Los Angeles: Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds says he and his wife Blake Lively will always be "deeply and unreservedly sorry" for their 2012 wedding at a former plantation. The 43-year-old actor had tied the knot with Lively, 32, at Boone Hall, a former plantation in South Carolina.
The move was criticized at the time, but came under renewed scrutiny in 2018 after Reynolds tweeted in support of "Black Panther," the first superhero movie to feature a majority Black cast. Many had accused him of hypocrisy at the time.
During an interview with Fast Company on Tuesday, the actor opened up about the controversy and said he still has regrets over it. "It's something we'll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for. 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," Reynolds said.
"A giant f***ing 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 f**k up again. But repatterning and challenging lifelong social conditioning is a job that doesn't end," he added.
During the Black Lives Matter movement in June after the killing of George Floyd, Reynolds and Lively had released a lengthy statement about their own misgivings while dealing with racial topics.
The couple both posted the same statement on their Instagram accounts, announcing they had donated USD 200,000 to the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) 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. 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," they had said in the joint statement.
