He’s Kenough: Ryan Gosling set to perform ‘I’m Just Ken’ at Oscars 2024
He’s Kenough for the Academy Awards.
Ryan Gosling will perform his Oscar-nominated “Barbie” song, “I’m Just Ken,” at the upcoming 96th ceremony, airing March 10 on ABC.
Earlier this month, Gosling told Variety that he still had “not been asked,” but the outlet confirmed Monday that he will indeed be singing the anthem to a worldwide audience.
“It might be too much of a risk to have me do it,” Gosling previously told Variety. “I don’t know how that would work. But I’m open to it.”
His co-star Margot Robbie (who played Barbie) chimed in: “Don’t worry. We’re poking Ryan whenever we can: ‘Do it. Come on. It’ll be fun.’ “
“I would love nothing more,” she added. “That would make me – and the world – so happy.”
Gosling said he almost turned down the role of Ken in “Barbie” — which has grossed over $1.4 billion at the box office.
“There were actual reasons why I couldn’t do the film,” Gosling told Variety in a wide-ranging interview published Monday.
“Schedule things. Life things,” he said. “And I would call months later to my agents or something and say, ‘Hey, who did they get to play Ken?’ And they would say, ‘Greta says it’s you.’ “
Gosling is referring to “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig, who was laser-focused on getting Gosling to play Ken from the get-go — even writing “Ken Ryan Gosling” in the pages of the movie’s script.
“There was a question of his schedule, but I just knew it had to be him,” Gerwig told Variety. “I think at one point I told him that I’d seen the future, and that he was in it and he was Ken.”
She added: “That made him laugh, but I think he also secretly saw the same future.”
Robbie — who shares an agent with Gosling — also pushed hard for him to accept the role, which has snared him an Oscar nomination. (Robbie and Gerwig, meanwhile, were snubbed out of the Best Actress and Best Director categories, respectively.)
“He absolutely passed,” she told Variety. “We just couldn’t let it happen. There was just no other version.”
“Greta and I are both extremely determined and persistent people, otherwise this movie never would have happened,” she continued.
“Every time he’s like, ‘I’m not doing this,’ we were like, ‘We are doing it, and it’s going to be fun.’ “
Robbie revealed that she added an incentive to Gosling’s “Barbie” contract because the role was so pivotal to the movie.
“I promised him a present every day,” she said. “I said, ‘I’ll buy you a present every day if you come and do this movie.’ And so I did. I bought him a present every day and I’d leave it in his trailer, wrapped in pink and a bow tie and it said, ‘To Ken.’ “
Variety notes parenthetically that the gifts were “usually inexpensive” — ranging from puka shells to a book on horses (Ken’s favorite animal) and always meaningful to the character.
“Eventually, I thought, ‘Who am I to argue with Greta Gerwig and Margot?’ ” Gosling said. “They had a vision for it. They believed it. And they believed I should do it more than I believed I shouldn’t.”
Gosling added that, at that point, he started to reconsider doing the movie.
“At a certain point, I thought, ‘They see something that I don’t see,’ ” he told Variety. “I thought it was such a great part that anyone could play it. I understand now, but it took me a while.”
Gosling also told the publication that the mink that Ken wears is an homage to the ’80s-era version of Sylvester Stallone.
“We found out that Stallone wore a lot of minks,” he said. “As long as Ken was wearing it, he was the Ken with the mink — and that separated him from the other Kens.”
Some of that inspiration also came from watching “The Bachelorette,” he said.
“One guy’s the guy that wears glasses. One guy has the one earring. If you were to challenge and do the same thing as that person, you’d be infringing on their identity, and so Ken’s identity became the mink.”
The Oscars are set to kick off with host Jimmy Kimmel Sunday, March 10, on ABC at 7 p.m.
