No one watching “SNL 50: The Anniversary Special” on Sunday night would think that Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively were caught off guard when Tina Fey and Amy Poehler jokingly asked the “Deadpool” actor how he was doing amid his wife’s sexual harassment lawsuit against her “It Ends With Us” director and co-star Justin Baldoni.
Indeed, a beloved, long-time member of the “Saturday Night Live” crew has since revealed that Reynolds’ brief comedy bit with Fey and Poehler was scripted and that it was the actor’s idea to throw in a joke referencing his wife’s legal ordeal.
During the “SNL” special, Fey and Poehler took the stage and called on celebrities in the audience for a Q&A session. When Reynolds raised his hand and stood, Fey and Poehler asked how he was doing.
“(I’m doing) great. Why, what have you heard?” Reynolds replied in his characteristic jokey way, though his comment elicited uncomfortable laughter and stunned looks from Kevin Costner and other celebrities in the audience. Lively, sitting next to her husband, kept her face frozen in a smile until seeming to look up at him with surprise at his joke. She has said in her lawsuit that her situation with Baldoni has left her suffering from “grief, fear, trauma and extreme anxiety.”
In fact, Reynolds rehearsed his bit with Fey and Poehler before the show aired live, said Wally Feresten, better known among “SNL” stars, guests and fans as “Cue Card Wally,” during a Tuesday interview with Australian breakfast radio show, “Fifi, Fev & Nick.”
Even more, Reynolds used “a different line in rehearsal” then pitched the Baldoni scandal joke “to replace” the original, Feresten said. “That was his idea to do it,” the crew member said.
Feresten went on to say that the show tries to consider the feelings of its celebrity guests’ feelings before poking fun at them. “We wouldn’t want to do anything too controversial unless they were in on it. So yeah, that was his line. That was his idea to do it.”
But now, Reynolds, or his people, don’t seem to be happy that Feresten spilled that Reynolds pushed to do a joke that sparked headlines and backlash. Contacted by Us Weekly, a source close to Reynolds denied Feresten’s version of events. It also appears that Reynolds’ representatives may have shared their displeasure with “Saturday Night Live,” because representatives for the show also told Us Weekly that the longtime crew member’s claims were “not true.”
Among those who questioned the appropriateness of Reynolds’ joke — and whether he was effectively minimizing his wife’s allegations that she was sexually harassed — was Baldoni’s attorney. Bryan Freedman criticized Reynolds joke during Monday’s episode of the “Hot Mics With Billy Bush” podcast.
“I’m unaware of anybody, frankly, whose wife has been sexually harassed and has made jokes about that type of situation. I can’t think of anyone who’s done anything like that,” Freedman said. “So it surprised me.”
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Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds accused of minimizing sexual harassment with ‘SNL50’ bit
Lively has been embroiled in a bitter, high-stakes legal battle with Baldoni since late December 2024, after the two co-starred in the dramatic film “It Ends With Us,” based on Colleen Hoover’s novel about a florist who falls in love with a handsome but abusive neurosurgeon. Lively initially filed a civil rights complaint in California and went to The New York Times to accuse Baldoni of sexual harassment and to allege that his Wayfarer Studios production company was complicit in the director creating a hostile work environment.
In that complaint and in a subsequent lawsuit, Lively also alleged that Baldoni, his studio and their publicists sought to retaliate against her for speaking up about the harassment by orchestrating a digital media “smear campaign” to damage her reputation during the film’s August 2024 release.
Baldoni has vehemently denied being sexually inappropriate with Lively during the film’s production or working with his publicists to orchestrate a PR war against her. In his own lawsuit, Baldoni has accused Lively and Reynolds of seizing control of the movie’s writing and final edit, even after he spent several years developing it from Hoover’s book. He accused the couple and their publicists of trying to damage his reputation and rob him of lucrative work opportunities by working with The New York Times to publish a one-sided story against him.
The legal back-and-forth continued this week with Lively filing an amended complaint that accused Baldoni of making other women “uncomfortable” on the set of “It Ends With Us.” But Freedman, Baldoni’s attorney, hit back with a statement that called Lively’s amended complaint “underwhelming” and said it was “filled with unsubstantial hearsay of unnamed persons who are clearly no longer willing to come forward or publicly support her claims.”
In his statement, Freedman also got in another dig at Reynolds for his “SNL” joke. He said, “Our clients have taken this matter and these issues very seriously notwithstanding the jokes made publicly by the plaintiff and her husband.”
