Why Jackson says chemistry mattered
Jackson, best known for directing The Lord of the Rings films and King Kong, later spoke more directly about Gosling while emphasizing that the issue was not a lack of talent.
“Ryan is a fantastic actor, as we know,” Jackson said.
His explanation centered on the difficult, sometimes imprecise chemistry of filmmaking, including how a performer fits with a cast, a story, and the tone a director is trying to build.
“Films are a chemistry both on camera and behind the camera,” he said. “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.”
Jackson continued, “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.”
That answer shifts the focus away from a single physical transformation and toward a broader casting call that did not land the way the filmmakers expected.
What Ryan Gosling previously said
Gosling, now 45, has spoken before about why he believed the part got away from him. In a 2010 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the Barbie actor said he and Jackson had different ideas about how Jack Salmon should appear on screen.
“We had a different idea of how the character should look,” Gosling said at the time. “I really believed he should be 210 pounds.”
To get there, he said, he gained weight for the role by drinking melted pints of Häagen-Dazs ice cream. It was a very committed approach to character work, and possibly a difficult one to explain in a production meeting.
But Gosling also suggested the weight gain was only part of a larger communication problem during preproduction.
“We didn’t talk very much during the preproduction process, which was the problem,” he said. “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.”
Why the clarification matters now
The story has lingered because it fits a familiar entertainment narrative: an actor makes a dramatic choice, the production disagrees, and a high-profile role changes hands. Jackson’s new comments complicate that version by placing the burden on the filmmakers rather than on Gosling’s preparation.
For audiences, the clarification is also a reminder of how many decisions sit behind a finished film, especially one built around grief, family, and a delicate emotional tone. A casting change can look blunt from the outside. Inside the production, it may be the result of many small signals that a role is not connecting as intended.
In this case, Jackson is not disputing that the recasting happened. He is disputing the idea that Gosling personally did something wrong. His answer is cleaner than the old rumor and probably kinder, which is not always how old Hollywood stories age.
