A serious case of laughter swept through Studio 8H as Ryan Gosling returned to “Saturday Night Live.”
The “Barbie” star hosted “SNL” for the third time this weekend in an episode filled with cameos, continuations of popular sketches and actors struggling to stop laughing.
In his monologue, Gosling kicked things off by announcing that he and Ken had to break up because “we went too far,” while admitting that it’s hard to let go of your “Barbie” persona.
“When it comes to dealing with a breakup, there’s really only one thing that can help: the music of the great Taylor Swift,” Gosling said before launching into a parody of Swift’s song “All Too Well.”
“I left my roller skates in this big pink house, but I still got this fur coat and I’m gonna wear it right now,” Gosling sang on the piano, before declaring: “I was just Ken, and Now I’m just Ryan.”
Gosling’s ‘The Fall Guy’ co-star, Emily Blunt, quickly joined him on stage to chastise him for still being obsessed with Ken before admitting that he also misses his character, Kitty, from ‘Oppenheimer’ – which Gosling described as an “inferior film” to “Barbie” as a follow-up to their Oscar roast. As a duet, Blunt and Gosling both sang about their “Barbenheimer summer” and bid farewell to their characters as dancers in “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” costumes took the stage.
But Gosling may not be quite ready to let go yet. The monologue ended with the actor blowing out a Ken candle, only for it to be lit again when the actor proclaimed, “Ken will never die!”
Kate McKinnon returns to ‘SNL’ in ‘Close Encounter’ sketch, Heidi Gardner and Chloe Fineman struggle to stop laughing
Outdoors, former “SNL” cast member Kate McKinnon brought back her classic sketch “Close Encounter,” in which she plays Colleen, a woman who describes being abducted by aliens.
Gosling, who plays Todd, another kidnapper, started laughing after explaining that the aliens were “smoothly over there” and mobbed him because they saw he “had a troll nose.” The actor could also be seen smiling and trying to hide his laughter under his cap, while McKinnon demonstrated what the aliens did to him.
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Gosling and the other cast members struggled to contain their laughter in virtually every other sketch on the show, including when he and Mikey Day played two people in a town hall audience who look suspiciously like Beavis and Butt Head. Heidi Gardner, who plays town hall moderator, burst out laughing every time she turned to see Gosling and Day; the second time she continued laughing until the next line. Gosling also laughed when he and Day were seated together, and the laughter spread to Chloe Fineman, who played the role of an audience member asking a question.
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Other character-breaking moments came in sketches where Gosling played a man having doubts about his engagement, as well as another where he and Bowen Yang played defensive doctors insisting that a patient’s death was not their fault.
Ryan Gosling Stars in ‘SNL’ Sequel to His Papyrus Sketch ‘Avatar’
Virtually the only parts of the show without anyone breaking character were the pre-recorded sketches, including one that saw Gosling reprise one of his most memorable “SNL” characters.
Following up on his 2017 “Papyrus” sketch, Gosling returned as a man obsessed with the fact that “Avatar” used the Papyrus font as its logo. In this sequel, the man feels comforted after seeing that the logo has been changed for “Avatar: The Way of Water”, only to be disturbed again after concluding that the new version is just a bold version of the old one. After infiltrating a Disney graphic design event to confront the logo’s creator, the sketch reveals that Gosling’s character is the son of the creator of Wingdings.
For what it’s worth, “Avatar” producer Jon Landau told Entertainment Weekly in 2022 that a new font had been created for the sequels. “When we realized the movie was going to become a franchise and we would have other IPs, we created our own font that we use now, and we call it Toruk, and it’s available for people to use. ‘use.’
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ‘SNL’: Ryan Gosling Sings With Emily Blunt, Heidi Gardner Laughs
