Ryan Gosling Steals a Tag Heuer Watch in Anniversary Film
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LONDON — “Gosling took the watch again.”
“Saturday Night Live” alum Vanessa Bayer’s on-screen outrage as Ryan Gosling hightailed it with a Tag Heuer Carrera Chronograph on his wrist was met with hilarity by the audience assembled Thursday at Outernet London for the world premiere of “The Chase for Carrera,” an action-comedy short commemorating the 60th anniversary of the timepiece.
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In the five-minute movie directed by Nash Edgerton, Gosling plays the role of an action star filming a watch commercial who is reluctant to hand the clip’s real hero — the Tag Heuer Carrera Chronograph — back to “prop master Tammy,” played by Bayer.
Hijinks ensue, with the comedic duo, who first worked together in 2015 on SNL, racing each other in anything from a vintage Porsche to electric buggies.
Classic cinematographic Easter eggs and motor racing references were aplenty, including tumbleweeds from cowboy flicks, 1930s cops and gangster films, showbiz archetypes and a character nodding to British-born Mexican actress Jacqueline Evans de López, who was the first woman to compete in the Panamericana race that inspired the original Carrera watch.
The plot was “90 percent improvised,” revealed the Swiss watchmaker’s chief executive officer Frédéric Arnault, who called the result a true collaboration between Tag Heuer and Gosling.
“From the start, the project [with Gosling] was to go further in an ambassador relationship and integrate [his] main skill in the narrative,” he said. “You don’t work with the best actor in Hollywood to just use his image — or shoot a banal commercial.”
Earlier in the day, Gosling said one thing he’d loved in his experience with Tag Heuer was that they’d found a way to blend his filmography, current projects, and a campaign. Filming a skit instead of a commercial “speaks to the versatility of the brand that they were willing to just have this become an action comedy piece,” he continued.
The campaign, filmed over the course of a weekend in Sydney, owed its plot to “The Fall Guy,” an upcoming action flick directed by David Leitch and starring Gosling and Emily Blunt in an adaptation from the ‘80s TV series.
“Because David Leitch and I made a movie about making a movie, it seemed to make sense to have a commercial about making a commercial,” he explained. “I waited a long time to partner with a brand but something like this [was] the right choice.”
Such projects — or even the Watches and Wonders fair — are ways to keep the watch industry relevant when time is now on display via a multitude of devices, according to Tag Heuer chief marketing director George Ciz. To spark interest in a new generation, “we need to tell those stories,” he said.
In any case, the heist was giving ideas to the audience, which included Geri Horner, Jacob Elordi, Patrick Dempsey and Madelyn Cline.
Newly named brand ambassador Alexandra Daddario, whose appointment was revealed by Arnault during the evening, even has her strategy ready.
With the new Carrera chronograph so highly coveted, the “White Lotus” star felt brute strength would not be the way to go. “I’d have to be sneaky about it [so] I definitely have to use a lot of manipulation,” she said. “Maybe I’ll cry.”
With a repertoire of roles that have gone from the hit HBO comedy-drama and crime anthology series “True Detective” to the action-packed teen blockbuster “Percy Jackson” and the 2017 reboot of “Baywatch,” she’s certainly got the range.
Case in point: her turn as clickbait-chasing journalist Rachel Patton in the “White Lotus” brought her a new generation of fans — in their 60s. “I don’t think anyone over the age of 60 had seen anything I had done so it’s this lovely, new experience,” she said.
Daddario’s interest in timekeepers sparked with a family watch, passed down to her mother by a great-uncle, a World War II veteran. An item, bearing the mark of time and the experiences of its wearer, “has a history and you have a sense of pride at handing down, with the sense of it [being] a very important, beautiful memento,” she said.
Next up for her is production on the second season of “Mayfair Witches,” and a role in Tommy Dorfman’s directorial debut, where she will play a mother dealing with family issues.
As much as long-time ambassador Dempsey loves watches and Porsche cars, it’s one of the vintage Ferrari cars loaned by the luxury automobile manufacturer’s museum for his role as Italian race driver Piero Taruffi in a biopic about Enzo Ferrari slated to come out this year that he’d have gone for in a heist.
“But I’d never have gotten away with it,” said the actor, a race driver himself.
Other notable attendees at the event included Jacob Elordi, Simone Ashley, Milly Alcock, Kit Connor, Lennon Gallagher, Mia Regan, Louis Partridge, Amita Suman, Poppy Delevingne and Leonie Hanne.
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