Greta Gerwig had to pursue Ryan Gosling for a year before he started feeling the Ken-ergy

It may be hard to believe now, in a post-2022 “Ken-ergy” press tour (which was actually a The Gray Man press tour) world, but the world’s biggest Barbie supporter Ryan Gosling was once extremely hesitant about fully embracing his bleach blond alter-ego.

In a recent, lengthy New York Times Magazine profile on Greta Gerwig and all things Barbie, Gosling’s Ken gets a special shout all the way down at the bottom, which, as writer Willa Paskin makes sure to note, is “very Ken.”

Even though he told Jimmy Fallon last July that Barbie was “the best script I’ve ever read,” Gosling revealed in the profile that he spent a full year flip-flopping about taking the role. “There were times where I was sure I wasn’t doing the film,” he said. “I would call my agent and ask who was playing Ken. And they would say, ‘Greta says you are.’”

Eventually, though, he made the decision to move into the DreamHouse for good: “She was just, in the end, more confident that I should play him than I was that I shouldn’t.”

Gosling previously spoke about the real-life metaphor that made him change his mind on the same episode of The Tonight Show, an anecdote that is also referenced in the NYT profile. “I walk out in the backyard, and you know where I found [my daughter’s] Ken? Face down in the mud next to a squished lemon,” he told Fallon, as the host held up a snapshot of the rotting fruit in question. He continued: “I texted it to Greta, and I said, ‘I shall be your Ken, for his story must be told.’” And the rest, as they say, is history.

You can read the full NYT profile, titled “Greta Gerwig’s ‘Barbie’ Dream Job,” here. Barbie premieres in theaters July 21.