Ryan Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” Barbie power ballad was originally much shorter and less important to the fantasy-comedy’s story, according to music producer Mark Ronson.
Ronson opened up about the song’s evolution in a new Barbie making-of featurette shared on Vudu Fandango’s YouTube channel. “It went from being this song that was maybe gonna be played somewhere in the film to this song that they built this epic battle around,” he said. Ronson added that Barbie co-writer and director Greta Gerwig was the one who pushed for “I’m Just Ken” to play a bigger, more integral part in the movie, asking him to expand on his first draft of the song as soon as she heard it. “[She’s] like, ‘We love that song — actually, can you make it longer?’ So we’re essentially scoring 11 minutes just around the Ken song,” the music producer recalled.
Gerwig’s instincts regarding “I’m Just Ken” proved to be on the money, as the musical number is widely regarded as one of Barbie‘s stand-out sequences. It has also taken on a life of its own outside the film, racking up over 50 million streams and 3 million views on Spotify and YouTube, respectively. Even the behind-the-scenes video detailing the making of the “I’m Just Ken” sequence has enjoyed considerable success, scoring 6.7 million views and 133, 000 likes since it dropped on YouTube in late August 2023.
Barbie Costume Designer Talks the Kens’ Disco Outfits
Aside from “I’m Just Ken,” Gosling also joined Barbie‘s other Ken actors in another of the movie’s showstopping scenes: the disco dance party. In a recent interview, costume designer Jacqueline Durran reflected on the challenges of creating the Kens’ outfits for this scene — specifically, emulating a 1960s-70s aesthetic without restricting the performers’ ability to perform their dance choreography. According to Durran, the fabric for the Gosling and his co-stars’ disco attire needed to have “the right weight and not be too stiff,” which made sourcing it tricky.
The Kens’ clothing — or rather, their lack of clothing — caused problems elsewhere during the production, as well. Barbie‘s co-casting directors Allison Jones and Lucy Bevan recently revealed that several of the actors who auditioned to portray an incarnation of Ken stripped off their tops during the audition process, which wasn’t something the pair wanted them to do. “Some of the Kens would take off their T-shirts, and we were like, ‘No, no, you don’t need to take off your T-shirt,'” Bevan said.
Barbie is in cinemas now, and is also available to stream on VoD platforms.
Source: YouTube, via THR