This is a transcript of my interview episode with Ryan Reynolds. To hear the interview clips that go with this episode, click play on the streaming link in this post or visit https://megaphone.link/CORU1375829383
He was born on October 23, 1976, in Vancouver, Canada.
The youngest of four boys to James Chester, a former Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman who retired and then worked as a food wholesaler.
His mother, Tamara Lee worked in retail while caring for Patrick, Jeff, and Terry who treated him not as a younger brother but more as a moving target.
This young… nervous kid was extremely sensitive … and aware of everything around him so he found solace in school plays.
In the theater his vulnerability became his…superpower rather than a problem.
It would be one of many he would acquire along the way to becoming a world famous actor, producer, and incredibly successful businessman and sports team owner.
He has really done it all…But he never forgot his roots or the land that helped shape him..
I’m Craig Baird and this is Canadian History Ehx … Biography.
A new series of episodes where every other week I sit down with prominent Canadians to learn more about them, and how being Canadian has influenced their success.
Today, I bring you one of the most well known people on the planet and he just so happens to be from the great white north.
This is…Canada’s very own superhero…who is way better than Wolverine…Ryan Reynolds.
The first time I saw Ryan Reynolds was when he was around 16 years old and I was a young teenager.
He was on my TV screen as the villainous Macro in The Odyssey, a Canadian-produced half-hour adventure fantasy series for children, originally broadcast from 1992 to 1994 on CBC.
It was way ahead of its time and if you’re a long time listener you’ll remember I shared its history back in May, 2023.
I’ll be re-releasing the episode this week as well so you don’t have to search for it.
If you’re like me and watched it you know that The Odyssey was unlike any other from my youth.
While it was intended for kids and young adults, it was also smart, complex and edgy.
Far ahead of its time, so much so that it feels like a fever dream for some and I kept my eye out for the guy that played the villain in the future, because he made such an impact on my screen.
But the reality is that Ryan Reynolds had been acting professionally for about four years…since he was 12 years old.
His first major role came when he was 15 years old when he got to play Billy Simpson
The series which followed the students of fictional Hillside School and dealt with a variety of issues including dating, divorce, alcohol abuse, infidelity and friendship ran from 1991 to 1993 on YTV in Canada and on Nickelodeon.
As Ryan said his character turned to bullying to cope with family issues and romantic rejections.
And yes it WAS drippy as it played heavily into stereotypes, including two characters named Dylan and Chris, who wore leather jackets to show off their toughness, but which could not completely disguise their inner selves.
At one point, they play a gig with their band Teenagers in Love at the local eatery and hangout spot The Avalon.
Billy frequently hangs around Dylan and looks up to him and an intervention from Dylan finally gets through to Billy and makes him amends for his bullying.
The first season of the show was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, so not too far from home for Ryan.
But then the second season had him travelling to Ottawa to film at the studios of CJOH-TV, where fellow Nickelodeon series You Can’t Do That on Television was also filmed.
Fun fact this is the same show that Alanis Morisette appeared on for five episodes… Ryan and Alanis would go on to date many years later starting in 2002, and they were engaged for three years before calling it quits in February 2007.
Meanwhile back in the 90s Ryan would go on to film the third and fourth seasons of Hillside/Fifteen at Nickelodeon Studios at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida in Nickelodeon Studios’ Stage 18.
And by 1993 Ryan was nominated as Best Young Actor Co-starring in a Cable Series by The Young Artist Award which honors excellence of youth performers.
(BEAT)After that show ended, he made his feature film debut in Ordinary Magic, a coming-of-age drama where he played Jeffrey, an orphan raised in India, who is inspired by Mahatma Gandhi to go on a hunger strike in a small town in Canada.
Directed by Giles Walker, the film received mixed to disappointing reviews but soon Ryan would be appearing in CBC’s The Odyssey which brings us to the mid 90.
By then Ryan was struggling to get his career off the ground. He was cast in a few small roles, including a guest spot on The X-Files, Sabrina The Teenage Witch, The John Larroquette Show and the miniseries Cold Blood.
Still he needed to take odd jobs to make ends meet after completing high school and for a time, he worked a late-night shift at a supermarket.
However, regardless of the struggles he found comfort in Canada’s lush coastal rainforest
In the late 90’s, Reynolds had moved to Los Angeles with a friend and had landed his first major television job in 1998, playing a medical student on the sitcom Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place (later renamed Two Guys and a Girl).
The series started as a short-run (thirteen episodes) mid-season replacement on March 11, 1998, on ABC and ran for four seasons and Ryan starred alongside Richard Ruccolo, and Traylor Howard as the title characters.
The ending was a planned series finale, its eighty-first episode, on May 16, 2001 and was titled “The Internet Show”, because fans of the show voted on the characters’ outcome online.
After the show finished in 2001, Ryan made the jump to feature films.
He starred in the comedy National Lampoon’s Van Wilder (2002) as a perennial, fun-loving college student. While the film did poorly at the box office, it eventually became a cult classic.
And Ryan? Well he was just getting started…
For several years, Ryan appeared in a string of films that failed to find their audience as he carved his way into Hollywood.
Ryan’s steps into superstardom were measured.
He impressed with a cameo as the nurse in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle in 2004, which Entertainment Weekly described as a “single, though memorable scene”.
He has a natural knack for comedy and an easy smile but he was searching for more and so he was cast as Hannibal King, a vampire hunter, who joins Blade in David S. Goyer’s Blade: Trinity.
Released in 2004, it was Ryan’s first dip into the Marvel universe, but you wouldn’t call it a super successful one. That would come eventually.
And Goyer, who also wrote the script for the original Blade released in 1998, as well as its hit sequel admits that Blade Trinity was a challenge for all of those involved.
He told the Hollywood Reporter in 2021
quote “ I don’t think anyone involved in that film had a good experience on that film, certainly I didn’t. I don’t think anybody involved with that film is happy with the results. It was a very tortured production.” end quote
To prepare for the role, Reynolds focused on gaining muscle by training six days a week and adhering to a 3,200-calorie diet.
He gained 11 kilograms (24 lb) of muscle in three months. His transformation into an action hero was well earned and the movie was a success at the box office.
It grossed $132 million on a $65 million budget, but it was negatively received by critics and Blade was put on ice for 20 years until Ryan helped revive it… but we’ll get there…
I don’t want to get ahead of myself.
In the meantime, Ryan starred in the 2005 remake The Amityville Horror, an adaptation of the 1977 novel and remake of the 1979 film of the same name for which his performance was praised by critics.
Collider’s Shawn Van Horn said he was “funny and charming, but toned down, as if he’s not performing for a camera”
Then, Ryan’s comedy chops were once again on full display as Monty, the charismatic waiter in Rob McKittrick’s 2005 comedy Waiting and in the romantic comedy Just Friends from the same year.
In it he played Chris Brander, an overweight high schooler trying to escape the “friend zone” with his best friend played by Amy Smart, during a Christmas visit to his hometown.
But for most of the early 2000 it seemed like Ryan’s career ebbed and flowed as critics acknowledged his performances and comedic talent even though the films themselves sometimes received poor receptions.
In 2008 he starred in the critically acclaimed and commercially successful romantic comedy Definitely, Maybe, where he played Will Hayes, a man in the middle of divorce proceedings who is questioned by his daughter about how he and her mother first met.
This kind of marked a turn towards romantic comedies as he then starred in 2009’s Adventureland in which he plays Mike Connell, a technician and part-time musician.
Critics praised the film and it has an approval rating of 89% on Rotten Tomatoes.
2009 is also the year he made his return to the Marvel Universe as Wade Wilson / Deadpool / Weapon XI in the superhero film X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
It would be the role that would change everything
As early as 2003, Ryan had expressed interest in and involvement in a potential Deadpool film adaptation.
He had been developing his own project with David S. Goyer at New Line Cinema, but the project fell apart as they focused on Blade: Trinity and the aborted spin-off.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine’s writer David Benioff had been pursuing the Marvel project under 20th Century Fox for almost three years before he was hired to write the script in October 2004
He wrote Deadpool into the script in a manner Hugh Jackman described as fun, while also deviating from some of his traits.
Ryan took his opportunity to don the Deadpool suit and ran with it because although during its first day of wide release, Wolverine took in an estimated $35 million for the most part critics hated it.
Tom Charity of CNN commented:
“Serviceable but inescapably redundant, this Wolverine movie does just enough to keep the X-Men franchise on life support, but the filmmakers will have to come up with some evolutionary changes soon if it’s going to escape X-tinction”
However you might feel about the film, one thing was abundantly clear: Ryan Reynolds was born to be Deadpool.
He stole every scene and made such a massive impact I bet you don’t remember much of the plot but you definitely remember him.
And now how a bonafide box office hit in his resume and he followed it up with another whopper when he starred as Andrew Paxton in Anne Fletcher’s romantic comedy The Proposal.
In it, America’s Sweetheart, Sandra Bullock, plays Margaret Tate, a Canadian editor-in-chief at a New York City book publishing company, universally disliked by most everyone.
A visa violation means she is threatened with deportation back to Canada.
She forces her long-suffering personal assistant, played by Ryan, into marrying her so she can get a green card.
Hijinks ensue and in the process the on-screen chemistry between Ryan and Sandra was undeniable.
It made the movie which had a $40 million dollar budget, a massive success as it grossed over $317 million worldwide.
Teaming up with Sandra, allowed Ryan to once again showcase his comedic talents while continuing to prove he was a box office success and incredibly popular with audiences.
He continued to thrive professionally, and expanded his range with the independent drama Buried in 2010.
In the film, Ryan played civilian truck driver Paul Conroy, who is attacked, and then finds himself buried alive in a wooden coffin, with only a lighter, flask, flashlight, knife, glowsticks, pen, pencil, and a mobile phone.
The film was shot in Barcelona over 16 days.
Ryan has said he suffered from claustrophobia while filming because the coffin was gradually filled with sand as filming went on.
He described the last day of shooting as “unlike anything I experienced in my life, and I never ever want to experience that again.”
Buried premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 23 January 2010 and it sparked a bidding war with distributors and a deal that was initially estimated at $3.2 million, would ultimately come to $10 million.
It was also lauded critically as Scott Mantz of Access Hollywood called it “a brilliantly twisted suspense thriller that would have made Alfred Hitchcock proud.”
Film director John Waters named Buried as one of the ten best films of 2010, and said
“The most excruciatingly painful date movie imaginable comes complete with a very smart feel-bad ending. See it with someone you hate.”
He followed up his indie success with another big budget movie and this time he would play the titular character.
The gamble didn’t exactly work out but it did alter the course of his life
In early 1997, Warner Bros. approached cult filmmaker and comic book writer Kevin Smith, to make a Green Lantern film.
He turned it down and it was kicked around Hollywood for years.
At one point, Quentin Tarantino was offered the chance to write and direct but the project had mostly stalled until Gregory Berlanti was hired by Warner Brothers to write and direct in October 2007.
To say the project was doomed from the start might be unfair but it is important to note that Martin Campbell was brought on board in February 2009 after Berlanti was forced to vacate the director’s position.
The movie follows the Green Lantern Corps in their pursuit to preserve intergalactic order which has existed for centuries.
Its newest recruit, Hal Jordan, played by Ryan, is the first human to join the ranks.
The Green Lanterns have little regard for humans, who have thus far been unable to harness the powers of the ring which each member wears.
But Jordan, a gifted and cocky test pilot, seems to be the universe’s only hope when a new enemy threatens the universal balance of power.
Green Lantern was released in the United States on June 17, 2011, by Warner Bros. Pictures and it was not well received.
Audiences were critical of the script, tone, visual effects, and lack of adherence to the source material.
On top of all that… it only grossed $237 million against a production budget of $200 million at the box office and any future plans by Warner Brothers for a franchise were immediately scrapped.
Although he didn’t achieve super hero success with Green Lantern, the movie is where he met his future wife, Blake Lively, who played Carol Ferris, the female lead and love interest in the superhero film.
The pair began dating in 2011 and got married about a year later.
Meanwhile, Ryan’s career continued to ebb and flow until it reached a peak in 2016.
That’s when he returned to the role he was always meant to play…Deadpool.
As I mentioned, the film had been in development since as early as 2000
By March 2005, Ryan learned that Fox had expressed interest in a film featuring a cameo by Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and as we know he was cast in the part.
His role was expanded during the film’s production as he proved himself to be the best man for the role.
Executives at Fox took note and after the box office success of Wolverine the studio officially began development on Deadpool, with Ryan set to star.
The spinoff would ignore the Wolverine version of Deadpool and return to the character’s slapstick comedic roots.
Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick were hired to write the script in January 2010 and Ryan worked closely with them.
In April 2011, Tim Miller was hired as director after working on the visual effects for some of the X-Men films, in part because of his work creating animated short films.
It would be Miller’s directorial debut and by then Ryan had a deal with Fox to produce the film.
But then Green Lantern was released and it threw a wrench in things over at Fox.
Executives were already concerned about Deadpool’s R-rated content and the film simply couldn’t be anything else.
The project then stalled again in 2012 with the release of Marvel Studios’ The Avengers.
At first Reese and Wernick thought Deadpool might be easily approved by Fox as it was an already developed superhero film.
But the film actually caused Fox to be even more doubtful about the script, and began exploring ways to include Deadpool in other properties instead.
It was all extremely frustrating for everyone involved and it may have been the end of the story, except test footage of Ryan voicing a CGI version of the script was leaked online in 2014.
People loved it and the enthusiasm caused Fox to FINALLY greenlight the project and gave Deadpool a release date of February 12, 2016.
But it came with a catch…
In exchange for making the film the way they wanted, Ryan and co would have a much smaller budget to work with.
Co-writer Rhett Reese said the studio’s cuts to the film’s budget made the script better for it
“It was that last, lean and mean chop that got us to a place where Fox was willing to make it. The script was very efficient and not too long. That was a function of budget more than anything, but I think it really made the movie pace nicely”
They had written a draft of the script every year for six years before completing the film, and about 70 percent of the first draft ending up in the final film which began principal photography on March 23, 2015, in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Ryan Reynolds would be making his film at home and hired more than 2,000 locals as actors, extras and crew members.
Ryan (04:09 – 04:38) So I’ve been lucky to, I guess it’s one of the greatest by products slash side effects of my job.’ve been everywhere. I’ve really been lucky to see the world and you know, it is, it has been, yeah, it’s really been, something wonderful, but to see it through the eyes of a Canadian is, is always great. You know, it’s like, it’s like one of those things where anywhere you go, if someone else is Canadian, it’s the first thing they say to me. And I take that as a huge compliment because that’s, that would suggest that I’ve done some of my job, which is to
Part of my work and part of my life is to make Canada in my own small way as best as I can, a little bit better, a little bit broader, know, and make it a better place somehow. I feel like that’s sort of our civic duty to a certain degree.
One thing I have always liked about is that he is unabashedly Canadian.
Whether it is in the charity work he does here, or the roles he chooses, he always finds a way to sprinkle in a little bit of our country into the mix
4:55 – 6:08 yeah only in the movies I write and produce really, but because it’s, wouldn’t, I wouldn’t want to do that to someone else’s movie. Deadpool and Wolverine is easy because Sean Levy is from Montreal and I’m from Vancouver. So, no, I always, I always try to put a little, a little something here or there about the things that, you know, are most meaningful to me. There are many things people still have never seen in some of the movies or figured out.
You know, like a good example is I always have a John Candy nod in every single one of the Deadpool movies. I always care at some point you see the book, the Canadian mounted book that John Candy is reading in planes, and automobiles. You know, I even steal a line of his in Deadpool 2 where I say, I like me. You know, and I’m obviously trying, I’m performatively trying to make some emotion happen with the Colossus.
Yeah, Canada is kind of all over everything I do. And I think it really is largely inside my body more so than it is external. You know, it’s very much in my DNA to laugh at myself
Which is something that Deadpool also does and one of the many reasons it has been such a massive success from the second it premiered on February 8, 2016.
It grossed a worldwide total of $783.1 million, against a budget of $58 million and broke records with its opening weekend sales across the world, and went on to become the highest-grossing X-Men film, as well as the ninth-highest-grossing film of the year.
Deadpool was a box office juggernaut AND it was critically beloved as well as a fast, funny, fourth-wall-busting profane spectacle that subverted the superhero formula all while being decidedly not family-friendly.
It was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards, four Critics’ Choice Movie Awards (winning two), a Directors Guild of America Award, a Producers Guild of America Award, and a Writers Guild of America Award.
This led many to believe Deadpool would be a serious contender for several Academy Awards, so when the film did not receive any, it was widely considered to have been “snubbed”.
It may not have gotten the Academy’s stamp of approval but Deadpool did something much more lucrative for Ryan… it launched a franchise.
The sequel, Deadpool 2, was released in May 2018 to comparable critical and commercial success.
Then following the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney, the character’s film rights were returned to Marvel Studios alongside the X-Men and the Fantastic Four.
This allowed for the highly anticipated Deadpool & Wolverine, a third film starring Ryan alongside his Wolverine co-star Hugh Jackman.
It was a massive success as it integrated their characters into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
It was released on July 26, 2024.
Along the way Ryan released multiple other projects per year, solidly establishing him as a Hollywood rainmaker even after he announced he would be taking “a little sabbatical” from his work after the production of Spirited in 2022.
That’s because Ryan wasn’t only doing films, he had launched Maximum Effort, a production company in January 2018, and signed a three-year first-look deal with Fox.
That same year he acquired a stake in Aviation American Gin, and took the role overseeing the brand’s creative direction to great success. He sold Aviation American Gin to Diageo in a deal valued at up to $610 million in 2020.
He also purchased an ownership stake in Mint Mobile in November 2019, holding between 20% and 25%.
In 2020, Reynolds joined the board of Match Group a year later he sold his production company’s marketing division which had been spun off into a separate company to create ads for his film projects and brands like Peloton MNTN Software.
Ryan has the midas touch when it comes to business…and then he turned his sights on sports
Ryan alongside American actor Rob McElhenney announced their intention to buy Wrexham A.F.C., a Welsh professional association football club based North East Wales in the United Kingdom.
The team played in the National League, the fifth tier of the English football league system, below the Premier League and the three tiers of the English Football League.
At the time, the team was described to be struggling to the point of near collapse, and under threat to it] continued existence.
The deal was completed in February 202 as the Wrexham Supporter’s Trust, a fan-operated company, since 2011 approved the two actors to £2 million takeover by 98.6%
Rob and Ryan embraced Welsh culture, the team and fully threw themselves into being team owners.
They promoted the language in their media projects and Ryan asked that Welsh subtitles be included with his Netflix movie Red Notice in 2021.
The whole fascinating process of their investment in Wrexham is covered by the television documentary series Welcome to Wrexham.
During and since their takeover, Wrexham rose in the rankings of the National League from 8th place to 2nd at the end of their first year of ownership.
The team successfully secured promotion to the EFL League Two during the 2022–23 season and during the 2023–24 season they won a back-to-back promotion to EFL League One.
Ryan also pursued ownership of the National Hockey League’s Ottawa Senators but withdrew his bid in the middle of 2023
He later became part of an investor group that acquired a 24% stake in the Alpine F1 Team.
Through all of his incredible successes he remains proudly Canadian.
This is why I wanted to start this series above all else…
As Canadians, we tend to keep our love for our country just under the surface.
And it seems like during the past few months for the first time in living memory, it seems like our sovereignty is under threat.
I’ve seen as our flags fly off store shelves, made in Canada stickers are everyone and almost everyone is ready with an “Elbows Up”
I wanted to focus on what makes us special
No matter where his life may take him or where his root are here and he makes sure share his love for Canada… because in some ways he never left
As he said Canada is always close to his heart and his upcoming project might be one of the most personal ones to date
I would love to thank Ryan for inspiring me to do this series and for biting more than he could by sharing his time with me.
A couple of months ago he requested I share the history about the Maple Leaf Gold Heist.
I will be re-releasing that episode with a short story from Ryan which includes the reason he reached out.
I’ll also be rereleasing my episode of The Odyssey, which was where I was first introduced to Ryan Reynolds acting for the first time.
In two weeks, I will be back with another episode of Canadian History Ehx Biography.
Join me as I bring you the story of actor, writer and comedian Mark Critch.
This episode was written and exec produced by dila v.
Audio production by Roslyn koufour and rob Johnston
If this is your first time listening and you like what you heard please take a moment and give us a five star review.
We love hearing form you, if you have a show topic you want me to cover you can email me at craig@canadaehx.com
You can also visit my website, I will include all of those in my show notes. Until next time, I am craig baird and this was Canadian History Ehx.
