Is there someone in your life who floods your inbox with photos? Have you tried to get them to stop, but failed?
You might want to try Ryan Reynolds’ trick to convince his father to be a bit more choosy before hitting the send button.
Then again, you might not.
Last month the Vancouver-born actor was on BBC’s Graham Norton Show to promote Deadpool 2. Apart from it becoming a love-in with Josh Brolin, who plays Cable in the darkly funny action hero movie, the 45-minute talk show also showcased Reynolds’ ability to never let a good laugh get in the way of a true story.
It turns out that Reynolds’ father Jim, who died in 2015, was enamoured with taking photos. “Your dad, it was like he was training you for paparazzi. He was very snap happy,” Norton says to Reynolds.
“Actually,” the actor responded, “the saddest moment in our childhood, and these are uptown problems, was when they switched from film to digital because to my father that was just like every day was the lottery. It was amazing. You could just take pictures and pictures and pictures, thousands of them.
“It could be thousands of pictures of just a meatloaf that’s blurry.”
Every night Jim Reynolds would download the photos and send them as a batch to his relatives.
“This was back when the internet was made of a fax machine of wood,” his son said. “It was so much material to download that you’d feel like the lights dimmed in your home.”
The actor tried to get his father to stop, or at least cut down on the number of photos he’d email.
“Dad,” Ryan told his father, “you don’t need to send every photo. We don’t need to see the blurry photo of the ceiling you took. Just edit yourself a little.”
Alas, his father kept sending all those meatloaf photos.
That’s the wrong thing to do when you’re the father of the actor whose offbeat sense of humour has earned him 11 million Twitter followers and 21 million Instagram fans.
You’ve awakened a sleeping moose, Europe.
— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds)
“After a while, and I deeply regret this now as an adult male,” Reynolds told Graham, “I would take the camera in the middle of dinner and I’d go in the bathroom and I’d grab a quick shot of my penis. And then he’d email it to everybody — Aunt Cathy, Uncle Tim. Gramps got a few of those….”
Vanessa Kirby — who played Princess Margaret in The Crown but was on the show to promote her new movie, Mission: Impossible — Fallout — asked if the recipients believed the penis belonged to his father.
“That was [my father’s] concern, which is what actually in a weird way made the whole thing work for me,” Ryan responds. “After that he became a strict editor so you’d get only just two lovely family photos not 60,000 shots of a mashed potato. And a penis.”
That was when the bromance between Reynolds and Brolin made itself evident.
Brolin said he hadn’t heard a word of the story because Reynolds was like that kid in elementary school who always amazed you and who the rest of the class was always in awe of.
“Every time I’m with him it’s like somebody spiked my water with LSD and I’m just sitting there in awe,” Brolin said.
When Norton responded, “This is lovely,” Brolin replied, “It’s not a compliment. I’m sober. I’m not supposed to have LSD.”
“You’re high on Ryan,” Norton said solicitously.
The host then shared a recent photo of Reynolds and Brolin in Rome as part of their publicity tour. Reynolds has his arm around Brolin and the photo prompted Reynolds to remark, “Oh boy, I could feel Josh feeling deeper and deeper there.”
“That is like your honeymoon picture,” Norton giggles (and for those who have yet to discover the show, he does giggle.)
Brolin said that the previous night, he’d sent Reynolds a text telling him how much he was enjoying their time together. “You don’t have to downplay it,” Reynolds said. “It was a love letter.”
“It was a very intimate love letter that I feel really good about, not only how it was written but the heart behind it,” Brolin deadpans as the two actors effortlessly play off one another.
“But you had feelings for Ryan before you met Ryan,” Norton said to Brolin.
Brolin then comes clean about how deep was his love. “I saw The Proposal and I have no shame in saying that even though I saw it alone, all three times, that I was a fan. I am a fan.”
“I just cannot wrap my head around you sitting around and watching The Proposal. No, not at all,” Reynolds said, prompting the rom-com-loving Brolin to pump his arm to reassert his masculinity.
Reynolds still couldn't buy it. “I can see watching it and just being like, ‘F*** this guy,’” Reynolds said.
“No, I felt that when I saw Green Lantern,” Brolin said, referring to a Deadpool joke about Reynolds’ epic flop in a previous super hero outing.
“So did I,” Reynolds said.
