Ryan Gosling has spoken about the La La Land moment that “haunts” him to this day.
Before Ken in last year’s Barbie, the musical also garnered the actor an Oscar nomination (his second, following Half Nelson in 2007). Despite all of its success, there’s one part of it he wishes he could go back and change.
“There’s a moment that haunts me where we’re dancing, Emma [Stone] and I. I didn’t know this would become the poster for the movie,” he told the Wall Street Journal magazine.
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“We were supposed to have our hands up, and I thought it’d be cool to put my hand like [flat]. Even though everyone told me it wasn’t cool, I was sure that [a flat hand] was cooler than [pointing up]. Now when I look at it and I have to see it all the time, you know what would have been cooler than this? That.
“It just 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁ed the energy that way. It was sort of like all leading to what? It’s just a lazy… I call it ‘La La Hand.'”
When told that kind of pose is referred to by professional dancers as ‘hamburger hands’, he said that he hadn’t heard of the phrase before, but said that it fit. Referencing his own dance experience, he said: “I thought it would help in La La Land. Then, of course, Hamburger Hands Gosling over here… It didn’t help me at all in the end.”
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