Ryan Reynolds Just Addressed His and Blake Lively’s Plantation Wedding

Photo credit: Michael Loccisano - Getty Images
Photo credit: Michael Loccisano - Getty Images

From Cosmopolitan

  • Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds married on a slave plantation in South Carolina in 2012.

  • They recently said they were “ashamed” of how ignorant they’ve been to systemic racism but didn’t directly address their wedding.

  • In a just-published interview, Ryan finally made a statement regarding their wedding, pictures of which have been banned by Pinterest.


It’s been eight years since Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds regrettably married on the grounds of a slave plantation in South Carolina called Boone Hall, months since Pinterest banned photos of their wedding—along with other plantation ceremonies—and a little over a month since they vaguely addressed how they’re “ashamed” by their ignorance of systemic racism. (A few years after they married, Blake created her now-defunct website, Preserve, which also romanticized the antebellum period.) Finally, after years of everyone reminding them how offensive their ceremony was, Ryan addressed their wedding head-on.

Talking to Fast Company, Ryan said:

“It’s something we’ll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for. 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 fucking mistake like that can either cause you to shut down or it can reframe things and move you into action. It doesn’t mean you won’t fuck up again. But repatterning and challenging lifelong social conditioning is a job that doesn’t end.”

Photo credit: Jackson Lee - Getty Images
Photo credit: Jackson Lee - Getty Images

Still, Ryan didn’t explain why he and Blake didn’t release a statement like the one he’s making now when they decided to remarry years ago after being ashamed for their previous ceremony.

In June, Blake and Ryan donated $200,000 to the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund and opened up about how they plan to do better and raise their kids “so they never grow up feeding this insane pattern” of systemic racism. They continued and said, “We want to use our privilege and platform to be an ally. And to play a part in easing pain for so many who feel as though this grand experiment is failing them.”

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A post shared by Blake Lively (@blakelively) on May 31, 2020 at 6:09pm PDT

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