- Gosling made the announcement on last Saturday’s episode (April 13) of Saturday Night Live
- In true Ken fashion, Gosling broke up with his character during an edited rendition of Taylor Swift’s song, All Too Well
- He was joined by his The Fall Guy co-star, Emily Blunt – who pretended to get violent with the actor
After his starring role in Barbie last summer, Ryan Gosling is still the man of the moment.
But as all good things must come to an end, the actor has finally bid farewell to his alter-ego Ken.
That’s right – after almost nine months of being tied to Barbie’s sidekick, Gosling, 43, finally put the part to bed during last weekend’s episode of Saturday Night Live (SNL).
However, he couldn’t do so without putting on a show.
During the April 13 show, Gosling announced in his opening monologue, “I’m here because of my new movie The Fall Guy. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna make any jokes about Ken because it’s not funny. Ken and I, we got to break up. We went too deep. So I’m not going to talk about it… I actually am going to talk about it a little bit – with the music of the great Taylor Swift.”
The Drive star then launched into a Ken-ified rendition of Swift’s 2021 hit, All Too Well – replacing the lyrics about the singer’s red scarf with a nod to his character’s fur coat.
“I left my roller blades in that big pink house, but I’ve still got that fur coat and I’ll wear it right now,” he sang at the piano, before slipping on the garment.
While the audience went wild for the performance, one person was (jokingly) perturbed by the stunt – Emily Blunt.
Joining Gosling to promote their new movie – which is about a stuntman who volunteers to find the missing lead actor in a bid to save the director’s debut film – the British actor kept interrupting her co-star to remind him that he was supposed to be leaving Barbie in the past.
In fact, Blunt, 41, even resorted to ‘violence’ to try to stop Gosling from breaking into song!
This isn’t the first time the two actors have teased each other about their movies.
During the Oscars last month, the quick-witted pair made barbed comments about each other’s films from last summer – with Blunt starring alongside Cillian Murphy in the critically acclaimed Oppenheimer, which debuted the day before Barbie (July 20).
“You know, I think I kind of figured out why they called it Barbenheimer and they didn’t call it a Oppenbarbie,” Gosling told Blunt. “Well, I think you guys are at the tail end of that because you were riding Barbie’s coattails all summer.”
Blunt retorted, “Thanks for ‘Kensplaining’ that to me. All right, Mister ‘I Need to Paint My Abs On to Get Nominated.’ You don’t see Robert Downey [Jr.] doing that!”
Gosling’s ‘break up’ with Ken comes after his stunning performance at the Academy Awards, when he wowed the room of A-Listers with his rendition of I’m Just Ken – which was nominated for Best Original Song.
In a nod to the 1953 Marilyn Monroe movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Gosling sang his heart out as he was joined on stage by fellow Kens Simu Liu, Scott Evans, Ncuti Gatwa and Kingsley Ben-Adir, as well as songwriter Mark Ronson.
Things got even more bizarre when Guns ‘n’ Roses rocker Slash performed a shredding guitar solo in the middle of the track – much to the joy of Hollywood’s elite, including director Martin Scorsese, who was caught on camera by his daughter grinning along to the performance.
It’s a miracle that the production even came to fruition, as Gosling recently revealed he originally turned down the idea.
Admitting his first answer was “100% no” when asked by ceremony bosses, Gosling told Jimmy Fallon, “There’s a lot of ways that could go wrong.”
