Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively co-starred in the box-office flop Green Lantern in 2011, then married in 2012, so you might think that they fell in love immediately. Not so.
“I met Blake on the darkest crease in the anus of the universe called Green Lantern,” Reynolds told Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes on Monday’s episode of their podcast, SmartLess. “And we were friends and buddies and then, about a year and a half later, we actually went out on a double date, but we were dating separate people.”
When they met, as Green Lantern began filming in early 2010, Reynolds was still married to Scarlett Johansson, his wife since 2008. They split in 2010. Lively was in a relationship with Penn Badgley, her co-star on Gossip Girl, for several years, also ending in 2010.
So after single Reynolds and Lively crossed paths on this double date, there was a When Harry Met Sally… situation where they fell for each other.
“We hung out and kind of, you know, we always kind of kept in touch but sort of casually. And then next thing you know, she was going to Boston. I was going to Boston. So I was like, ‘I’ll ride with you,'” Reynolds said. Then he joked, “We got on the train and rode together and then I was just begging her to sleep with me.”
Reynolds, who made the first move, noted that the romance moved quickly.
“Honestly, it was kind of one of those silly sort of … like out of a fairy tale,” he said. “Like a week later, I was like, ‘We should buy a house together.’ And we did.”
Now they’ve been together almost a decade, which Reynolds described as “like 45 years in Hollywood terms.”
The two are parents to three daughters: 6-year-old James, Inez, 4, and Betty, 1. (Taylor Swift fans already know this.)
Still, Reynolds’s career has not slowed down, and he thanks Lively for that. His list of projects in the works include another installment of his Deadpool franchise (presumably the character’s first full-fledged foray into the Marvel Cinematic Universe) and a big-screen adaptation of the board game Clue.
“The only reason I think I’m able to continue doing this in this way, I think, is that I’m present with my kids and my wife, and my marriage is incredibly important to me and that friendship is important to me, so I’m able to kind of get through, you know,” Reynolds said. “But then Blake and I don’t do movies at the same time, so [when] she’s ready to go back and do some stuff, I’ll step down and then we go back and forth. She’ll do a film and I’ll just be with her on location, hanging with the kids.”
He said that she’s been especially impressive while dealing with kids and their schoolwork during the pandemic: “Blake was so much better than I was, because I’m also a child.”
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