With “Barbie” now available to stream on Max, director and co-writer Greta Gerwig hit the late night press circuit and revealed on “The Late Show” one of the wildest ideas Ryan Gosling wanted to execute in the film as Ken. One of the character’s most memorable looks in the blockbuster comedy is a white mink coat. According to Gerwig, Gosling pitched her on having Ken dance with and fight the mink coat during the “I’m Just Ken” dream ballet.
“One of the ideas that Ryan had was that he would have a dance duet with his mink [coat],” Gerwig explained. “The mink would be fighting him and then love him and then fight him and then eventually defeat him and then he would be birthed anew out of the mink.”
“Somewhere there is rehearsal footage of this,” Gerwig continued. “It’s in the vault. Even though it didn’t end up being in the movie, it was that kind of openness and everybody bringing these wild, brilliant ideas that allowed [the movie] to happen in its form. We had a fun week exploring what it would be if he did his mink ballet.”
“Barbie” costume designer Jacqueline Durran previously spoke to PvNew about choosing the perfect mink coat for Ken to wear in the film.
“That coat is fake,” Durran stressed. “But, if you look closely at the inner lining, we did line it with a horse print,” nodding to Ken’s fascination for horses after he becomes obsessed with patriarchy.
Durran added that when she and Gerwig were figuring out what the toxic version of Ken would look like, she remembered a photo of Sylvester Stallone modeling a fur coat; that became the main inspiration for the mink coat.
“That image is in the movie. It was such a fantastic image of exuberance and fashion of someone like him wearing a huge mink coat in the ’80s that it just had to become part of the Ken look,” Durran said. “Ryan was totally up for the look. He was ready to go as far as Greta wanted.”
Watch Gerwig’s full appearance on “The Late Show” in the video below.
