'SNL': Ryan Gosling sings Taylor Swift to say goodbye to Ken, Kate McKinnon returns
A serious case of the giggles swept through Studio 8H as Ryan Gosling returned to "Saturday Night Live."
The "Barbie" star hosted "SNL" for a third time this weekend in an episode filled with cameos, sequels to popular sketches, and cast members 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 deep," while admitting it's difficult to let go of his "Barbie" character.
"For processing 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 rollerblades in that big pink house, but I still got that fur coat and I'll wear it right now," Gosling sang at a piano, going on to declare, "I was just Ken, and now I'm just Ryan."
Gosling's "The Fall Guy" co-star Emily Blunt soon joined him on stage to chastise him for still obsessing over Ken before acknowledging she also misses her character, Kitty, from "Oppenheimer" − which Gosling described as an "inferior movie" to "Barbie" in a continuation of their Oscar roast. In a duet, Blunt and Gosling both sang about their "Barbenheimer summer" and wished their characters farewell as dancers in "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" costumes took to the stage.
But Gosling still might not be quite ready to let go. The monologue concluded with the actor blowing out a Ken candle, only for it to light back up as 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
In the cold open, former "SNL" cast member Kate McKinnon brought back her classic "Close Encounter" sketch, playing Colleen, a woman who describes being abducted by aliens.
Gosling, playing Todd, a fellow abductee, began cracking up after explaining that the aliens are "smooth down there" and mobbed him because they saw he was "packing a troll nose." The actor could also be seen smiling, and trying to hide his laughing under his cap, as McKinnon demonstrated what the aliens did to him.
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Gosling and other cast members struggled to contain their laughter in virtually every other sketch throughout the show, including when he and Mikey Day played two people in the audience of a town hall who look suspiciously like Beavis and Butt-Head. Heidi Gardner, starring as the town hall moderator, burst out laughing both times she turned around to see Gosling and Day; the second time, she continued laughing into her next line. Gosling laughed, too, when he and Day were seated together, and the giggles spread to Chloe Fineman, who played an audience member asking a question.
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Other moments of character-breaking came in sketches where Gosling starred as a man having second thoughts about his engagement, as well as another where he and Bowen Yang played doctors defensively insisting a patient's death wasn't their fault.
Ryan Gosling stars in 'SNL' sequel to his 'Avatar' Papyrus sketch
Practically the only portions of this week's show without anyone breaking character were the pre-taped sketches, including an online exclusive one that saw Gosling reprise one of his most memorable "SNL" characters.
In a follow-up to his 2017 sketch "Papyrus," which was teased at the end of the live show and released online, 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 the logo was tweaked for "Avatar: The Way of Water," only to become disturbed again after concluding the new version is simply a bold version of the old one. After he infiltrates a Disney graphic designers 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 was created for the sequels. "When we realized that the movie was going to expand into a franchise and we'd have other IPs, we went out and created our own font that we're now using, and we call it Toruk, and it's available for people to use," he said.