Ryan Reynolds on His Sweet Birthday Tribute to Wife Blake Lively (Exclusive)

But first, I'm not going to lie, Ryan, when I saw you in that snowy forest, I was like, this is going to be a Deadpool movie. Because that's where we saw you on the opening scene. This opening scene, yeah, I was getting with you. I know, right? I can't even do them. I wouldn't think about them. It's a snowy landscape. It looks like Bob Ross spent a couple of minutes on it. That, and you have a partner in crime that we're going to see all these wild adventures. But, I mean, what was it like bonding with Kenneth over this movie? No bonding necessary. I mean, it was like we knew each other for 20 years when we met on the set for the first time. We met on like a camera test kind of thing. It was like we just kept up, right? I don't know why that is. Some people just, I love this guy. It was funny. We were just straight into, because he was looking very handsome in his naval uniform and everything. And, I don't know, John and Jonathan, our great director writers, they said cut and walked across. It was like somehow we'd already been talking before that shot or something. But, it maybe was to do with sort of meeting in the middle of something that was work already, that we were already doing stuff. And, it was also establishing, look, we'll chat, but we've got to do this thing as well. So, it was already going, we'll chat as we go. Oh, we are. We're chatting. Oh, we're going. Yeah, we're going. It started. And then somewhere along the way, you guys obviously discovered your love for football. Oh, yeah. Clearly. Was that the thing that took it to the next level? Yeah, that was the thing where you sort of like, you know, you'd hear them go, guys, guys, guys. We're just called action. Can we just, we should get back to the scripted words instead of the football words. It's just the detail, isn't it? It's getting into the weeds on the football that you find is so, we got caught up in sort of little micro details of, you know, certain plays in certain games, et cetera. It was just a, yeah. This man is being humble. His knowledge of football is so vast that I often wonder. Yeah, he's a Spurs supporter. And we all know what that means in our country. Well, it's not important to dwell on where they are at the moment, but we're in a period of change. Okay. Got a welcome change, haven't you? Aren't we all? I mean. Yeah. Did he get competitive, though? No, no, no, no. Okay. This is, man, it's like genuinely, and I'm not just saying this because we're in a TV interview. That's what I think. He is one of the best people I've ever met. Like, just a good human being. But, like, you can be on a film set, and you can work with people, and you can kind of go right away. You can identify, oh, gosh, this person's trying to win in every scene. And that's never going to make a great movie. It might make a good performance. I don't know. But it will never make a great movie. But Kenneth has directed so many movies, written so many movies. And he's just been in the inner guts of it all. He understands the military precision of it. You know, the idea that you're five minutes early is on time. And the idea that, like, telling a story is about sharing and moving and being vulnerable to other people and, like, really, like, tapping into every expertise on the set. Well, he's describing what he does. And one of the things that was so interesting, a simple example of that, I'd get called to the set. I'd come out of the trailer. And as I was around in the corner of mine, he was around in the corner of his. So, there was no, it was just, boom, we would meet on the way. And I said, well, of course, they've asked for you. You go. There's no, there can be quite a lot of pepperoni behavior that can go on that doesn't sort of understand. You're trying to catch lightning in a bottle. So, you better be there when the lightning hopefully strikes. I love that word, by the way. I'm going to put that in my daily left hook on, pepperoni. It's the name of my memoir. Yeah, right? Pepperoni. I do want to talk about your commitment to this role because not only did you have the accent, you had the KGB stunts going on. And I heard that you really put your all into it. So, walk me through that process. Well, I knew I had to fight with him just a little bit. And then we had to fight together. And then we would be doing a lot of running and jumping. So, the goal was you have to get there early. You have to be ready. You might get your stretch, stretch, stretch. And also be ready to accept that, oh, so you can practice and you get into the choreography, which is great. It's beautiful, like a great dance. And he's tremendous at that. So, a very, very comfort giving partner. But you also do knock your knees and your elbows and all the rest of it. You've got to get up and get on with it. It's got to be right for that camera moment. For a man of a certain age to be asked to do something like that's a big thrill. He was spectacular at it, though. I mean, it was phenomenal to get a front row seat to him watching this guy just kick ass in every square inch of that frame. I mean, it was really wonderful to see when an action star can kind of be born and leapfrog over the old and new guard in a way. I mean, he's done. Finally, he's tiring of the Shakespeare stuff. And he's like, I need to go kick some, I need to go mutilate ass in a movie for 95 minutes. And that's what he does. Did he inspire you to do the Shakespeare stuff, though? Oh, gosh, yes. I just pressed my temple against his as hard as I could. I managed to download the first three words of Hamlet. That was it. That's all I got. You know, when I worked with Keanu Reeves a few months ago, within months of us doing the picture together, Keanu was playing Hamlet in Winnipeg. Oh, look at that. Winter peg. Was it cold? Is it cold? Okay, so I have to ask, though, speaking of that, because you have a Canadian playing an American, Rip playing a Russian, who had a bigger identity crisis on set? Good question. Yeah, that is, yeah. Yeah, I think. Shooting in Eastern Europe and Canada. Yeah. So. Yes, I was finding my inner Irishman was coming out through the vehicle of wild man of the woods, Nikolai Ustinov. So I did enjoy, my grandfather was somebody my father referred to as a tinker, which was a word to describe a sort of itinerant buyer and seller of goods. You know, so if he found stuff, a job lot of, I don't know, some piece of a horse bridle or whatever, he'd be out selling it and buying other weird things. Nikolai Ustinov is in his cabin with a collection of items. It was quite unusual and, of course, most unusual that many of them feature around and about the film Top Gun. So that was where the biggest identity crisis came. So where does your inner KGB man sit with your fanboy Tom Cruise? Well, I guess not to over intellectualize it or anything like that, but it's interesting when you have, you know, characters that both would probably have mythologized each other before ever having met. Right. You have an American military sort of, you know, Air Force pilot kind of guy who's meeting a Russian KGB agent. I mean, you've already boogeyman this person into oblivion before you ever even met them. So it's kind of I like that there were you kind of breaking down those some of those barriers. You know, I play a Top Gun pilot is exactly the guy you want in a cockpit, but he's totally incompetent when he hits the ground. Like my character is useless. And he relies on him to stay alive in this space of Siberia. And it's now forced to listen, isn't it? You're physically. Yes. And then the nice crucible of this story is that that man who might have been the bogeyman for somebody like me suddenly becomes we're dependent on each other to get out. It's a race against time and it's a race to get home. And suddenly emotions are much closer to the surface, even though they come out in these situations of extreme comic peril. But that doesn't make them any less true. If like this one, you're taking very seriously in the way that works with comedy, the sort of inner life of the of the character. And it was so great to see having seen him be wild and unleashed in numerous extraordinary performances recently to see that sort of ability to listen and be and be changed by it inside this comic world was beautiful. Oh, my God. I just lastly, we were partner in crime. We had beautiful words for him for your real life partner in crime birthday. Yeah. All the guys are taking notes. How did she react? All the guys are taking notes. You know, old married guys birthday. No, it's a I'd love. You know, we have the succession of birthdays that all happen in like August, September, October, December. It's just like, oh, yeah, it's just like this endless kind of row of them that go right through Christmas as well. So it's yeah, there's just you just you don't pop the balloons. You just put them away. That I think is a wonderful metaphor for life. Yeah. I will. You make me you make me not want to pop my balloons. You make me a better person every day. I need to see the birthday post you put for him. I'm gonna wait for that one. That one's a fountain pen. Yeah. Thank you guys so much. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. You look great by the way. Thank you so much.