Ryan Gosling has said in the past that Stallone’s ‘Rambo: First Blood’ “put a spell on me” as a child

Sylvester Stallone may be primed to pass one of his iconic roles down to Ryan Gosling.

As Stallone, 77, appeared on The Tonight Show last Friday, he and host Jimmy Fallon discussed how Gosling’s Barbie character Ken drew significant inspiration from Stallone himself.

The conversation led Stallone to mention that Gosling, 43, told him he is a major fan of the Rambo movies, which star Stallone as a Vietnam War veteran who struggles with civilian life and eventually engages in additional military missions.

“I met him at a dinner and obviously we’re opposites. He’s good-looking — I’m not. That’s how it works,” Stallone said of Gosling. “Seriously, can you imagine me as Ken? That doesn’t work at all.”

“But 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,'” the actor said.

“He just kept saying that he had a lot of affiliation with Rambo, and I thought, this is interesting. If I ever pass the baton, I’ll pass it on to him because he loves the character.”

Stallone has starred in five Rambo movies; the series began with 1982’s First Blood. The most recent sequel, Rambo: Last Blood, was released in 2019.

TriStar Pictures/Everett Collection Sylvester Stallone in ‘Rambo’
“I would say yes, but I don’t know if anyone would say hey, he’s too good-looking to be Rambo,” Stallone added when Fallon asked whether the idea could come to fruition.

The Rambo series has not yet received a follow-up to Last Blood, which made $91 million at the worldwide box office and received negative reviews from critics.

Stallone suggested that multiple ideas for a Rambo streaming series were kicked around, including a prequel and a “modern-day story where I pass the torch,” during a November 2022 interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

Gosling himself shared tales of his childhood interest in Rambo in a 2011 interview with then-Tonight Show host Jay Leno, in which he said he was once suspended from school for taking his love for the movie too far.

“So when I was a kid I saw Rambo: First Blood and then the movie put a spell on me and I thought I was Rambo,” Gosling recalled. “I even thought my face felt like Sylvester Stallone’s.”

“I put a bunch of steak knives in my Fischer Price kit and I took it to school the next day and I threw them at all the kids at recess,” he said. “I got suspended and I didn’t hit anybody, and I’m sorry. I don’t think it’s cool.”