Ncuti Gatwa jokes he ‘fell over’ looking at Ryan Gosling on Barbie set: ‘I just drowned in his eyes’

‘Doctor Who’ star played an alternative Ken in Greta Gerwig’s box office smash

Ncuti Gatwa has joked that he “drowned in Ryan Gosling’s eyes” while filming Barbie.

The Rwandan-Scottish actor appeared as one of the many Kens in Greta Gerwig’s box-office smash. Gosling played the main Ken, a love interest to Margot Robbie’s Stereotypical Barbie.

The cast bonded on set, with Gosling wearing a t-shirt displaying fan art of Gatwa as the next Doctor after his role in Doctor Who was announced in the middle of filming last summer.

Speaking in a new interview ahead of his appearance at the Elle Style Awards, where Gatwa has been given the Modern Pioneer Award, Gatwa shared his awe at meeting Gosling for the first time.

“I was so nervous I hardly spoke for the first month [on set],” he told Elle.

“There was a time when I was talking to Greta and I turned around and Ryan Gosling was looking at me, and his eyes were so blue that I just... fell over. I just drowned in his eyes.”

Gatwa, 30, went on to describe working on Barbie as ‘the most kind, empathetic set I’ve ever been on”.

“We played So Solid Crew and all these old-school garage tunes, then we got to Magic Mike and all screamed our faces off at the incredible dancers,” he recalled. “Then we all went to [London nightclub] The Box... The group chat the next day was lit.”

From L-R: Scott Evans, Ncuti Gatwa and Ryan Gosling on the set of ‘Barbie' (Atlantic Records/Warner Bros/YouTube)

Since its release on 21 July, Barbie has continued to go from strength to strength in the box office.

On Tuesday (29 August), the comedy-drama – which has made more than $1.3bn in the global box office – overtook 2011’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 to become Warner Bros’s highest grossing global release in the company’s 100-year history.

The film’s success comes amid an admission from Michael Cera, who was one of the Barbie’s breakout stars, that his manager nearly lost him his “last-minute” role in the film.

Cera, who plays one-off doll Allan, recalled: “My manager got a call checking on my availability for it, and he called me and he said, ‘I got a call about this movie, it’s the Barbie movie, Greta Gerwig’s directing it, and it’s filming in London for four months or something. So I told them you probably wouldn’t want to do it because you probably don’t want to go to London.’

“I was like, ‘What?! What do you mean? Call them back! I mean, he didn’t blow it or anything, but he’s like, ‘I managed their expectations that you might not want to do it.’ And I was like, ‘How could I not do it? I need to do it.’”

Barbie is in cinemas now.