One of the biggest questions facing the upcoming Academy Awards is whether or not “Barbie” or “Oppenheimer” might win the Oscar for best picture, but also whether or not Ryan Gosling will put his Ken mink coat back on to perform “I’m Just Ken” live on stage.
Should the beloved power ballad land a nomination for best original song, a live performance will likely take place regardless of its Gosling singing the lead vocals. Oscar producers would surely love for it to be Gosling for ratings purposes (and the odds of him attending the Oscars as a best supporting actor nominee are in his favor), and they even might want to stage an “I’m Just Ken” live performance even if the song does not get nominated because it’s just so popular. Would Gosling actually take the stage?
“Well, I haven’t been invited. And I wasn’t thinking about it until now, and now it’s all I’m going to think about,” Gosling recently told W Magazine while playing coy on his final answer. “Do you get paid to sing at the Oscars? Do you have to drive yourself? What kind of scratch is involved? They pick you up at least, right?”
Gosling has earned a Grammy nomination and a spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart thanks to “I’m Just Ken,” which also recently made the Oscar shortlist for best original song. Moviegoers will find out Jan. 23 whether or not “I’m Just Ken” earns an Oscar nomination. It’s one of three original songs from “Barbie” that are on the shortlist. Joining the power ballad are Dua Lipa’s disco hit “Dance the Night” and Billie Eillish’s soulful “What Was I Made For?” Gosling and “Barbie” soundtrack producer Mark Ronson recently gave “I’m Just Ken” an awards campaign boost by releasing three new versions of the song, including a Christmas and an acoustic cover.
Elsewhere during his W Magazine interview, Gosling said his first impression of playing Ken was total intimidation.
“It was the title page of the script, which said ‘Barbie and Ken,’ but ‘and Ken’ was scratched out. And the next impression was, this is the hardest part I’ll ever play,” he said. “How do you approach playing a 70-year-old crotchless doll? There’s no research you can do for that. There’s no one you can shadow, no documentaries you can watch, no books written about Ken. You’re on your own.”
Margot Robbie told the magazine that “Ryan always had these tricks up his sleeve” to keep her on her toes while filming. “He’d catch me off guard with them,” she said. “The double sunglasses thing [when Ken wears two pairs of sunglasses for ‘boys night’] was his idea. That was just on a random take, and it made the cut of the movie. And yelling out ‘Sublime!’ at a certain moment. It was like I was always getting a front-row seat to being entertained.”
Another trick Gosling had was bringing a prop seagull to set for the first day of filming. The first scene Gosling and Robbie shot together as Barbie and Ken is the moment the two characters travel to the real world in a boat.
“I brought a prop seagull to set. I asked somebody to puppeteer it in the shot, and I didn’t tell Margot,” Gosling said. “Ninety percent of the actors I’ve worked with would go [very sarcastically], ‘You brought a seagull. Great.’ But Margot was open to the seagull puppetry.”
“Barbie” is now available to stream on Max.
