Every wild thing Barbie’s Ryan Gosling has said about playing Ken

There are good press tours and bad press tours, and then there’s what Ryan Gosling is doing on the Barbie A press tour can be a lifesaver.

Gosling has made it no secret that he’s stoked to be involved with the film, and his time promoting it — during which he’s slowly unleashed his full “Kenergy” — has been an absolutely wild ride. There was a time he was sworn to secrecy (telling Vogue, “It would be very un-Ken of me to talk about Ken”), but those days are long past. It’s time to enjoy the full-court impress.

Gosling’s Ken era is built on natural star power that can’t be manufactured. As he told GQ, “I care about this dude now. I’m like his representative. ‘Ken couldn’t show up to receive this award, so I’m here to accept it for him.’” And as he accepts the attention on Ken’s behalf, he has gone beyond merely promoting a film and become a phenomenon unto himself. Though Barbie co-writer/director Greta Gerwig and fellow star Margot Robbie apparently “conjured this out of him” — “Up until this point, I only knew Ken from afar. I didn’t know Ken from within. I doubted my Ken-ergy. I didn’t see it,” Gosling said at CinemaCon — it’s taken on a life of its own. With each new appearance we have been gifted a new quotation about the spirit that drives Ken.

As Gosling tells ExtraTV, he’s dabbling with dangerous, untested material — “Kenergy you can feel” — noting that “very little is known about Kenergy. And we don’t have the funding for the research.

“We know that it’s real. My case was that it started out as a skin rash but then turned into an orange tan. And then suddenly you’re shaving your legs, and you’re bleaching your hair, and you’re wearing bespoke rollerblades.”

Ken may not be able to not have a sense of humor (apparently)Gosling certainly is. And here are the best things he’s said about taking up the mantle of Ken — or, put differently, here’s everything Gosling has said about the role.

Image: NBC Universal/YouTube

• The following are some of the ways to get in touch with us.You can also find out more about the following: Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Gosling offers the original, the blueprint, the only way anyone should ever talk about accepting a job offer: “Best script I ever read. I go out into the back yard. You know, Jimmy, where I’ve found Ken? Face down in the mud next to a squished lemon.”
  And later: “I texted it [the photo] to Greta and I said: ‘I shall be your Ken. For this story must be told.’”
• He continued this thought on EW’s Around the Table, stating: “It was like, at one moment I was a human male in my backyard picking up a Ken doll, and then somehow magically I had become that doll and I was being picked up by Greta Gerwig, and the only way to become human again was to just follow her very specific directions.”

Warner Bros. Pictures

• He responded to #notmyken, a movement started by people who were against the photo that showed him in the role of Ken. “It is funny, this kind of clutching-your-pearls idea of, like, #notmyken,” Gosling told GQ. “Like you ever thought about Ken before this? […] But suddenly, it’s like, ‘No, we’ve cared about Ken this whole time.’ No, you didn’t. You never did. You never cared. Barbie has never had a fling with Ken. That’s the point. You would have known that no one cares about Ken if you had ever cared for him. Now your hypocrisy will be exposed. This is why his story must be told.”
• Does Gosling see himself always as Ken? “Ken wasn’t really on my bucket list. But in fairness, I don’t have a bucket list,” he told Vogue. “So I thought I’d give it a shot.”
• He also explained why he played so hard to get when Gerwig was trying to cast him: “I did doubt my Kenergy in the beginning. And I thought this was such a perfect tonal symphony that I didn’t want to be the one instrument that was out of tune, you know? What it would take was clear to me. So I just wasn’t sure I could do it […]I’m going to push Ken the hardest I can. I Kennered in the evening; I Kenninged during the day. If I’m honest, I’m Kenning a little right now.”
• How did he find the role while filming (and on the press tour)? Gray Man? “It’s been cathartic,” he told MTV News. “Because there’s always been a Ken inside of me. It’s the role I was born to play. I’ve had this Kenergy, if you will. And this Kenergy is alive in me now.”
• He also has a lot of feelings about the ’80s power ballad he performs in the film, telling the LA Times:

The whole thing felt very organic. In many of the scenes, we talked a great deal about being children and how these were our origins. While I worked, I would dance in the mall or sing at weddings.
You know that boy worked so hard, and he got me to where I am today. He is the reason I am where I am today. I have to thank him for everything. Like, he’d worked enough and I could take it from here. He was ready to be pulled out of retirement once more for one last heist.

He also notes that the performance didn’t come from him, telling the LA Times (with “a straight face,” per the article): “Ken sang that song. Never in my life have I sung like that. I don’t know why or how that happened.”

• Gosling uses Ken to connect with his childhood self. “There’s something about this Ken that really, I think, relates to that version of myself,” he told GQ. “Just, like, the guy that was putting on Hammer pants and dancing at the mall and smelling like Drakkar Noir and Aqua Net-ing bangs. That kid has a great deal to do with me. It feels like I was quick to dissociate myself from him once I made more serious movies. But the reality is that, like, he’s the reason I have everything I have. […] I really had to go back and touch base with that little dude, and say thank you, and ask for his help.”
• Again, here’s the Kenergy quote in full — from Gosling’s interview with ExtraTV — which I just can’t say enough about:

• Gosling also told Vogue how Margot Robbie helped him find Ken: “She left a pink present with a pink bow, from Barbie to Ken, every day while we were filming. The gifts were all related to the beach. Like puka shells, or a sign that says ‘Pray for surf.’ Because Ken’s job is Just Beach I’ve never quite figured out what that means. But I felt like she was trying to help Ken understand, through these gifts that she was giving.”
• According to BuzzFeed, his favourite part of work is updating the website. Barbie (after getting to work with “all these talented people”) was “getting to wear a fake mink. And I think the headband is a good look for me.”
• Gosling’s partner and daughters encouraged his Kenergy: “They’ve seen a lot pieces of [the film]They were a huge inspiration for me.” They were huge inspiration for me.”
  “Well, it was, I think, weird enough for them that I played Ken anyway,” he told Entertainment Tonight. “I might like, you know, just hold off on them seeing the full Ken energy.”
• Has he been put off because of his hair bleaching? No — when he saw the concept he thought: “Finally. Finally. I’ve been manifesting this my whole life,” he told Variety. “Yes […] I felt seen. I felt like I was seeing myself.”

When Buzzfeed asked Gosling to name the role he found most difficult to leave behind, Gosling chose Ken. “The Ken thing is tough. It’s a bit like that Pillsbury dough — go with me on this — Cinnabon mix? Like once you open that canister you’re making Cinnabons. And you’re loving it. You’re loving making Cinnabons.”

It seems that this role will make it difficult for him to move on. (As he says, maybe it’s the inner child in him, a development he’s surprised so many people know about.) Let’s not forget there is Ken within us all. As the man, the myth, the press tour legend himself says: “Look no further. You are Kenough.”