Margot Robbie went to some creative lengths to convince Ryan Gosling to sign on for the blockbuster Barbie. Considering how iconic his Ken performance ultimately became, his love for working on the flick, and how huge the movie turned out to be, it’s safe to say the effort paid off. But the story behind how she got him to say yes led to a hilarious moment when Robbie described buying him a present every single day, and watching Jacob Elordi, her Wuthering Heights co-star, find out is devastating.
As can be seen in an Instagram clip shared by channel10au, Robbie and Jacob Elordi appeared on The Graham Norton Show alongside Amanda Seyfried while promoting their 2026 movie calendar release. During the conversation, she explained that Gosling didn’t immediately jump at the chance to play Ken. In fact, convincing him to join the project required a bit of persistence and a very unusual promise. You can check out the lengths she went to in the video below.
The Suicide Squad star explained that she went to some pretty extreme lengths to negotiate with Gosling, getting him to join the film. At one point in her efforts to win Gosling over, she made a bold promise in an email. She shared:
Article continues belowAnd I ended up emailing him in one of my attempts to convince him. He was like, ‘No, thank you.’ And I was like, ‘No, Please.’ And this went on for a little while and then I ended up saying in an email, ‘I will buy you a present every single day, every day, if you come and do this movie.’ I don’t know why I said that. And then he came and did the movie and I was like, ‘Well, don’t make a liar out of me, Ryan. I will buy you a present every day.’
Naturally, that led to the obvious follow-up question from the couch: What kind of gifts do you even give someone on a movie set every day? Robbie explained that the whole thing turned into a fun running joke during production. Each day, she’d leave something small in Gosling’s trailer labeled as a gift from Barbie to Ken. She continued:
It ended up becoming really fun. I’d just leave him a present in his trailer every day, like ‘To Ken, from Barbie.’ And it would be something silly that, you know, if we were shooting a beach scene, it would be like a Hawaiian shirt, or like, floaties or something. It’s now occurring to me, that another costar is sitting right next to me who didn’t get a present every day.
That’s when the moment became comedy gold. As the realization hit that her Wuthering Heights co-lead was sitting right beside her while she described this elaborate gift campaign for Gosling, the entire couch erupted into laughter. Amanda Seyfried didn’t hesitate to pile on either, jokingly pointing out that the situation wasn’t the Australian native’s fault. “That was you. That was on you,” Seyfried told Elordi. Elordi, meanwhile, responded with perfectly timed deadpan delivery:
It is on me, it is.
Of course, the Wolf of Wall Street breakout actress’s bribery campaign clearly worked out in the end. Gosling’s Ken became one of the standout elements of Barbie, streaming with an HBO Max subscription, helping turn the movie into a cultural phenomenon and one of the year's biggest box office hits. Still, it’s pretty funny to imagine the Oscar-nominated actor opening his trailer door each day to find another small surprise waiting for him.
And, if nothing else, the moment on The Graham Norton Show may have revealed a useful casting strategy for Robbie going forward. Though if Jacob Elordi signs on to another project with her, he might want to negotiate for the daily gifts upfront next time.
Meanwhile, the newly released book-to-screen adaptation of the classic Gothic romance Wuthering Heights, which marks Robbie and Elordi’s latest collaboration, is currently playing in theaters. Be sure to check your local listings for showtimes.
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