Ryan Gosling’s two daughters were not into him doing the Barbie movie at all.
“They couldn’t understand why I would want to play Ken,” he told me recently. “They’re so uninterested.”
Because they’re too old for Barbie now?
“No,” Gosling said. “Because no one’s interested in Ken. They can’t understand why I would want to do it. He’s an accessory. And not one of the cool ones.”
Ken gets plenty of accessories of his own in Barbie.
The acid yellow rollerblades, the mirrored shades, the faux-mink coat, a lightning bolt headband…
Ken also gets watches. Three of them – which we see him wearing all at the same time.
(Sidebar: Buzz Aldrin was also photographed wearing three watches last week, so perhaps this is just the next logical step on the double-wristing trend. Aldrin was asked about his horological thripple, though his answer didn’t put much clarity on the matter. “See, you need an odd number in case there is a discrepancy so you can sort out which one is what,” he explained. Buzz is 93 years old and has been to the Moon.)
As befits Ryan Gosling’s role as its brand ambassador, the watches Ken wears are all by Tag Heuer. Perhaps surprisingly, none of them are the pink-dialled 2023 Carrera Date model the actor was seen wearing as part of the all-out hot-pink Barbie marketing blitz.
Instead, Ken wears three vintage gold Carrera chronographs of a more interesting provenance, apparently picked for their unashamedly glitzy design. (Sorry, their ‘Ken-ergy’.)
First, there’s a 1971 model with the reference 1158, one of the most celebrated of all vintage Carreras, thanks to then-boss Jack Heuer’s idea of presenting it to winning Formula One Ferrari drivers of the day – including Niki Lauda, Mario Andretti and Gilles Villeneuve.
Ken wears his on an 18kt Milanese gold bracelet – an option that added 150 per cent to the price of the watch back then, and something Jack Heuer didn’t necessarily consider in keeping with his brand’s motorsport credentials, regarding such an addition as a bit too ‘California’ – ie: flashy.
So, perfect for Ken, then.
Then there is a Carrera reference 110.515 from 1974, a gold-plated steel model with a barrel-shaped case and sunray dial, complete with era-appropriate wave-like ‘Geneva stripes’ – or Côtes de Genėva.
Rounding out the trio we also see Ken wearing a 2448 NT Carrera, arguably the most understated of the three, another gold-plated number but this time with a solid black face and presented on a black leather strap, inspired by a 1963 model.
Tag Heuer refers to this model as having ‘classic elegance’ – words we’re not entirely sure are in Ken’s wheelhouse, but perhaps it’s all relative.
“I’ve always worn a watch, from when I was a kid,” Gosling told me. “I mean, I never had a lot of fancy watches. My first was a digital Casio or something. I think it had Hulk Hogan on it.”
The actor had worn vintage watches by Rolex and Omega as well as Casio, before signing his contract as a Tag Heuer ambassador 18 months ago – the first endorsement deal of his 29-year career.
In May he starred in a perfectly pitched five-minute commercial for Tag Heuer, directed by David 'John Wick' Leitch on the set of their movie remake of the 1980s TV show The Fall Guy, due out next year.
The mind boggles to think how much the company might be paying Gosling, who was last week announced as the highest-paid actor in the world, to advertise its watches. His fee for Barbie alone is rumoured to have been $12.5m.
Though given how well the whole enterprise seems to be going, you’ve got to conclude that however much it was, it was money well spent.
