Ryan Reynolds stepped out for the first time since Blake Lively filed a legal complaint and subsequent lawsuit against Justin Baldoni, his production partner and company, and several others. He was in New York at the NBR Awards last night to honour Wicked which was named Best Picture. 

 

Ryan and Blake were at a screening for Wicked when the movie came out last year and took a photo with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande that was widely shared. So this isn’t coming out of nowhere. On the carpet and on stage, Ryan appeared to be warmly greeted by the cast, and on stage he did his usual Ryan Reynolds thing – here he is taking it to Jonathan Bailey, 

 

In the video and in the photos, at least to me, he did seem a little low energy, looked wan, or maybe that’s just projection given the situation. It’s no doubt been stressful for Blake and Ryan both, not just over the last few weeks but the last several months after the chaos of the It Ends With Us press tour. After the details from Justin Baldoni’s lawsuit against the New York Times came out, a lot of headlines were focused on Ryan in particular, about how he had Justin over to his and Blake’s place and yelled at him for fat-shaming his wife. And yelled at Justin again at a subsequent meeting to go over boundaries for when shooting was to resume after the strikes. This, obviously, is supposed to make Ryan look like a tyrant, a bully, the Goliath to Justin’s David, in that much of Justin’s case is built on the premise that Ryan and Blake have all the power and have been wielding it against him in this whole mess. 

 

I’ve already written my thoughts on why I don’t think that just because Ryan and Blake are more famous it means they’re more powerful but there are definitely people out there, especially on social media, who can’t or won’t make that distinction. And Justin is certainly relying on that assumption to gain an advantage in the court of public opinion, and continue to use social media as a weapon in this war. 

 

What came to mind for me when news first broke about Justin’s lawsuit against the NYT was, again, Johnny Depp. There was already an association with Melissa Nathan who, prior to launching her own agency, was part of Johnny Depp’s crisis PR team. And much of the momentum starting building in Johnny’s favour when he sued Amber Heard over her op-ed in the Washington Post, another legacy newspaper. JD presumably would have wanted to also sue the Post if not for legal precedents (that certain SCOTUS justices might be “reconsidering”) but the bigger common point between the two cases is how they’re connected via the ongoing undermining of media institutions. Justin Baldoni is challenging the journalistic integrity of the New York Times, which makes him a natural ally to the sinister forces at play and at large who’ve been chipping away at public trust in publications like the NYT. And on that note, his lawyer, Bryan Freedman, has been hollering for days about how a subsequent lawsuit against Blake and Ryan is forthcoming – most recently on Megyn Kelly’s show: 

@megynkellyshow

Justin Baldoni's lawyer Bryan Freedman says he's going to sue Blake Lively "into oblivion" soon. #megynkellyshow #news

♬ original sound - The Megyn Kelly Show

I mean, if you’re claiming that you weren’t using about DARVO tactics that follow the pattern of previous successful campaigns against women with strategic digital and right wing media targeting, using Megyn Kelly’s f-cking platform and audience to advance your message isn’t convincing me otherwise. 

 

In other Ryan Reynolds news, after what’s come to light about the conflict with Justin Baldoni, fans have picked up on a character from Deadpool and Wolverine: Nicepool… and are speculating that Nicepool, who is killed by Lady Deadpool (Blake) and performs kindness and non-toxic masculinity, is based on Justin. Here’s a compilation.