Peter Jackson has finally addressed the infamous casting controversy surrounding Ryan Gosling's abrupt dismissal from the 2009 film The Lovely Bones, more than a decade and a half after the incident. The Oscar-winning director, known for his work on The Lord of the Rings trilogy, spoke candidly about the situation during an interview at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, taking a significant portion of the blame upon himself.
The Backstory of a High-Profile Firing
Gosling, who was originally cast to play Jack Salmon, the father of Saoirse Ronan's protagonist Susie, was replaced by Mark Wahlberg just days before filming commenced. The actor had famously gained 60 pounds for the role, a decision Jackson disagreed with. In a 2010 interview, Gosling revealed that communication breakdowns during preproduction led to his dismissal. "We didn't talk very much during the preproduction process, which was the problem," Gosling explained. "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. Then I was fat and unemployed."
Jackson's Perspective at Cannes
During the Cannes interview, Jackson refrained from discussing specific actors but acknowledged that recasting decisions are ultimately the director's responsibility. "Anytime we recast an actor, it's actually our fault because we didn't get the casting right and we cast the wrong person for a role. It's not because they did anything wrong," Jackson stated, as reported by Entertainment Weekly. He emphasized that the decision stems from a misalignment in creative vision rather than actor error. "You just got to realise that what you were imagining isn't really quite happening, which means that we got it wrong and so we take full responsibility."
Jackson praised Gosling as a "fantastic actor, as we know," and elaborated on the complex chemistry involved in filmmaking. "Films are a chemistry both on camera and behind the camera. 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. 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."
Ronan's Reflection on the Incident
Saoirse Ronan, who played Susie Salmon in the film, also weighed in on the firing during a 2024 appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. She described the split as "valid" but "sad," noting that she and Gosling had developed a rapport before his departure. "But I think the reasons why they parted were totally valid, and I've spoken to both [Gosling and Jackson] now and it happens. It's not personal, necessarily. It's like sometimes you're just not on the same page," Ronan said. She added that Wahlberg, who had children at the time, brought a paternal quality to the role that Gosling, then 27, might not have been able to convey. "Mark was able to step in, and he was a father. He was a father to, like, I don't know, three kids? He probably had an experience of that that Ryan felt he didn't. Ryan was like 27. He was young." Interestingly, Ronan and Gosling later collaborated when he cast her in his directorial debut, Lost River.
The Lovely Bones, an adaptation of Alice Sebold's 2002 novel, follows 14-year-old Susie Salmon, who is raped and murdered by her neighbor (Stanley Tucci) in 1973. From heaven, she watches her family investigate her death and cope with their grief. The film received mixed reviews but earned Tucci an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
