’d go to Target, and they’d slowly go by the Barbie aisle.”
“My wife and I sort of realised [it was] time to let them have Barbies,” he continued. “But [they had] no interest in Ken, which was pretty interesting.”
Frankly, we delighted in Gosling’s take on the infamous doll, and embarrassing your child is inevitable with parenthood, so they might as well see you win awards for it and let the appreciation come later.
