Ryan Gosling was a guest on this week’s episode of Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast. Ryan doesn’t usually do the podcast circuit, so it was nice to see him in a different type of interview setting. They talked about his new film, Project Hail Mary (it’s a little bit spoiler), his upcoming Star Wars movie, and his experience performing “I’m Just Ken” at the 2024 Oscars. Ryan also revealed that when he was a young teenager, he was a huge Days of Our Lives fan. He completely geeked out about it, too. Ryan was such a big fan that he used to pretend that he was sick so he could stay home from school to watch it.
During his conversation with host Josh Horowitz, Gosling shared that as an adolescent, “TV was my best friend. All the channels were my friends … I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up; I had TV.”
The actor continued, “I used to pretend to be sick so I could stay home and watch Regis and Kelly. I loved Regis and Kelly and I loved Days of Our Lives.” Horowitz replied, “I can’t support you there, but okay.” “Really?” challenged Gosling, and Horowitz allowed, “I just never got into it. Maybe it was great.”
Gosling made it clear that he had genuine respect for the genre of daytime drama and for its talented performers. “Days of Our Lives — well, just soap opera actors in general, they do not get the love they deserve,” he declared, noting how much material cast members had to “memorize the night before, like 10 pages of dialogue, they get one take, and it’s impossible scenarios.”
To illustrate his point, Gosling brought up the infamous 1994-95 DAYS storyline that saw Marlena possessed by the devil. “Like when Marlena, Deidre Hall, right, Deidre Hall gets possessed,” Gosling marveled. “This is right around when X Files was a big deal, right? Suddenly everything got supernatural. She was possessed by the devil. So she, Deidre Hall, has to suddenly — after playing, you know, a normal person, then she’s gotta have this [sudden shift in her character]. Or it’s like somebody’s dead and now they’re back [or] they’re a different actor and they come out of the shower, you know — that was Bo, by the way, [with] Bo and Hope, he came out as a new Bo,” the Oscar-nominated actor added, referencing to the Bo switcheroo that took place between Robert Kelker-Kelly and Peter Reckell in 1995, when original Bo Reckell replaced his own successor, Kelker-Kelly.
“I have to say, it was an incredible acting class,” professed Gosling. “I loved it. What’s amazing is, I remember that, thinking like, ‘God, Deidre Hall is a great actress because she’s having to act possessed right now! That just seems like a lot to ask of her.’”
Gosling, who was 14 when Marlena’s possession tale began, shared that he stopped watching the show around the time of that storyline, but he caught some scenes again back when the devil returned to Salem in 2021. “And just recently, [DAYS] was on TV and she’s possessed again!” Horowitz asked, “Has she been possessed for 30 years?” “No,” Gosling clarified. “I think it’s just like, somehow, my life keeps passing, like keeps crossing the path with when Deidre Hall is possessed!”
I freaking love that Ryan Gosling used to be such a big Days of Our Lives fan that’d skip school to watch it. Someone get that man a cameo! I can’t believe that he still remembers so many details about Marlena’s possession storyline. Even though I never really got into Days, I used to subscribe to Soap Opera Digest and would read about what was going on with all of the different soaps. I remember Marlena’s possession storyline! I was more of an ABC soaps kinda gal and watched One Life to Live, General Hospital, and Port Charles. After they switched to the telenovella-type story arcs, Port Charles also had supernatural storylines.
It’s also cool that Ryan namechecked Deidre Hall’s performance for teaching him something about acting. He’s right that soap opera actors don’t get enough credit. People tend to brush them off because of the genre, but a soap opera set is such a fast-paced environment where they generally film an episode per day. Those actors really do work their butts off to learn their lines. It’s awesome that Ryan recognized it and gave them so much praise.
Here’s the podcast where Ryan was gushing about Days. The part where he talks about
“I’m Just Ken” is at 37:28. He tells a good story about Slash!
Photos credit: Michael Williams/Avalon, Unicode Images/Avalon, Justin Ng/Avalon, Janet Mayer/INSTARimages.com, Getty Images
Ryan and I are the same age and I relate to this SO much. TV was my friend growing up as well and I watched ALL of the soap operas. My personal favorite was General Hospital but Days of Our Lives was a close second. And he’s right – soap actors don’t get the props they deserve. I don’t think a lot of people realize how much work goes into those shows and they are literally shooting pages of dialogues (that they HAVE TO MEMORIZE THE DAY OF!) and shoot for hours on end. Most shoots for film and TV don’t shoot like soaps do. Film shoots are a lot of standing around and then they shoot for a few hours and the day is done. Soaps (and films) are one of the things that got me into pursuing acting and doing theater . The closest thing to soap acting is theater!
Same! Guiding Light was my show, but all my high school friends were into Days, so I adopted that one too. I recorded them both every day and watched them right after school. (My mom didn’t know because she didn’t know how the VCR worked and wasn’t home in the afternoons.).
It’s hilarious he remembers so many details 😂. But then again, I remember way more of the storylines for the Passions soap that was on when I was in college than I do of most of my class work 😂.
Passions was a telenovela/soap opera mash up and fully insane, there was a witch and her son who was a ventriloquist doll she brought to life (played by a young short person), and that was one of the normal story lines. It wasn’t on for very long, it only ran a couple of seasons, but the Go Fug Yourself girls used to reference it all the time when they first started out and I loved it.
I watched Barbie for the first time on a plane last week, and I get the hype, I didn’t think I would enjoy it as much as I did. And a lot of it had to do with the Kenergy of Goslin and Sam Liu really selling it (and Michael Cera as Alan) as the comic relief.
omg I had forgotten all about Passions! That show was insane.
I started watching DOOL right after that and oh man that show was insane. I watched through the whole Kristen storyline, where she had the “ugly” British lookalike and then there was another one. And then the whole Sami thing with Austin when Eric figured out what was going on with Sami faking being nice because “I can sense it.” And then to find out she was lying about Brady’s parentage!! I think it was Brady. Anyway I started losing interest when they kept skipping time. One day Belle is getting swooped off to the hospital bc she ate poison candy as a child and the next week she’s 17 and in HS and being asked to do drugs.
I also HATED that really skinny girl who tried to get something started with Eric. Sami discovered her at the cafe. oh lordy what was her name.
Anyway. I feel ya Ryan.
Also, Eric was played by Jensen Ackles so that was my introduction to him at that time, lol.
Okay, this is very cute. Watching the cbs soaps with my grandma during the summers was a big thing. Bc the room with the tv was the only one that had ac. Later I got into GH.
When I was small, my grandmother had us on a steady diet of NBC soaps. I’m actually named after a character from Another World. When we got older, we went straight ABC. I saw the debut episodes of AMC, Ryan’s Hope, Texas, Y&R and B&B. In the late 80’s into the 90’s , AMC had a death grip on soaps. Luke and Laura, the arrival of the Buchannons on OLTL. I LOVED IT ALL. Michael B. Jordan gave the same tribute to soaps during his tour for Sinners. He said it was an education and he learned from Darnell Williams, Walt Wiley and Susan Lucci. Susan Lucci and Walt Wiley were his parents on AMC and they’re both very proud of him. They posted after Oscar night. Soaps were where you’d learn.
I remember when I was in college all of the cute or athletic guys would disappear at the time AMC was on. Years later I learned that they all had the hots for Susan Lucci and they were glued to TVs somewhere watching for Erika Kane.
Same-sies, Ry, Ry! 🖐🏼
Such a fun interview. Made me laugh to read all the details he remembers and he’s very right to give them credit for their hard work.