Ryan Reynolds sat down for his first television interview since his wife Blake Lively’s legal battle against her It Ends With Us director and costar, Justin Baldoni, began.
The Deadpool & Wolverine star, 48, appeared on the Monday, May 12, episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Reynolds held puppies during Colbert’s adorable “Rescue Dog Rescue” segment, and sat with the host, 61, to discuss season 4 of Welcome to Wrexham, which returns to FX on Thursday, May 15. The docuseries follows the highs and lows of Wrexham A.F.C., the Welsh football team that Reynolds owns.
“It’s mayhem,” he said of attending his team’s games. “It’s the ecstasy and joy that you can’t believe exists in this world right now that we live in. We live in a digital hate tank.”
The actor praised “concerts and sports and movies and places where we gather together” as venues for fostering community. He did not address his and Lively’s ongoing legal drama with Baldoni.
Earlier on Monday, Reynolds was a guest on the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast, where he also kept mum on the Lively-Baldoni feud.
Reynolds and Lively, 37, have been keeping a lower profile since December 2024, when she filed a lawsuit claiming that Baldoni, 41, sexually harassed her, created a “hostile work environment,” caused her “severe emotional distress” and orchestrated an alleged smear campaign against her. Baldoni has vehemently denied the allegations against him.
Baldoni countersued Lively, Reynolds and her publicist in January, accusing them of civil extortion, defamation, false light invasion of privacy and more. Lively and Reynolds denied the allegations, while Lively’s publicist requested to be removed from the lawsuit.
In March, Reynolds filed a motion to dismiss Baldoni’s lawsuit. According to court documents obtained by Us Weekly at the time, Reynolds’ legal team argued that Baldoni’s case “does not identify a single allegedly defamatory statement” made by Reynolds.
“The entirety of Mr. Baldoni’s case appears to be based on Mr. Reynolds allegedly privately calling Mr. Baldoni a ‘predator,’ but here is the problem, that is not defamation unless they can show that Mr. Reynolds did not believe that statement to be true,” Reynolds’ attorneys Mike Gottlieb and Esra Hudson said in a statement to Us at the time. “The complaint doesn’t allege that, and just the opposite, the allegations in the complaint suggest that Mr. Reynolds genuinely believes Mr. Baldoni is a predator.”
The statement continued: “Mr. Reynolds’ wife has accused Mr. Baldoni — privately and in multiple complaints — of sexual harassment and retaliation, and as pointed out by Mr. Reynolds’ motion, Mr. Baldoni has also openly spoken about his past of mistreating women and pushing the boundaries of consent. Mr. Reynolds has a First Amendment right to express his opinion of Mr. Baldoni, which should be comforting to a group of people who have repeatedly called Ms. Lively and Mr. Reynolds ‘bullies’ and other names over the past year.”
After Reynolds filed his motion to dismiss, Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, told Us in a March statement that Reynolds “was a key player in the scheme, defaming Justin around Hollywood, strong-arming WME into dropping Justin as a client and trying to destroy Justin’s career however possible.”
Freedman added, “Mr. Reynolds now attempts to reduce plainly cognizable claims to ‘hurt feelings,’ sending a clear message that bullying is acceptable. After lighting a match, Mr. Reynolds now seeks to run from the flames. It won’t work. The Wayfarer Parties’ claims against him are real, and they are serious.”
Freedman concluded that his legal team would “not stop” until Reynolds was “held accountable for his actions.”
In court documents obtained by Us in April, Baldoni’s attorneys argued that the complaint against Reynolds “alleges ample facts to support the Wayfarer Parties’ claims against him, based on both his direct actions and his liability as a co-conspirator.”
A spokesperson for Reynolds responded to the filing in a statement to Us at the time.
“The main takeaway from the Wayfarer Parties’ opposition to Ryan’s motion to dismiss their case is that they finally realize the plain defects in their complaint,” the statement said. “They once again claim defamation without alleging who was defamed, what specifically was said or how anyone suffered actual harm.”
Lively and Baldoni’s case is set to go to trial in May 2026.
