In “Barbie”, Ryan Gosling plays Ken alongside Margot Robbie. Just like his on-screen partner, he dances and sings. Has the actor been vocally dubbed?
Famous in the world as an actor, Ryan Gosling does not hesitate to dance and sing in the film event of Greta Gerwig, Barbie, currently in theaters. Does the Canadian comedian actually sing or is he dubbed?
If Ryan Gosling’s film career really started in 2000 with his interpretation of a football player trained by Denzel Washington in The Most Beautiful Fight and his incredible performance in Henry Bean’s Danny Balint (2001), which won the Grand Prix du Jury at the Sundance Festival, the young man began his career long before.
In 1990, when he was only 10 years old, Ryan Gosling joined the Mickey Mouse Club team. A show for which he dances and sings alongside Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Keri Russell.
A fan of talent contests from an early age, the boy is therefore as comfortable on the dance floor as behind a microphone or a camera, as the video below proves.
And if the cinema took a lot of place in his life (he is also a director), Ryan Gosling manages all the same to carry out in parallel, his career of singer. In 2009, he founded with his friend Zach Shields, the group Dead Man’s Bones and released a first album in October of the same year.
The actor also interprets himself the flagship title of Damien Chazelle’s film La La Land, “City of Starsalongside his on-screen costar Emma Stone.
In Barbie, it is therefore he who interprets the title “I’m just Ken”, accompanied on the guitar by Slash from Guns N’Roses in one of the funniest scenes of the feature film, an extract of which is available in the video at the top of this article. A title written by Mark Ronson, producer of Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga, Maroon 5 or Dua Lipa (who also interprets the title “Dance The Night” in the movie).
A masterful sequence which has met with enormous success on social networks since the broadcast of the extract from the music video.
“‘I’m Just Ken’ hasn’t left my mind since I saw #Barbie. Ryan Gosling really stole the show bringing a level of Kenergy the world has never seen.”
The story of “I’m just Ken”
Questioned by our colleagues from TF1info during the promotion of the film (before the actors’ strike), Greta Gerwig explain : “The truth is, if Ryan had known everything that was expected of him in this movie, I don’t think he would have said yes. I did not tell him all the requirements from the start. We took it step by step. He’s brilliant and I think he’s glad he did it. I let him fall in love with Ken and then I said, ‘Now here’s what Ken has to do‘”.
For his part, Mark Ronson explains to Vanity Fair that he wasn’t sure if the lyrics to “I’m Just Ken” fit Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach.
Ryan Gosling asked to perform it in front of the camera.
“When I sent the demo, I mumbled, ‘Is it my destiny to live and die a life of blond fragility?’, because if they didn’t like it, I didn’t want them think I was kidding. But Greta Gerwig loved it, and she was quick to get the message across to me that Ryan Gosling loved her too. In fact, he was so attached to the song that he asked to perform it at the within the film itself, in front of the camera”.
To meet the request of his actor, Greta Gerwig therefore rewrote an important scene and asked Mark Ronson and his collaborator Andrew Wyatt to write music that would lead up to the song.
Barbie is currently in theaters.