Ryan Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” almost had a much smaller role – The Hollywood Reporter
I’m Just Ken almost played a much smaller role in I’m Just Ken Greta Gerwig’s record breaker Barbie.
In a new featurette promoting the film’s streaming release, Gerwig, music producer Mark Ronson, Ryan Gosling, Ncuti Gatwa and other members of the cast and crew spoke about the making of the now hit song. It shows the climax of the plot as the Kens battle on Malibu beach.
“It evolved from this song that might have been played somewhere in the movie to the song that they built this epic battle around,” Ronson said, explaining that Gerwig “knew immediately” what he wanted when he did asked him to write Gosling’s Ken song it should be.
After writing the first version, Gerwig wanted more. “[She’s] like, ‘We love this song – can it actually be extended?'” he explained. “So we essentially score 11 minutes around the Ken song.”
Elsewhere in the three-minute video, the writer-director shared that she drew inspiration for the beach scene The Nutcrackerwhich she loved very much as a child.
“The fight between the toy soldiers and the rats, the absurdity of it, that’s what I was thinking about when we were staging that fight,” the Oscar nominee said.
Gosling and Gatwa, who play two different Kens in the hit film, explained that in the long scene near the end of the film, the men don’t fully understand what they are doing and their opinions on what battles are and how they work are very different limited.
“They have no information about what war is,” Gosling said. “It’s like a real-world game of telephone. By the time it gets to them it’s distorted and they’re just doing their best, but it’s really the worst.”
Barbie is now available for rent online.
