Ryan Reynolds Calls His and Blake Lively’s Plantation Wedding ‘Giant F—ing Mistake’

Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively wed about eight years ago. Now, all these years later, Reynolds has expressed his feelings about the fact that he and his wife got married on a plantation in South Carolina. During a new interview with Fast Company, the Deadpool actor said that their decision to exchange vows on a plantation was a major “mistake.”

Reynolds couldn’t help but express his regrets over choosing to get married at Boone Hall, a former slave plantation in South Carolina. “It’s something we’ll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for,” he explained. “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.” The actor went on to share that he and Lively “got married again” at home years ago. But, he added that “shame works in weird ways,” in regards to their original wedding.

“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 continued. “It doesn’t mean you won’t f— up again. But repatterning and challenging lifelong social conditioning is a job that doesn’t end.” Reynolds’ comments come as many in the country are fighting for racial justice for all Black Americans in light of the murder of George Floyd in late May. Reynolds and Lively are doing what they can to support the Black Lives Matter cause, as they donated $200,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund back in May. At the time, the couple also released a statement on Instagram in which they expressed their commitment to change. More specifically, they noted that they will make sure to educate their three children on these issues, as well.

“We’ve never had to worry about preparing our kids for different rules of law or what might happen if we’re pulled over in the car,” they wrote in their statement. “We don’t know what it’s like to experience that life day in and day out. We can’t imagine feeling that kind of fear and anger. We’re ashamed that in the past, we’ve allowed ourselves to be uninformed about how deeply rooted systemic racism is.” They added that they want to not only educate themselves on “other people’s experiences,” but they want to make sure that their kids know about “everything, all of it … especially our own complicity. We talk about our bias, blindness and our own mistakes. We look back and see so many mistakes which have led us to deeply examine who we are and who we want to become. They’ve led us to huge avenues of education.”