Ryan Gosling hosted SNL this week and it was absolutely hilarious. He broke character and started laughing in every sketch he was in! It’s hard for me to pick a favorite, but I think I’d have to go with the cold open (featuring Kate McKinnon) or the Beavis and Butthead one. The opening monologue, in which he sang about no longer playing Ken to the tune of Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well (Ryan’s Version)” was also amazing.
Speaking of Ken (not that I ever need an excuse to talk about Gosling’s Ken; not a euphemism, I swear!), while he was in New York, Ryan also appeared on The Tonight Show. When Jimmy Fallon brought up his phenomenal performance of “I’m Just Ken” at the Oscars, Ryan revealed that at first, he was absolutely not on board with doing it! I remember there were early reports that basically said not to get our hopes up, and I guess there was more truth to them than we knew. According to Ryan, he was originally reluctant to bring Ken to the big stage because there were “a lot of ways that could go wrong.”
Ryan Gosling visited “The Tonight Show” ahead of his latest hosting stint on “Saturday Night Live” and spoke about his internet-breaking live performance of “I’m Just Ken” at the Oscars last month. Asked by host Jimmy Fallon if it was an immediate yes when the Academy called him up to request he perform the “Barbie” original song live during the ceremony, Gosling said his answer was “100% no.”
“There’s a lot of ways that could go wrong,” Gosling said.
But the performance went very right. Gosling, bathed in pink lighting and wearing a sparkling pink suit and pink gloves, started singing “I’m Just Ken” while in the audience sitting behind Margot Robbie. He then made his way to the stage, where he was joined by Mark Ronson and Slash on guitars. His fellow Ken actors Simu Liu, Scott Evans, Ncuti Gatwa and Kingsley Ben-Adir joined the armada of backup dancers behind Gosling. At one point, the actor made his way back into the audience and held the microphone up to his “Barbie” collaborators Greta Gerwig, Robbie and America Ferrera, who were all singing along with him. He also tapped his “La La Land” co-star Emma Stone to sing along, too.
“Ryan Gosling is a true professional, that man — we met with him on Zooms months ago, talking about that performance,” Oscars producer Molly McNearney told Variety after the ceremony. “Greta Gerwig weighed in creatively as well. He was so committed to it. His choreographer, Mandy Moore, is exceptional — she was on all the calls. So was Mark Ronson.”
Moore added that Gosling was “pretty clear about his overall structure of it. He wanted to start in the audience, come up, see Mark, see Andrew [Wyatt the co-producer], ignite the Ken-delabras and then join the 10 dejected Kens on the stairs. From there he wanted the rest of the number to evolve as if Kens were coming from everywhere, ‘Calling All Kens.’ Eventually ending in a huge celebration revealing Slash.”
According to McNearney, it was Gosling’s idea to make the number a tribute to “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” from “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”
In the weeks leading up to the Oscars, there was mystery over whether or not Gosling would take the stage to perform “I’m Just Ken” live. He opted not to sing the “La La Land” song “City of Stars” at the 2017 Oscars, where his co-star John Legend performed the single instead. Gosling didn’t confirm his involvement in performing at the Oscars until just a few weeks before the Academy Award ceremony.
I had honestly completely forgotten that Ryan didn’t want to sing “City of Stars” at the 2017 Oscars. I am so glad he changed his mind with “I’m Just Ken” because that is truly an iconic performance that will be talked about for ages. I bet he agreed to do it once he was given permission to basically have full creative control. Sure, things could have gone wrong, but they didn’t, thanks to Ryan’s vision and the whole production team backing him up completely.
Ryan was hosting SNL for a third time to promote his new movie, The Fall Guy, which is out on May 3. Some other tidbits from the interview include Ryan talking some more about how his daughters were at the “I’m Just Ken” dress rehearsal and sharing that they know Ken’s dance even better than he does! He also confirmed that Greta Gerwig cast him after seeing him doing a bit with Alex Moffat on Weekend Update during his second time hosting. It’s a very charming interview and you can check it out below.
Photos credit: Jennifer Bloc/Future Image/Cover Images, IMAGO/Jennifer Bloc / Avalon and Getty