Ryan Reynolds Jokes Paul Rudd’s ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ Honor Is a ‘Wasted Opportunity’

Ryan Reynolds is making sure PEOPLE’s 2021 Sexiest Man Alive, Paul Rudd, gets a good ribbing as the Free Guy actor looks back at his own reign, having previously won the honor in 2010. Reynolds joked on Wednesday’s TODAY show that while he was “very excited” for Rudd, he figured the “opportunity will be wasted on him, like so many before him.”

“He’s going to play it shy. He’s going to play it bashful, humble,” the actor continued. “If I know what I knew now, I wouldn’t. You got to seize this opportunity.” Reynolds joked that if he were to be named Sexiest Man Alive knowing what he knows now, he would do things very differently. “I’m not saying I would leave my family, but they would need to go on without me,” he quipped.

“I would roam the world clutching my dog-eared PEOPLE magazine, going from town to town, sowing my wild oats like some sort of nude, magical gardener. It would be amazing,” he continued before offering Rudd a word of advice: “Don’t blow this, Rudd. If you’re there, do not blow this opportunity. Run like the wind,” he said.

Accepting the honor in Wednesday’s Sexiest Man Alive issue, Rudd said there were “so many people that should get this before me,” adding, “I do have an awareness, enough to know that when people hear that I’d be picked for this, they would say, ‘What?’” The Ant-Man star expected a response like Reynolds’ from his friends, saying he fully anticipated them giving him “so much grief.”

“I mean I’m going to lean into it hard. I’m going to own this. I’m not going to try to be like ‘Oh, I’m so modest.’ I’m getting business cards made,” he joked. “But all of my friends will destroy me and I expect them to. And that’s why they’re my friends.”

With his new title, Rudd said he planned on his life changing “a lot,” telling the magazine he hoped to “finally” be invited to “some of those sexy dinners with Clooney and Pitt and [Michael] B Jordan.” He continued, “And I figure I’ll be on a lot more yachts. I’m excited to expand my yachting life. And I’ll probably try to get better at brooding in really soft light. I like to ponder. I think this is going to help me become more inward and mysterious. And I’m looking forward to that.”