Ryan Gosling initially didn’t want to perform I’m Just Ken at the Oscars: “There’s a lot of ways that can go wrong”

Ryan Gosling initially didn’t want to perform I’m Just Ken at the Academy Awards, saying, “There’s a lot of ways that can go wrong.”

Ryan Gosling singing “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie at the Oscars was a definite highlight of the ceremony, but the actor originally turned down the Academy when he was first asked to perform it.

While speaking with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, Gosling revealed that he initially wasn’t down to perform the hit song at the Academy Awards. “One hundred percent no,” Gosling said. “There’s a lot of ways that can go wrong.“

When Gosling finally agreed to do it, he was able to bring his daughters to the rehearsals. “It was their interest in Barbie and their disinterest in Ken that sort of started all of this,” Gosling said. “It’s really been a team effort, and they were on the film and they came to set when I filmed the number, but a lot of this has no context for them. It’s just like a lot of fake tan stains around the house. So I wanted them to come to the dress rehearsal just to give it some kind of context for what had been going on.” He said that his daughters actually helped him get the choreography down. “They know all the choreography than I do, and the songs,” he said. “Oh my god. They’re backstage kind of showing me the moves.“

Ryan Gosling was also up for the Best Supporting Actor award for his performance as Ken, but lost to Robert Downey Jr. Given the enormous success of Barbie, it’s only natural that the studio would want a sequel, but Gosling’s co-star Margot Robbie remains skeptical. “Its funny, that knee-jerk reaction in this day and age for everyone to immediately ask about a sequel,” Robbie said earlier this year. “I don’t think it was like that 20 years ago. This wasn’t designed to be a trilogy.” Not all movies need sequels, but the chance of another billion-dollar payday will be hard for the studio to resist.

Gosling will next be seen in The Fall Guy, which our own Chris Bumbray absolutely loved. “The Fall Guy really is a terrific summer action movie and a throwback to a different (better) time in genre movie-making,” Bumbray wrote. “More than anything, it’s a tribute to the stunt industry and a demand that it gets the recognition it deserves, with the point made over and over that CGI action is lame and can’t hold a candle to the old ways. I’m inclined to agree.” You can check out the rest of Bumbray’s review right here. The Fall Guy will hit theaters on May 3rd.