In 2012, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds found their wedding destination on Pinterest, but while it was set to be one of Hollywood’s biggest nuptials the event quickly made headlines for all the wrong reasons. The couple chose Boone Hall, a former plantation in South Carolina, and now for the first time, Reynold’s has shared he and Lively deeply regret that decision.
In light of the Black Lives Matter movement, Reynolds told Fast Company that he and Lively are motived to continually push to be anti-racist, reflecting on their wedding day.
“It’s something we’ll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for,” he said of the nuptials. “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. A giant fucking 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 fuck up again. But repatterning and challenging lifelong social conditioning is a job that doesn’t end.”
Earlier this year, the couple announced their donation of $200,000 US to the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund.
“We’ve never had to worry about preparing our kids for different rules of law or what might happen if we’re pulled over in the car,” they shared at the time. “We don’t know what it’s like to experience that life day in and day out. We can’t imagine feeling that kind of fear and anger. We’re ashamed that in the past, we’ve allowed ourselves to be uninformed about how deeply rooted systemic racism is.”
The statement continued, “We’re committed to raising our kids so they never grow up feeding this insane pattern and so they’ll do their best to never inflict pain on another being consciously or unconsciously. It’s the least we can do to honour not just George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Eric Garner, but all the black men and women who have been killed when a camera wasn’t rolling.”
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