Peter Jackson defends Ryan Gosling after axing him from ‘The Lovely Bones’: “We got it wrong”
Peter Jackson has defended Ryan Gosling after axing him from the cast of the 2009 film The Lovely Bones, admitting, “We got it wrong”.
Gosling was famously cut from the drama, in which he was set to play Saoirse Ronan’s father, just days before filming was set to commence, and was replaced by Mark Wahlberg.
The actor had gained 60 pounds to take on the part, which director Jackson disagreed with and ultimately axed him from the film because of it.
Some 17 years later, however, the filmmaker was asked about the incident during an appearance at the Cannes Film Festival last week, and admitted that the blame for the issue did not fall to Gosling.
Although reluctant to speak about the Project Hail Mary star specifically, Jackson said (per Entertainment Weekly): “I won’t talk about any particular examples of actors because it’s a personal, private thing and it’s not their fault.”
Despite this, he called Gosling “a fantastic actor, as we know,” and added, “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.”
Jackson then said it was important as a director “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.”
For his own part, Gosling previously said in a 2010 interview that he attributed his axing from The Lovely Bones to a lack of communication before filming took place.
It seemed that the La La Land star didn’t hold any bad blood with Jackson over the incident, though, as he jokingly admitted: “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.”
Separately, during his appearance at Cannes, Jackson said AI is set to “destroy the world” but doesn’t mind it being used in films, as he sees it similarly to “special effects”.
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