Barbie Star Simu Liu Gushes Over Fellow Canadian and Co-Star Ryan Gosling (Exclusive)

The confrontational relationship between Ryan Gosling’s Ken and Simu Liu’s Ken in Barbie is one of the key things the promotional campaign for the movie has been built around — and Liu said it was a ton of fun, even if it was kind of hard to get into character as selfish jerks when…well…they’re Canadian! Greta Gerwig’s candy-colored blockbuster is bearing down on us fast, and as part of the press junket for Barbie, Liu admitted that Barbie Land isn’t always as perfect as it seems for the Kens, and that they — starved for attention and desperate for validation — find themselves acting out in hilarious ways.

That’s an interesting thought — and one kind of teased in the movie’s official synopsis. It’s also likely to really get people talking, since the “girl power” message of the movie comes wrapped in a more broadly humanist message about individuality and following your bliss.

“It was the best,” Liu told ComicBook.com’s Jamie Jirak of the feud with Gosling. “The irony was not lost on me that we’re both Canadian, and there’s no reason for two Canadians to ever be fighting like that, but this is a movie, and we are playing characters that are often at odds with each other, so we had to bury that preconceived Canadian niceness as it were, and really focus on hating each other. Which was hard! He’s a very likable human — but as Ken, maybe not so much, and that made it a little bit better. I think the Kens are in such an interesting place in Barbieland at the beginning of the movie. There’s just so little that they have to themselves. They’re not a particularly empowered group of dolls. They don’t have jobs — their only job is the beach, which they do all the time every single day, and that’s it. And then every so often if a Barbie smiles at them or gives them the time of day, that’s great, but it also gets the Kens very competitive. Ryan’s Ken, very quickly in the beginning of the movie, makes a fool out of himself trying to impress Barbie, and that’s just too bad, because I think my Ken would never do that. My Ken would always impress the Barbies with his Kenergy and hsi dance moves — which you get to see later in the movie, and drives Ryan’s Ken green with jealousy.”

In Barbie, to live in Barbie Land is to be a perfect being in a perfect place. Unless you have a full-on existential crisis. Or you’re a Ken. From Oscar-nominated writer/director Greta Gerwig comes Barbie, which hits theaters on July 21st. 

Barbie stars Oscar-nominees Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken, alongside America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera, Ariana Greenblatt, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, and Will Ferrell. The film also stars Ana Cruz Kayne, Emma Mackey, Hari Nef, Alexandra Shipp, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Simu Liu, Ncuti Gatwa, Scott Evans, Jamie Demetriou, Connor Swindells, Sharon Rooney, Nicola Coughlan, Ritu Arya, Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Dua Lipa and Oscar-winner Helen Mirren. 

Gerwig directed Barbie from a screenplay by Gerwig & Oscar nominee Noah Baumbach, based on Barbie by Mattel.