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SALT LAKE CITY — The tale this week of Ryan Gosling saving a woman in New York City from an oncoming taxi has spread like wildfire — but the woman claims it was not that big of a deal.
British journalist Laurie Penny posted on Twitter that she "literally, LITERALLY just got saved from a car by Ryan Gosling. Literally. That actually just happened."
Penny said she was crossing 6th Avenue and not looking the right way because "I am from London," and that Gosling "grabbed (her) away from a taxi." She said his identity was confirmed by a girl near her.
"He did not say 'hey, girl.' He said 'hey, watch out!,'" she tweeted, apparently referencing a popular Internet meme that features a picture of Gosling with the text "Hey girl," followed by a variety of sayings.
Shortly after, though, Penny downplayed what had happened, saying "it's a bit of a fuss over not very much," and that the experience — including myriad calls from local and national media — was teaching her a lot about American culture.
"This place is insane," she said, adding that being helped by Gosling has turned out to be more trouble than being hit by a car would have been.
In a guest post on Gawker, Penny explained why she thought the reaction to her story was a bit intense.
People do lovely, considerate things for other people all the time.
–Laurie Penny
"People do lovely, considerate things for other people all the time," she wrote in a post titled "Ryan Gosling saved me from a speeding car but there's a war in the Middle East so everyone calm down."
"I don't believe that the fact that A-list celebrities occasionally act like human beings is in itself news — it might have been slightly newsworthy had Mr. Gosling simply floated by on a cloud of his own cultural significance whilst a young woman got smeared into the tarmac, but lucky for me, even the most chiseled-jawed of us are usually boringly dependable in times of minor peril," she continued.
Penny said she is grateful to Gosling, but was also grateful to the number of other strangers who have helped her out in a time of need during her two months in New York City. She also said she hopes Americans will focus on important issues rather than be distracted by "the most everyday happenings."
"The real heroes I've met in America are risking everything to make sure that the United States doesn't slide further into bigotry, inequality and violence whilst everyone is distracted by the everyday doings of celebrities," she wrote.
