Actors Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively are letting us know how “deeply sorry” they are for holding their 2012 wedding on a former slave plantation in South Carolina.
The topic came up during the “Deadpool” star’s recent interview with Fast Company. Reynolds was asked about being called a hypocrite in 2018 after he tweeted his support of the blockbuster film “Black Panther,”.
Reynolds told Fast Company that having their wedding at Boone Hall, a former plantation in South Carolina, is “something we’ll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for.”
“It’s impossible to reconcile,” he said. “What we saw at the time was a wedding venue on Pinterest. What we saw after was a place built upon devastating tragedy.”
“making such a mistake” he continued, can “cause you to shut down or it can re-frame things and move you into action.”
The couple has since taken action toward supporting racial justice and the Black Lives Matter movement. In June they donated $200,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF)in addition to $1 million in donations he and Lively made last year to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.
Reynolds expresses reluctance to talk about their social justice support “in part because he worries that white celebrities too often drown out non-white voices, even if that’s not their intention.”
Reynold also noted that his production company and marketing agency, Maximum Effort, is making sure to maintain diversity in their hiring practices.
“Representation and diversity need to be completely immersive,” Reynolds said. “Like, it needs to be embedded at the root of storytelling, and that’s in both marketing and Hollywood.”
“When you add perspective and insight that isn’t your own, you grow. And you grow your company, too.”
