A one-time teen soap opera star, with perfect teeth and a year-round tan, until now nothing has seemed to rattle Ryan Reynolds.
He’s been named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, awarded the Officer of the Order of Canada for his philanthropy, and built up a $350 million fortune with investments in tech and booze.
Throughout, he has traded on his wholesome image with a stream of off-colour wisecracks – acceptable only because everyone ‘knew’ that the man who was teasing his wife and co-stars so rudely was, deep down, a ‘nice guy’.
But after a month filled with lawsuits and revelations, that image is under serious threat.
All of Hollywood is agog over the Blake-versus-Baldoni affair which followed the filming of Justin Baldoni’s adaptation of the Colleen Hoover novel, It Ends With Us – Reynolds’ wife, Blake Lively, took the lead role as florist Lily Bloom.
Lively filed a legal complaint just before Christmas saying that she had been caused ‘severe emotional distress’ by Baldoni’s behaviour during the making of the film, including unwanted contact which amounted to sexual harassment. She said that Baldoni had also ordered a PR team to undertake a global media campaign to ruin her image.
Ryan Reynolds’ image as a ‘nice guy’ may be under threat following a month filled with lawsuits and revelations over the Blake-versus-Baldoni affair
Baldoni countered with a number of lawsuits, claiming defamation and asking for $400 million in damages from Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds.
He says that Lively, 37, aided by the industry clout of her supportive husband, kicked him off his own film and production company, and claims Reynolds then tried to ruin his career.
Reynolds, said Baldoni, had yelled at him for allegedly ‘fat-shaming’ Lively, had asked for his agents to drop Baldoni, and claimed that Reynolds’ considerable power and influence had been used to threaten him.
The matter is due to come to court on Monday for the first time for a case conference. Former Gossip Girl star Lively is trying to get the lawsuits against her and Ryan Reynolds thrown out and made a filing to that effect on Thursday.
But the Mail can reveal that a website containing a trove of information, emails, texts and WhatsApps between Baldoni and Lively was due to be released last night. That will give a full timeline of how events unfolded, and show the souring of the relationship between the co-stars ‘in real time.’
No such website has ever been put online during a legal dispute and the move is likely to distress Lively and Reynolds, who have been pleading through lawyers for the other side to stop trying the case in the court of public opinion.
Meanwhile, it can also be revealed that Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, is going to refile a lawsuit for libel against the New York Times, which published the original allegations that Baldoni had sexually harassed and tried to smear the reputation of Lively, after discovering new evidence questioning the timing of its exposé.
Reynolds, 48, was spotted leaving his New York City apartment earlier this week looking somewhat pinched beneath his tan
Justin Baldoni, who is suing, and being sued by, Blake Lively and Reynolds
Well-placed sources also claim the Baldoni team have an ‘ace up their sleeve’ which they say will suggest that Reynolds and Lively leaned on their agents at William Morris Endeavor to drop Baldoni. A claim the couple deny.
No wonder Reynolds, 48, has been seen outside their New York penthouse looking somewhat pinched beneath his tan, carrying suitcases. It looks as if the family – they have four children – are planning to go away somewhere.
He might well look pinched, as he is front and centre to a number of points under contention.
Indeed, on industry bible Variety’s website, the comments are mostly not about Lively, but about what the affair seems to reveal about Reynolds – best known to many in the UK as the co-owner of Welsh football club Wrexham FC.
One celebrity PR says: ‘Beyond question this has hit him very hard. If he isn’t panicking about it, then he definitely should be. But I do hear that he is. It makes people doubt the authenticity of that nice guy image, and he’s been known for that for decades.’
Baldoni has complained that Reynolds asked for him to be dropped by their common agents at William Morris Endeavor. And he was indeed dropped just after Lively filed her lawsuit last month, although the agency has denied it was at the behest of Reynolds.
And then there’s a matter of optics. We now know that when Ryan Reynolds was pictured smiling on Blake Lively’s arm at the premiere of It Ends With Us in New York last August (and receiving a cheeky little bottom squeeze from her), the man who wrote and directed the film, Baldoni, claims he’d been banished to the basement on the orders of Lively, who didn’t want him anywhere near her.
Lively filed a legal complaint just before Christmas saying that she had been caused ‘severe emotional distress’ by Baldoni’s behaviour during the making of the film
We also know she referred to Reynolds as one of her ‘dragons’ in a text message which reads as a not very coded threat to Baldoni. (The other dragon is reputedly Taylor Swift, Lively’s close friend).
In a message shared in a legal complaint, she texted Baldoni: ‘If you ever get around to watching Game Of Thrones, you’ll appreciate that I’m Khaleesi, and like her, I happen to have a few dragons. For b
etter or worse, but usually better. Because my dragons also protect those I fight for. So really, we all benefit from those gorgeous monsters of mine. You will too, I can promise you.’
Apparently spooked by this, and the power of her ‘gorgeous monsters’ Baldoni sent Lively a seven-minute voice message which has now been leaked, in which he says: ‘Damn right, you got great friends. If that’s how you felt… we should all have friends like that.
‘Aside from the fact they’re two of the most creative people on the planet… the three of you guys together is unbelievable. Talk about energy. Force. All three of you.’
And the question of that ‘force’ and how it was used is being debated thanks to a legal move on January 7 when Freedman sent a ‘litigation hold’ letter to Disney executives. In it, he alleges that Ryan Reynolds was flagrantly mocking Baldoni in a sequence in his smash-hit superhero film, Deadpool & Wolverine, which was released by Disney in July.
In it, Reynolds plays ‘Nicepool’ an alternate version of Deadpool who has a man bun – as Baldoni had for years. Nicepool says lines such as ‘Where in God’s name is the intimacy coordinator?’ and compliments Ladypool – played by none other than Blake Lively – for ‘snapping back’ into shape after giving birth.
This appears to reference Baldoni offending Lively during filming, by asking how much she weighed, when she had recently given birth to her fourth child, a boy, Olin, in February 2023. Baldoni later explained he had a back injury and wanted to be sure he could safely lift Lively in a stunt. In his filing, Baldoni says he was ‘aggressively berated’ by Reynolds during a meeting at the couple’s New York home over the issue.
Baldoni and Lively also clashed over the use of an intimacy co-ordinator, with Baldoni saying that Lively declined to use one.
Hollywood is agog over the Blake-versus-Baldoni affair which followed the filming of Baldoni’s adaptation of the Colleen Hoover novel, It Ends With Us
Baldoni pictured with his wife Emily at the It Ends With Us premiere in New York last August
There’s another line in Deadpool & Wolverine, when Deadpool tells Nicepool he is a misogynist, to which he replies: ‘It’s OK, I identify as a feminist.’ Baldoni had a podcast about being a feminist man, and has spoken often about being an ally to women.
Baldoni’s legal team picked up on the references, and have indicated they will form part of their case, ordering Disney to retain ‘all documents relating to or reflecting a deliberate attempt to mock, harass, ridicule, intimidate, or bully Baldoni through the character of Nicepool’.
Given that the Nicepool character does not exist in the Marvel comics, we are left with the question: would a ‘nice guy’ have created a character in order to mock one of his wife’s co-stars?
The issue of Ryan Reynolds helping his wife to write certain scenes in It Ends With Us is being taken seriously. Lively revealed that Reynolds had written a key scene in the film during the press tour in the run up to its release.
This is playing very badly in Hollywood, where they take union representation and credits seriously. To make it worse, it appears some of the rewriting could have been undertaken during the Writer’s Guild strike.
All of the above are serious blows to Reynolds’ carefully curated image as an adorable, wise-cracking Canadian who doesn’t take himself too seriously.
Indeed, many industry insiders have speculated whether William Morris boss Ari Emanuel gave ‘the wrong client the pink slip’, referring to dismissal of employment.
So who is Ryan Reynolds, and will his wholesome image survive this unsavoury spectacle?
Ryan Rodney Reynolds, born in 1976, is one of four boys of James, a Mountie turned food wholesaler. James Sr died not long before Ryan’s first daughter with Lively was born, and they called her James in his honour.
Raised in Vancouver, his showbusiness career began when he was just 15 and acted in the soap opera Hillside. He then had the lead role in the sitcom Two Guys And A Girl. His big break was the film Green Lantern which came out in 2011 – though it was both a critical and commercial flop.
At the time of filming, he was married to Scarlett Johansson, but they split at the end of 2010. He moved on with Lively, who’d made her name in Gossip Girl, and was his co-star in Green Lantern.
All concerned insist that there was no overlap, and Johansson has hinted it was competition between them, as they both aimed for stardom, which doomed their marriage.
Reynolds said of his slow-burning romance with Blake: ‘I remember it was funny because for about a year after Green Lantern had come and gone, we were both single. We went on a double date – she with another guy, and I was on a date with another girl – and that was the most awkward date from their perspective probably because we were just like fireworks coming across.
‘We were buddies for a long time. It’s the best way to have a relationship, to start as friends.’
They were married in 2012, in a lavish ceremony at a plantation house in South Carolina, which included slave cottages. Both later apologised for this mis-step, with Reynolds saying in 2020: ‘It’s impossible to reconcile. What we saw at the time was a wedding venue on Pinterest. What we saw after was a place built upon devastating tragedy.
‘Years ago we got married again at home – but shame works in weird ways. A giant f***ing mistake like that can either cause you to shut down or it can reframe things and move you into action.’
He was serious about deflecting that criticism. They have made repeated charitable donations, including to Black Lives Matter, and his production company has a diversity initiative to help people from ‘excluded communities’ break into films.
No doubt his philanthropy comes from a sincere place, but it is also true that preserving his ‘nice guy’ image is essential to his success – both in the acting sphere and in the commercial world.
Since first appearing as Deadpool in the 2009 film X Men: Wolverine, his career has been on a high. Deadpool was a smash hit in 2016 and Deadpool & Wolverine last summer was part written by him, with a director he chose, and bears the distinctive hallmark of his humour throughout. It grossed over a billion dollars.
The 2021 film Free Guy, which he produced and stars in,
also exceeded expectations.
In tandem with these successes have been hugely lucrative link-ups with Mint Mobile, that investment in Wrexham FC which has spawned a successful Disney TV series, and a gin brand he founded, which was sold for more than $600 million in 2020.
At the centre of it all, though, is his relationship with Lively. Their four children are James, ten, Inez, eight, Betty, five, and Olin, one.
When he and Lively celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary he said: ‘It’s great! We’re lucky. That’s amazing. In Hollywood years that’s like 145 years or so!’
And in an emotional post on Instagram he wrote of Lively: ‘I’m grateful for the light and for the kindness you smuggle into each and every second of our lives. I see you in the eyes of our children… every laugh, every blink and every thoughtful moment of vulnerability. The tender grit it takes to be a mother… is an act of pure strength and heroism.
‘I’m lucky to reflect a little of the sunlight you shine on all of us.’
But what is being reflected now?
