Sylvester Stallone explained why Ryan Gosling would be his choice to star as John Rambo in the future.
The actor, in an appearance on “The Tonight Show” Friday, revealed to host Jimmy Fallon that he met Gosling at a dinner where the “Barbie” actor spoke about his attachment to the action movie character.
“He goes, ‘I was fascinated by Rambo and I used to go to school dressed as Rambo, and people would chase me away and I still didn’t stop,’” Stallone said, adding that Gosling “just kept saying that he had a lot of affiliation with Rambo.”
“And I thought, you know, this is interesting. If I ever pass the baton, I’ll pass it on to him because he loves the character,” Stallone continued.
Fallon went on to ask if Gosling could be the next Rambo.
“I would say yes but I don’t know if anyone would say, ‘Hey, he’s too good-looking to be Rambo,’” Stallone said.
The actor’s comments arrive years after he picked Gosling to portray the character during an interview with Yahoo! Movies in a press run for “Creed.”
Gosling has previously talked about seeing “First Blood,” the movie where Stallone made his debut as Rambo, as a child, telling Jay Leno back in 2011 that the movie “put a spell on” him and he thought he was Rambo.
“I even thought my face felt like Sylvester Stallone’s and I put a bunch of steak knives in my Fisher-Price Houdini kit. I took it to school the next day and I threw them at all the kids at recess,” said Gosling, who added that he didn’t hit anyone but was suspended over the matter.
Gosling, who is nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Ken in “Barbie,” recently told Variety that the character’s mink coat look in the film stems from the love that he and director Greta Gerwig have for ’80s-era Stallone.
“We found out that Stallone wore a lot of minks,” he said. “As long as Ken was wearing it, he was the Ken with the mink — and that separated him from the other Kens.”
