Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively are the golden couple of Hollywood. Many admire how they support each other while also making jokes about each other. Fans often joke about how even though Green Lantern (2011) was probably one of the worst decisions of Reynolds’ career, at least it introduced him to his wife.
The two have been married for about a decade now and have four children. However, not everything is cute or hashtag couple goals about them. During their wedding, they committed a blunder that still haunts them to this day even though they have apologized for their mistake.
Ryan Reynolds And Blake Lively Apologized For Their Wedding Plans
Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively got married in 2012 at the Boone Hall Plantation in South Carolina. The place has a total of 9 slave cabins, which were also called Slave Street. A decade ago, this move was severely criticized as well but it mostly flew under the radar. However, conversations were reignited about this in 2018, when Reynolds tweeted in support of Black Panther, the first Black superhero film in the MCU.
Later on, during the Black Lives Matter movement, the conversation about the dark past of their wedding venue and how it reflects on the couple reached its peak. So in a statement to the Fast Company, they expressed regret over not understanding and researching the history of the plantation.
Reynolds 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.”
The Deadpool actor further expressed regret and said that he and his wife are educating themselves about racial bias. He said:
“A giant f—king 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 f— up again. But re-patterning and challenging lifelong social conditioning is a job that doesn’t end.”
Thankfully, the couple didn’t stop at just hollow words. They donated $200,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. However, Blake Lively has been criticized separately for Preserve, her lifestyle website.
Blake Lively Criticized For Celebrating Antebellum Website
In 2014, Blake Lively created a lifestyle website named Preserve to celebrate the Antebellum South. This was a time before the Civil War took place and slavery was allowed as well. The website had a photoshoot called The Allure of Antebellum. Its entire aim was to invoke nostalgia. It didn’t acknowledge any of the atrocities that happened during that time frame.
The website aimed to bring back the culture of Southern Belle with glamor and extravaganza. But any mention of the oppression conducted during that time was missing. The site description read:
“The term ‘Southern Belle’ came to fruition during the Antebellum period, acknowledging women with an inherent social distinction who set the standards for style and appearance. These women epitomized Southern hospitality with a cultivation of beauty and grace.”
However, the site wasn’t up for long, Blake Lively revealed to Vogue that she shut it down because it wasn’t ready for launch. The actress said, “We launched the site before it was ready, and it never caught up to its original mission. It’s not making a difference in people’s lives, whether superficially or in a meaningful way,”
Apart from this, Reynolds also launched the Group Effort Initiative which trained Black people as well as others from underrepresented groups to prepare them for jobs in the film industry. As such, over time, criticism against the couple has reduced severely online.
Source: Fast Company
