Ryan Gosling Explains How His Daughters Helped Him Prep For 'Barbie' But Haven’t Watched The Movie

Ryan Gosling recently revealed in an interview with E!Online that his daughters Esmerelda, 9, and Amada, 7 haven't seen his blockbuster movie Barbie yet. At the 2024 Santa Barbara International Film Festival, he told the outlet, "I don't know if you should watch your father as Ken. I don't know what age is a good age to see your father do that. It gets pretty crazy."

Gosling added that his daughters were still a part of his journey and said, "They've seen little parts of it and they came to set one day when I did a big musical number." He said that his children have always been lovers of the legendary doll, even before their father played the role of Ken. He continued, "I knew that they loved it because they kept saying at first, 'Hey, can we go to Target?' And we go to Target, and then they'd slowly go by the Barbie aisle. And my wife and I sort of realized, 'OK, I think it's time to let them have Barbies.' And no interest in Ken, which was pretty interesting, too." His children play with their Barbies quite seriously, as he previously disclosed.

Gosling confessed to ET in July last year, " My  kids, their Barbies aren’t even named ‘Barbie.’ They all have their names [and] very complicated lives, backstories, interrelationships, history — you gotta know it all. If you are playing with the two that are estranged now for some reason [and you did not know that], it’s like, ‘Get out of here.’" During an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Gosling spoke about why he agreed to portray the legendary toy boyfriend. He began by expressing his admiration for the screenplay, which was co-written and directed by Greta Gerwig, who sent him an email offering the role.

As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, referring to the Ken doll that his girls had, "Best script I’ve ever read. I walk out in the backyard and, do you know where I found Ken, Jimmy? Face down in the mud next to a squished lemon." Gosling wrote Gerwig after snapping a picture of what he had seen, "I shall be your Ken, for this story must be told".

Barbie made a remarkable $356.3 million worldwide, surpassing forecasts at the foreign box office with $194.3 million (above Sunday's prediction of $182 million). The fact that the movie didn't have a significant presence on Imax or premium big format screens—which cost more than the typical 2D movie ticket—made those ticket sales particularly noteworthy. Barbie's contribution to the US summer box office's first-ever $4 billion (£3.2 billion) total since the epidemic was also noteworthy. As per BBC, the success of Barbenheimer—Barbie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, which were released on the same day in July—pushed receipts beyond the previous year's total of $3.4 billion (£2.7 billion), surprising analysts who had not anticipated theaters to reach that milestone.