Ryan Reynolds Calls His Plantation Wedding A 'Giant F***ing Mistake'

Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds were married on a former plantation in South Carolina

Ryan Reynolds and his wife, Blake Lively, have been hesitant to comment on the outrage many felt over their wedding ceremony, held on a former plantation in South Carolina. He has finally spoken out in a recent interview, apologizing for the site of their 2012 wedding calling it a “giant fucking mistake.”

The notoriously silly couple, who wed in 2012 on Boone Hall, a former plantation in South Carolina, has taken heat over that decision, specifically in 2018 when the Deadpool actor tweeted love of Marvel’s Black Panther upon its release. Many were quick to call him out for the hypocrisy and now Reynolds has addressed it, apologizing for the poor decision.

During a recent interview with “Fast Company,” the father-of-three opened up about his wedding, saying the location is “something we’ll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for.”

Responses to his Black Panther tweet ranged from disappointment to being crystal clear on what it meant to some of his fans. “You don’t think it’s even a little fucked up to be all ‘Wakanda forever’ when you literally got married standing on dust from the bones of murdered slaves?” one follower wrote at the time.

“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,” Reynolds continued. “Years ago we got married again at home — but shame works in weird ways. A giant fucking mistake like that can either cause you to shut down or it can reframe things and move you into action.”

And so they have.

The couple has donated $1 million twice to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights in the past and again donated $200,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) following the death of George Floyd. He tells Fast Company he’s not opened up publicly much on the topic because he “worries that white celebrities too often drown out non-white voices, even if that’s not their intention.”

They did post a message to their social accounts expressing shame over their lack of education on racism, saying in part, “We want to educate ourselves about other people’s experiences and talk to our kids about everything, all of it . . . especially our own complicity.”

But now, it seems, they won’t stay silent on the issue anymore and hope to continue to learn and take responsibility for decisions of the past. “It doesn’t mean you won’t fuck up again,” Reynolds said. “But repatterning and challenging lifelong social conditioning is a job that doesn’t end.”