Ryan Gosling details how he found his ‘Ken-ergy’ for the ‘Barbie’ movie

By Alli Rosenbloom and Dan Heching, CNN

Ryan Gosling has been busy channeling his inner Ken doll while portraying the iconic toy in the upcoming live-action “Barbie” movie, but he admits that he had some doubts at first.

Speaking on stage at the “Barbie” CinemaCon panel in Las Vegas during Tuesday’s presentation by Warner Bros. Pictures, Gosling said that “up until this point, I only knew Ken from afar. I didn’t know Ken from within.”

“I doubted my Ken-ergy. I didn’t see it,” he said, later adding that his co-star Margot Robbie and director Greta Gerwig ultimately “conjured” the Ken doll out of him.

Upon landing the role, Gosling underwent a physical transformation that is still being showcased with his frosty bleached-blonde hair and uber-bronzed skin to embody the plastic mind of Ken.

“I was living my life and the next thing I knew, I was bleaching my hair and shaving my legs and rollerblading on Venice Beach,” Gosling joked.

He added that he’d often find himself asking why there was self-tanner on his bed sheets and likened this transformation to being overtaken by what he called “pink fever,” as if he had been sweating Barbie through his pores.

As far as Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, her partner and “Barbie” co-writer, were concerned, there was nobody else they felt more suited for the role than Gosling, despite his initial trepidation. Gerwig told the CinemaCon audience that while they were writing the script, they went so far as to write Gosling’s name in for Ken as if they’d already cast him in their minds without knowing him.

Gosling certainly showed support for his director, as he attended the panel wearing a pink jacket over a white t-shirt with text in the signature Barbie font that read “Greta Gerwig.”

Robbie, who plays Barbie in the film, said during the panel that walking onto the set of the project was “like a dopamine hit” every day. Grown men even found excuses to step onto set — including the guys from the “Fast X” set who were filming on the same lot — Robbie said.

In addition to the fun, fun, fun CinemaCon panel discussion, new clips from the movie were presented and gave viewers a wider glimpse at Barbie Land, which Gerwig had mentioned she wanted to look and be as “tactile” as possible, like the Mattel toys themselves.

The snippet also further introduced SNL alum Kate McKinnon’s “Weird Barbie” character, who has a chopped up haircut, is in a permanent leg split and smells “like basement.”

The “Barbie” movie will premiere in theaters on July 21. (Warner Bros. and CNN are both part of Warner Bros. Discovery.)

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