Ryan Reynolds says he and Blake Lively are ‘deeply sorry’ for plantation wedding

For the first time, Ryan Reynolds has publicly discussed his and Blake Lively’s decision to hold their 2012 wedding at a plantation.

The actor, now 43, expressed regret over their choice while acknowledging that “it’s impossible to reconcile,” during an interview with Fast Company.

Reynolds and Lively married at Boone Hall, a former plantation in South Carolina, after seeing it as a venue option on Pinterest. While they largely received positive press at the time, the couple’s wedding was met with criticism when it was back in the spotlight in 2018.

After Reynolds tweeted his praise for the film, Black Panther - the first superhero film with a predominantly Black cast - many accused him of being a hypocrite, pointing to his plantation wedding as evidence.

“It’s something we’ll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for,” Reynolds said to Fast Company. “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,” he explained.

“Years ago we got married again at home - but shame works in weird ways. A giant f**king mistake like that can either cause you to shut down or it can reframe things and move you into action,” said Reynolds, who quietly donated $1 million to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights last year (Lively also donated $1 million).

“It doesn’t mean you won’t f**k up again. But repatterning and challenging lifelong social conditioning is a job that doesn’t end.”

Throughout the pandemic, Reynolds and Lively have contributed to a number of causes. At the start of the pandemic, the couple donated $1 million to be split between Food Banks Canada and Feeding America, as well as another $400,000 to be split among four hospitals in New York.

Following the death of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers in May, Reynolds and Lively donated $200,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in support of the protestors and resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Along with their donation, the couple released a statement pledging to take more anti-racist actions, including educating themselves and their three daughters.

“We’re ashamed that in the past, we’ve allowed ourselves to be uninformed about how deeply rooted systemic racism is,” Reynolds and Lively both posted on Instagram. “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,” part of their statement read.

They explained, "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.”