Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively may be having a financially successful year, but it’s come with controversy. Take the It Ends With Us debacle earlier this year, where Lively was accused of glamorizing domestic violence with her marketing for the movie, which deals with serious themes of abuse.
Reynolds and Lively are the Marmite of celebrity couples: you either love them or you hate them. And unfortunately, the pendulum of the internet is swinging more towards “hate them” these days. The most recent outrage is regarding some comments Reynolds made about his and Lively’s upbringings during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. When talking about how he and Lively raise their kids, he said, “I try not to impose upon them the difference in their childhood to my childhood or my wife’s childhood. We both grew up very working class.”
And people were quick to roll their eyes at that. You see, Lively could much more easily be considered a nepo baby than “working class.” Her mother was a talent scout and her father, Ernie Lively, was an actor. Sure, he wasn’t a household name, but he was still successful, appearing in The X-Files and Seinfeld, among other things. Lively grew up learning the tools of the acting trade and was ten years old when she appeared in her first film. By the time she was a teen, she’d already appeared in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, where her father played her onscreen father, and that role helped catapult her to the fame she enjoys today. It’s not that the family can’t have ever had money worries, but labeling all that as “working class” is just… no.
While Reynold’s comment about Lively has borne the brunt of the criticism, people have pointed out that he’s not really working class, either, although he was much closer to it than his now-wife. Reynold’s mother was in retail, but his father was a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
When The Cut posted Reynolds’ comments to their popular Instagram account, fans were quick to start roasting. “You keep using that word, “working class.” I do not think it means what you think it means,” one person wrote. Another commenter was harsher, writing, “Ryan and Blake are so out of touch and desperate to be seen as relatable it’s pathetic.”
And then there were the comments about Reynolds’ and Lively’s absolutely beyond tasteless choice of wedding venue. “Working class people don’t get married on plantaaaaations,” read one comment with 800 likes. Back in 2012, Reynolds and Lively wed on a former slave plantation, a venue where the cabins that housed enslaved people were still standing, and the internet has never let them forget it. Reynolds and Lively have apologized for what they did and made donations to anti-racist efforts, but it continues to haunt them.
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Still, others on social media have drawn comparisons with another very rich couple, Victoria and David Beckham, and Victoria’s now-famous false claim to working-class heritage. Last year, in the documentary Beckham, Victoria tried to make out as though she had had a working-class upbringing. Then David called out “Be honest,” and eventually got her to admit that she was driven to school in a Rolls Royce by her father. It’s not for nothing that she was nicknamed Posh Spice when she was in the Spice Girls, after all. And guess what, Lively was a fan of Victoria – looks like the two women have something in common.
Why does all this matter? Well, it matters because there simply aren’t that many working-class people in the entertainment industry. Instead, nepo babies rule the scene and that means important perspectives are being left out. So, when Reynolds claims Blake Lively was working class, it’s offensive to those who actually are, and who are struggling right now to be heard.
Published: Dec 19, 2024 02:08 pm