Ryan Reynolds & Blake Lively Are 'Deeply' Sorry For Their Plantation Wedding
Reconciling past mistakes is the first step in moving forward. That's especially true when it comes to tackling racism in all of its forms. Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively realized they had a part in it too, and are offering their apologies for their plantation wedding.
Reynolds talked about the event in an interview with Fast Company, where he said that the 2012 wedding (which took place at Boone Hall in South Carolina) was something that he and Lively would always be "deeply and unreservedly sorry for."
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"What we saw at the time was a wedding venue on Pinterest," the Canadian actor continued, "What we saw after was a place built upon devastating tragedy."
Reynolds and Lively had a second wedding at their home, but he told Fast Company that he couldn't shake the guilt he was feeling after being called out for hypocrisy when he praised the Marvel film, Black Panther.
"A giant f***ing mistake like that can either cause you to shut down or it can reframe things and move you into action," he said.
Reynolds added that this doesn't mean he won't make future mistakes but said that "repatterning and challenging lifelong social conditioning is a job that doesn’t end."
The actor previously went into detail about the steps he and his family were taking in a May 10 Instagram post, including trying to teach their kids better than their parents taught them.
"We want to educate ourselves about other people's experiences and talk to our kids about everything, all of it... especially our own complicity," he wrote.
He said that he and Lively are committed to raising their kids so that they "never grow up feeding this insane pattern," adding that this is a small way to honour those who lost their lives to racist police brutality like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
In addition to a $200,000 donation to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Reynolds is still working to do better by hiring BIPOC employees on his latest film.