Ryan Reynolds left little doubt his 13-year marriage to second wife Blake Lively was on solid ground amid her dwindling legal battle.
‘You know, you really see the illusion behind so much of this stuff – digital life versus real life,’ the Canadian 49-year-old told Sunday Sitdown Live’s Willie Geist.
‘Without getting into too much, I have never in my life been more proud of my wife, really.’
Reynolds added: ‘People have no idea what’s really going on, you know? I have never in my life been more proud of someone with that level of integrity that brings that with them with everything they do.’
The two-time Emmy-winning producer and the troubled 38-year-old – who wed at a former slave plantation in 2012 – are proud parents of daughters James, 11, Inez, nine, and Betty, six, as well as three-year-old son Olin.
Divorce rumors swirled after Reynolds decided to skip Lively’s (born Brown) settlement conference at US District Court in Manhattan on February 11.
Justin Baldoni’s wife Emily never left his side during his two court appearances ahead of the Gossip Girl alum’s May 18 trial against his production company Wayfarer Studios and his PR reps Melissa Nathan, Jennifer Abel and Jed Wallace for breach of contract and retaliation.
The 42-year-old It Ends with Us director will take the witness stand, but he’s no longer personally implicated after Judge Lewis J. Liman dismissed 10 of Lively’s 13 claims including sexual harassment in a 152-page ruling.
The two-time Grammy nominee – who admitted to burning down his own elementary school in 1987 – was also included on his wife’s list of witnesses, which would open him up to cross examination over his substantial involvement in the on-set dispute.
Despite a WGA strike, Reynolds personally rewrote the rooftop scene of the 2024 domestic violence drama and his firm Maximum Effort handled the tone-deaf marketing campaign tying Lively’s booze brand Betty Buzz with promotional cocktails like ‘Ryle You Wait.’
The Aviation American Gin owner called Baldoni a ‘sexual predator’ and ‘predatory fraudster’ in messages to WME CEO Ari Emanuel and WME agent Patrick Whitesell before the Jane the Virgin alum was dropped as a client.
Reynolds created a manbun-rocking character called Nicepool in his $1.338 billion-grossing 2024 sequel Deadpool & Wolverine to make fun of Baldoni, and not so subtly enlisted Lively’s Ladypool to shoot him dead in front of a flower shop.
None of the major talk show hosts – Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver – have cracked a joke about the Lively-Baldoni debacle after the Welcome to Wrexham star’s company Mint Mobile served as one of two sponsors for their 2023 podcast, Strike Force Five.
But perhaps Reynolds’ biggest role behind the scenes was he and the Secrets of the Penguins narrator’s 16-year-old dormant shell company Vanzan, Inc., which is seemingly named after their hometowns of Vancouver and Tarzana.
There would be no lawsuit had publicist Stephanie Jones not obtained a treasure trove of text messages from her former employee Jennifer Abel via a sham subpoena from Vanzan accusing 10 John Does of harming the company, which has been delinquent in the state of New York for years.
Those cherry-picked messages were then published by the New York Times in bad faith in 2024, much of which was debunked by Baldoni’s website packed with timelines and evidence.
Lively – who requires ‘authorship’ on all her films – took over directing, script, wardrobe, score and editing departments by threatening to pull out of promoting the movie with support from distributor Sony Pictures despite never even reading the book.
The ex-BFF of Taylor Swift convinced the author-producer Colleen Hoover and cast members Jenny Slate, Isabela Ferrer and Brandon Sklenar to shun and unfollow Baldoni, and banished him to the basement of the AMC Lincoln Square Theater during the New York City premiere.
Lively issued 107 subpoenas to ordinary content creators accusing them of conspiring with Baldoni and she’s reportedly trying to keep one of them – Norwegian reporter Kjersti Flaa – off the witness stand.
As for future projects, the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants alum signed on to produce and star in Lionsgate action rom-com The Survival List with Marc Platt ‘in talks to produce’ but there’s been no update on the project since August.
Reynolds has two upcoming films – Apple TV comedy Mayday (September 4) and Warner Bros. live-action animated comedy Animal Friends (2027) – both of which his company Maximum Effort produced.
