Entertainment

Watch: Ryan Gosling pokes fun at ‘Barbie’ role on SNL.

The actor hosted “Saturday Night Live” for the third time last night.

By Natalie Gale

April 14, 2024

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Hot off his live performance of “I’m Just Ken” at this year’s Oscars, Ryan Gosling hosted “Saturday Night Live” for the third time last night.

He wasn’t there to talk about his Oscar-nominated role in the “Barbie” movie. But he broke into a Taylor Swift-inspired ballad about it anyway.

“I was just Ken, and now I’m just Ryan.”

“Ken is dead!” cried a frustrated special guest — Emily Blunt, Gosling’s co-star in their upcoming action-comedy “The Fall Guy,” as she smashed him over the head with a chair.

The monologue got more and more dramatic as it went on — cue Mikey Day as Oppenheimer, and a bunch of extras in Barbie outfits.

This episode included some other fun guest appearances, too, like Kate McKinnon and basketball star Caitlin Clark, and more breaking from the cast than we’ve seen in a while.

Gosling was joined by musical guest Chris Stapleton, who was also appearing on the show for the third time. The powerhouse singer-songwriter began his career writing for famous country artists, before breaking onto the scene himself in 2015. He recently released his fourth studio album, “Higher.”

Cold Open

Setting: the Pentagon. But it’s not a political cold open — it’s another installment of the skit “close encounters,” which means McKinnon is back as Colleen Rafferty. She, Gosling, and Sarah Sherman have all been abducted by aliens, and two government officials (Bowen Yang and Day) are asking questions. Gosling and Sherman’s stories sound pretty plausible, but Rafferty’s get more and more graphically sexual and ridiculous. Gosling (and some of the others) are visibly cracking up by the end of the skit.

Monologue

Gosling’s here promoting his new movie, “The Fall Guy,” so he’s not gonna talk about his Oscar-nominated Ken performance. Actually, yes he is. A piano rolls onto the stage and he breaks into a ballad set to Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” about the “Barbie” movie. Emily Blunt joins him to promote their movie, but she’s hung up on “Oppenheimer,” too. She smashes a couple of props over Gosling, though, in a nod to “The Fall Guy,” in which he plays a stuntman.

The Engagement

Gosling channels George Costanza in this one — he just proposed to his girlfriend Liz (Chloe Fineman), and he has second thoughts, which he tells to Liz’s friend’s (Ego Nwodim) boyfriend (Andrew Dismukes) every time the ladies leave the room. Sometimes he drives to the airport and just watches the planes fly away. He’s planning on leaving for Istanbul tonight, and an unwilling Dismukes has to play a central role in the operation. He has no one else to tell about this, either. “All my friends are her friends.”

Can’t Tonight

Three men (Gosling, Marcello Hernandez, Kenan Thompson) are at a bar, and the waitress (Sherman) “loves countries and places,” so she wants to know where their accents are from. Thompson is Dominican, Hernandez is Cuban, and Gosling is from Tennessee but he’s been different ever since he married a Cuban woman, he tells Sherman in a heavy Cuban accent. He and Hernandez try to convince Thompson to go out to the club tonight — all the celebs are gonna be there, like Margot Robbie and the original dog from Beethoven.

Beavis and Butt-Head

NewsNation hosts a livestream town hall about AI, interviewing an MIT dean (Thompson) on the issue. But he can’t concentrate, since a man (Gosling) in the audience right behind his interviewer (Heidi Gardner) looks exactly like Beavis from the cartoon “Beavis and Butt-Head.” He’s asked to move, but then someone (Day) who looks like Butt-Head replaces him. Most players break in this one, but Gardner loses it so much she gets audience applause.

Chris Stapleton

Stapleton performed two of his bluesy country songs — the rock ‘n’ roll-ish “White Horse” and the ballad “Mountains of My Mind” — both off of his most recent album release, 2023’s “Higher.”

Weekend Update

Weekend Update hosts Colin Jost and Michael Che joked about some of the week’s top stories like O.J. Simpson’s obituary, Biden’s student loan relief, the TikTok-banning bill, and the Golden Bachelor’s divorce. Resident boyfriend Michael Longfellow came on to discuss weaponized incompetence, but the real standout guest was someone new — basketball star Clark showed up to chat about the WNBA.

Doctor

In this more absurdist bit, two creepy doctors (Yang and Gosling) have to break the bad news to a family that their grandfather passed away during surgery. They’re adamant that they didn’t have anything to do with it. “See, now that makes it sound like you did,” said Dismukes. Also, Gosling is covered in blood. 

Erin Brockovich

In a deleted scene from the 2000 movie “Erin Brockovich,” Gosling is Brockovich’s (Fineman) new neighbor, and he wants to take her out. They use the iconic numbers quote as a jumping-off point to make up other lists — Gosling details “Friends” characters and Thompson goes on about sounds.