Saoirse Ronan recently appeared on the Happy Sad Confused podcast and recalled the dramatic casting change that occurred during the production of Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones. The director had originally cast Ryan Gosling to play protagonist Ronan’s father, but Jackson disagreed with Gosling’s decision to gain 60 pounds for the role, and Mark Wahlberg was cast a few days before filming. was replaced by
Although Jackson never started filming The Lovely Bones with Gosling, Ronan revealed that the cast was already “preparing to some extent” by the time Gosling was fired. Ronan had developed a bond with Gosling, but was saddened to have met him earlier.
“I think I just loved Ryan and his dog George, and I was just sad that he wasn’t around,” Ronan said. “But I think the reason they broke up was completely legitimate, and I’ve talked to both[Gosling and Jackson]now, and it happened. You know what I mean? It’s not necessarily personal. Sometimes I feel like we’re not on the same page.”
“Mark was able to step in. He was a father,” Ronan added. “He was, I don’t know, the father of three kids? Maybe he had that experience, but Ryan felt like he didn’t. Ryan was about 27 years old. I was young.”
A few years later, Ronan had the opportunity to work with Gosling when he cast her in the lead role in his directorial debut, Lost River.
A year after The Lovely Bones was released in theaters, Gosling gave an interview to THR in which he revealed that his weight gain was the reason for his firing. The actor explained: “We had different ideas about what the character should look like. I really believed he should weigh 210 pounds. We didn’t talk much about it in pre-production. But that was the problem.”
“It was a huge movie and there were a lot of things to deal with, and he couldn’t deal with the actors individually,” Gosling added. “I just showed up on set and I was doing it all wrong. And then I was fat and unemployed.”
Watch Ronan’s full interview on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast in the video below.
