Ryan Gosling famously agreed to play Ken in the Barbie movie while staring at his daughters’ Ken doll face down in the dirt in his backyard. Despite his children partially inspiring the role, however, Gosling has yet to allow them to watch him in it.
During a recent conversation with E! News, the Barbie star revealed that he and his wife, Eva Mendes, haven’t shown their daughters – Esmerelda, 9, and Amada, 7, much of his celebrated film.
“I don’t know if you should watch your father as Ken,” Ryan Gosling explained at the 2024 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. “I don’t know what age is a good age to see your father do that. It gets pretty crazy.”
Though the girls haven’t seen the movie itself, they did get a sneak peek at their dad in his Ken gear on set. “They’ve seen little parts of it,” Gosling said. “And they came to set one day when I did a big musical number.”
According to Ryan Gosling, his girls’ love for Barbie began long before he stepped into Ken’s neon yellow roller skates.
“I knew that they loved it because they kept saying at first, ‘Hey, can we go to Target?'” he recalled. “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 daughters might not have shown much interest in the real-life version of his character, but Ryan Gosling saw playing Ken as a way to bond with his daughters. Making Barbie “was a way to sort of make something both for and with them,” he said.
Eva Mendes Says Her, Ryan Gosling’s Daughters Aren’t Allowed on Social Media
Though Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling are reportedly “fun” and “hands-on” parents, their house is not without rules. As Eva Mendes explained, they have pretty strict rules about social media.
“I’m just sharing what I feel now, but I know it’s gonna get harder as they get older,” Mendes wrote on Instagram.
“We are in the internet century so eventually everyone will need or want to access the internet sorry,” a commenter claimed, to which Mendes replied, “Yes true, but in my house, children do not have access to the internet. It’s too dangerous. Just like drinking or voting or getting a driver’s license (etc..) isn’t allowed for children, the internet falls under that category for me. Especially social media.”