Saying sorry. Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds apologized for their plantation wedding in 2012. In an interview with Fast Company on Tuesday, August 4, the Deadpool star expressed his and his wife’s regret for marrying at Boone Hall, a former plantation, in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, on September 9, 2012.
“It’s something we’ll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for,” he said. “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.”
The Detective Pikachu star continued, “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.”
Reynolds’ comment comes after he and Lively were accused of hypocrisy for their comments around Black Lives Matter when they tied the knot at a plantation where hundreds of slaves worked. In June, the Gossip Girl alum and the Marvel star released a statement on their Instagram accounts about how they planned to raise their three children to be anti-racist in the wake of the death of George Floyd and other unarmed Black Americans.
“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. We don’t know what it’s like to experience that life day in and day out,” the couple wrote. “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. We’ve been teaching our children differently than the way our parents taught us. We want to educate ourselves about other people’s experiences and talk to our kids about everything, all of it…especially our own complicity.”
Reynolds and Lively continued, “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. We’re committed to raising our kids so they never grow up feeding this insane pattern and so they’ll do their best to never inflict pain on another being consciously or unconsciously. It’s the least we can do to honor not just George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Eric Garner, but all the black men and women who have been killed when a camera wasn’t rolling.”
The couple ended their statement by telling their followers that they donated $200,000 to the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund. They also urged their followers to visit the NAACP’s website for more information on how to fight against systemic racism. “Last week we contributed $200,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. We stand in awe of this organization and its leader, Sherrilyn Ifill. And this is just the start,” the couple wrote. “We also pledge to stay educated and vote in every local election. We want to know the positions of school board nominees, sheriffs, mayors, councilpersons. We want to know their positions on justice. But mainly, we want to use our privilege and platform to be an ally.”
Reynolds and Lively continued, “And to play a part in easing pain for so many who feel as though this grand experiment is failing them. Link in bio to the @naacp_ldf. There are petitions to sign, representatives to call, money to be donated, calls to action, or simply information to better understand the issues and how each and every one of us can help. This content is imported from Instagram. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.”