WARNING! Minor SPOILERS ahead for The Gray Man.
Netflix’s 2022 action-thriller The Gray Man makes a perfect reference to Ryan Gosling’s biggest upcoming movie. Ryan Gosling stars in The Gray Man as CIA assassin Sierra Six, a former prisoner whose sentence was commuted in exchange for a lifelong commitment to the agency. The Gray Man continues Gosling’s successful career trend of portraying morally dubious and soft-spoken protagonists in action films, but audiences have become more excited for the new, iconic role he’ll be portraying in his next movie project.
While The Gray Man received mixed reviews, Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, and Ana de Armas’ A-list star power has led to Netflix turning the film into a franchise. The Gray Man’s ending purposefully left loose ends untied to set up sequels, so while The Gray Man 2 isn't surprising, Netflix’s official announcement finally confirms Gosling’s upcoming projects after his highly anticipated 2023 role. After The Gray Man, Gosling will be starring as Ken (one of them, at least) in Greta Gerwig’s 2023 Barbie movie, which is already shaping up to be one of the actor’s best-cast roles to date.
Since coming to prominence in Hollywood, Gosling has often been noted for his good looks, which is why it came as no shock that he was cast as the Ken doll opposite Margot Robbie’s Barbie in Greta Gerwig’s movie. Even outside of the official Barbie movie, Gosling has been compared to the Mattel doll, such as in Netflix’s The Gray Man. When Chris Evans’ villainous Lloyd Hansen is trying to raise the stakes for taking down Gosling’s Sierra Six, he says that he’ll give an “extra ten million to the first guy to put a bullet in this Ken doll’s brain.” Considering the next role that audiences will see Ryan Gosling play is the Ken doll, The Gray Man’s Barbie reference couldn’t have come at a more perfect time.
The True Story Behind The Gray Man’s Barbie Reference Proves Gosling’s Casting Is Perfect
Although official images and set pictures of Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in costume as Ken and Barbie have been making their way around the internet for months, The Gray Man’s reference predated his casting. Since The Gray Man’s Ken line was written long before Gosling was involved in Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie whatsoever, the Russo brothers joked that they manifested the actor getting the role. The Gray Man directors also quipped to Digital Spy that they encouraged Gosling to “embrace his Ken-ergy,” thus flawlessly setting up the actor for his next big part.
It may be surprising that the reference was written before Gosling's Ken doll casting came about, but it actually goes to prove that he was the perfect choice for the character. Not only did Greta Gerwig see that Ryan Gosling was the quintessential Ken, but so did the Russo brothers, albeit a more murderous Ken. Had The Gray Man been written later on, it may have seemed that the Ken doll line was just a cheeky nod to the online hype for Gosling’s upcoming role, but the directors having no idea that he would actually be playing that character is a testament to how right he is for the Barbie movie.
