Sylvester Stallone Says He’d Make Ryan Gosling the Next ‘Rambo’ | Video

The “Rocky” star also shared footage of Carl Weathers training with him

Sylvester Stallone appeared on Friday’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” where he chatted about his unexpected relationship with the movie “Barbie,” Ryan Gosling’s unexpected relationship with the movie “Rambo” and Stallone’s late friend and “Rocky” costar/opponent Carl Weathers. As he told Fallon, if Stallone ever decided to “pass the baton” to another actor to play Rambo, Gosling would be the one.

Stallone continued, “I would say yes, but I don’t know if anyone would say, ‘Hey, he’s too good-looking to be Rambo!’”

The idea of a Gosling-portrayed Rambo would likely delight the “Barbie” star himself. At the beginning of the interview, Fallon asked Stallone about Stallone’s own surprising link to the summer’s biggest hit.

“You have a connection with the Oscar-nominated film, so…” Fallon began, before Stallone joked, “Well, everyone used to call me ‘Barbie,’ so…” before Fallon said, “No, no, no, that’s not the connection, no.”

“No, actually,” Stallone continued, “the director said, ‘Do you want to be in the film?’ I said, ‘I’d love to be in the film,’ but then I was stuck on ‘Tulsa King’ so I couldn’t be on. And then they took, kind of, my image, and with Ryan, and it was, like, amazing. So, that’s the story.”

As the audience laughed, Fallon said, “This is true!” Stallone continued, “They put him in a fur coat—” and Fallon held up a photo from the movie and said, “In his training scene, there’s posters of you all over ‘Barbie,’ all over the walls, there’s all you. And then — and then — the Ken coat.”

Fallon held up a side-by-side comparison of Gosling in his white Ken coat and an older photo of Stallone in his own white fur coat. “I used to wear a Ken coat,” Stallone said with his hands in the air. “For real.”

“How do you— wow!” Fallon exclaimed. “That is fantastic.”

The host then moved the conversation to “Rambo.” Fallon asked Stallone who he would choose to play the character besides himself. Funnily enough… Gosling might fit the bill.

“I’ll tell you why,” Stallone began, “I met him at a dinner, and obviously… we’re opposites.”

“He’s good-looking, I’m not. That’s how it works,” Stallone continued. “No, seriously. Can you imagine me as Ken?” He then growled and added, “That doesn’t work at all.”

“So, but, he goes, ‘I was fascinated by Rambo, and I used to go to school dressed as Rambo, and people would chase me away, but I still didn’t stop. And, I, you know, vacation as Rambo.’ He just kept saying he had a lot of affiliation with Rambo,” Stallone said.

“And I thought, you know, this is interesting. If I ever pass the baton, I’ll pass it to him,” he concluded.

Later in the interview, Stallone and Fallon looked back and remembered the actor’s friend and “Rocky” costar, Carl Weathers, who died on Feb. 2. Stallone said news of his death was “shocking,” adding, “He was magnificent … ‘Rocky’ was a compilation of really great actors almost born to play those parts.”

“And I couldn’t fill that spot because it required incredible athleticism, brains, spirit, talent, speed. He had it all. I mean, he had it all,” Stallone added. “But the best thing is that the first day he came in to read, actually it was at night, and we were at wit’s end because we couldn’t find anyone.”

“They had taken him off a Piper Cub [plane] going to Oakland because he lived in Oakland, and he was at that time still playing for the Oakland Raiders as a linebacker,” the actor said. “So you know he’s fit. He comes in, he goes, ‘Oh God, this better be good’ — like, he was in a bad mood. And I’m going, ‘Perfect, check that. Bad mood.’ I like it!

“Big voice, he’s coming at me. Then, we read, and he’s going, ‘Oh my God, if you could get me a real actor, I could perform! That loser, that’s Rocky,’” Stallone shared. “And then I stood up and he literally took his shirt off and I went, ‘Oh my God, am I in trouble?’ Because I kind of looked like Pooh Bear at the time. I did, and he looked like Adonis.”

“And he banged about three shots off my forehead, and I went, ‘Hired,’” Stallone concluded

Watch the entire interview with Stallone in the video above.

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