Saoirse Ronan Says Ryan Gosling's Firing from The Lovely Bones Was 'Sad' but 'It's Not Personal'

Saoirse Ronan is looking back on Ryan Gosling exiting The Lovely Bones and being replaced by Mark Wahlberg.

The Outrun actress, 30, said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast that while it was "sad" to see Gosling, now 43, leave the project, she understood the decision.

Gosling was originally cast in 2007 to play Jack, the father of Susie Salmon (Ronan) who becomes obsessed with solving his teenaged daughter's murder case. Gosling left due to "creative differences," and Wahlberg took over the part in the film, which was directed by Peter Jackson.

"I just loved Ryan. And his dog, George," said Ronan, who recalled that they'd done some pre-production collaborating on the project but didn't film scenes together before Gosling was cut.

"I was just sad that he wasn't gonna be around. But I think the reasons why they parted were totally valid," the Oscar-nominated actress continued. "And I have spoken to both now, and I complete — it happens, you know what I mean? It's not personal, necessarily; it's just sometimes you're not on the same page."

"And it meant that, you know, 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," she added. (Wahlberg, 53, has four children with wife Rhea Durham.)

Ronan eventually reunited with Gosling to star in the 2014 film Lost River, which Gosling wrote and directed. "It was great then to work with him later," Ronan said on the podcast. "He's just, like, the same. He doesn't change."

Gosling's partner Eva Mendes, with whom he now shares two daughters, also starred in Lost River. The pair had previously met while filming 2012's The Place Beyond the Pines.

The Barbie actor previously revealed he gained 60 lbs. to play the grieving father in Lovely Bones, a creative choice that ultimately led to him being fired.

"We had a different idea of how the character should look. I really believed he should be 210 pounds,” Gosling told The Hollywood Reporter back in 2010 of not aligning with Jackson, 62, on the character.

“We didn’t talk very much during the pre-production process, which was the problem. 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," Gosling added. "Then I was fat and unemployed."

Jackson’s wife and producing partner Fran Walsh told THR back in 2009 about Gosling feeling miscast as a parent in Lovely Bones.

“Ryan came to us two or three times and said, ‘I’m not the right person for this role. I’m too young.' And we said, ‘No, no, no. We can age you up. We can thin your hair.’ We were very keen," Walsh recalled at the time. "It wasn’t until we were in pre-production and we had the cast there that it became increasingly clear: He was so uncomfortable moving forward, and we began to feel he was not right."

She added, "It was our blindness, the desire to make it work no matter what."

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The Lovely Bones, based on a novel by Alice Sebold, also starred Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon and Michael Imperioli, plus Stanley Tucci in a role that earned him an Oscar nomination.

Back in 2009 while promoting the movie, Wahlberg told PEOPLE how the emotional role impacted him personally.

"I would … just grab my daughter and hold her, and I would start crying," he said. “She’d be like, ‘Daddy, what’s wrong?’ She just wanted to play. And I would try to talk to her about taking care of herself and not talking to strangers. She was 3 at the time. But, thankfully, I had another movie to go to that helped me get out of that."