As celebrity firings go, the story of how Ryan Gosling lost his role in Lovely Bones is brutal.
Peter Jackson’s 2009 drama went through a dramatic switch-up when Gosling, who had been cast to play the father of Saoirse Ronan’s protagonist, was replaced by Mark Wahlberg just days before filming.
Jackson made the change because he disagreed with the actor’s decision to gain 60 pounds for the part, Gosling revealed in a 2010 interview. “We didn’t talk very much during the preproduction process, which was the problem,” said the Notebook star.
“It was a huge movie, and there’s so many things to deal with, and he couldn’t deal with the actors individually. I just showed up on set, and I had gotten it wrong. Then I was fat and unemployed.”
Decades later, Jackson vaguely shared his side of the story during an interview at Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday (13 March), stating that more of the blame lay with himself for getting the casting wrong in the first place.
“I won’t talk about any particular examples of actors because it’s a personal, private thing and it’s not their fault,” said The Lord of the Rings director, as reported by Entertainment Weekly.
“Anytime we recast an actor, it’s actually our fault because we didn’t get the casting right and we cast the wrong person for a role. It’s not because they did anything wrong.
“So, I’m not going to talk about individuals, but you just got to realise that what you were imagining isn’t really quite happening, which means that we got it wrong and so we take full responsibility.”
Speaking specifically about Gosling, Jackson called him a “fantastic actor, as we know”.
“Films are a chemistry both on camera and behind the camera,” he continued. “They’re chemistry in terms of what the actor conveys to the audience of the film. It’s just a complicated sort of amalgam of communication of how somebody gels into a group of people, into a story, into a character.
“It’s complicated and usually you try very hard when you’re planning the film, casting it, trying to get that gel kind of right, but occasionally we make our own mistakes.”
An adaptation of Alice Sebold’s 2002 novel of the same name, Lovely Bones starred Ronan as 14-year-old Susie Salmon, who is raped and murdered by her neighbour (played by Stanley Tucci) in 1973.
In a supernatural twist, Susie watches her family from heaven as they investigate her death and struggle with their grief.
During an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast in 2024, Ronan called Gosling’s firing from the film was “valid” but “sad” given she and him had gotten to know one another before his exit.
“But I think the reasons why they parted were totally valid, and I’ve spoken to both [Gosling and Jackson] now and it happens,” she said. “Do you know what I mean? It’s not personal, necessarily. It’s like sometimes you’re just not on the same page.”
“Mark was able to step in, and he was a father,” Ronan added. “He was a father to, like, I don’t know, three kids? He probably had an experience of that that Ryan felt he didn’t. Ryan was like 27. He was young.”
Ronan and Gosling worked together a few years later when he cast the Irish actor in his directorial debut Lost River.
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