Ryan Reynolds on Free Guy, his Aussie obsession and plans for a film with frenemy Hugh Jackman

Even though they have been sledging each other for years, Ryan Reynolds reveals why his “secret goal” is to make a movie with his Aussie frenemy Hugh Jackman.

RYAN Reynolds and Hugh Jackman have been throwing shade at each other online for years but the truth behind their faux feud is that they are great mates who really want to make a movie together – and soon.

The two A-list stars are bound by their ability to effortlessly move between comedy, drama and superhero blockbusters, their status as Sexiest Man Alive (Jackman in 2008 and Reynolds in 2010) and a reputation as two of the nicest and most generous guys in Hollywood.

They also a share a colleague and friend in Shawn Levy, who directed Jackman in the 2011 sports drama Real Steel and is behind the lens of Reynolds’ new action-comedy Free Guy – and the Canadian actor says that the mutual admiration society should bear fruit on the big screen in the near future.

“Our dream at some point – and I know it will happen soon, hopefully in the next couple of years – is to make a movie that Shawn is directing that both Hugh and I are starring in,” Reynolds reveals exclusively to SMARTdaily. “That’s our secret goal that I haven’t actually revealed until now but this is the thing we talk about when we are all together. There is that connection and it is pretty great.”

Ryan Reynolds and director Shawn Levy on the set of the action-comedy Free Guy.

Reynolds is genuinely effusive in his praise of Jackman, who he starred with in the much-maligned X-Men Origins: Wolverine, playing a bastardised version of what would become his signature role, Wade Wilson – aka Deadpool. He recently described Jackman to the Smartless podcast as his “life Sherpa” and said “he makes kindness look like murder – he really is the nicest guy you would ever meet”. But that doesn’t mean the reciprocal trolling will end any time soon. Jackman, who in April clocked up 25 years of marriage to fellow actor Deborra-lee Furness, recently posted a picture of he and Levy at a barbecue together. When reminded that the Aussie superstar rather pointedly marked Reynolds’ lack of an invitation, his frenemy can’t help but take the bait.

“Well, I can’t wait because I have been invited to Deb’s wedding and Hugh has not been invited to that, so I am looking forward to posting about that in the very near future,” Reynolds says with a laugh. “That’s a little ace card in my pocket.”

At face value, Australians might well be offended by Reynolds’ attitude to the land Down Under. Not only has he been sledging our A-listers online (Chris Hemsworth also copped a serve), he cracked that the country was “barely on the planet” when it was admitted to the Eurovision Song Contest, and also mocks the accent in Free Guy. So, what gives, Reynolds?

Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman worked together on X-Men Origins: Wolverine in 2009 – and have been bagging each other ever since. Picture: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

“Honestly – and I know that Hugh could attest to this and I think Chris could attest to this, certainly Hugh’s wife Deb can attest to this – I am actually obsessed with Australia,” he admits. “I grew up in Canada and I feel like these two countries have a strange bond and kinship unlike anything else.

“When I would go snowboarding at Whistler, everyone would be from Sydney, Melbourne or Perth or Adelaide. I felt like Vancouver, British Columbia, was the fourth, maybe fifth biggest Australian city and most of my friends growing up were from Australia so I have a kind of affinity. And the greatest road trip of my life took place in Australia when I tried to ride a motorcycle from Sydney to Perth, which I later found out the hard way was a borderline suicidal idea.”

Reynolds is at his wisecracking, self-deprecating best for Free Guy, in which he plays a background character in a violent, first-person shooter video game who eventually becomes self-aware and disregards the rules of the game and its real-world players in pursuit of the woman of his dreams (played by Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer). As a child of the ‘80s, Reynolds says he was “basically weaned off Back To the Future and Indiana Jones”, and was attracted to the movie not just for its heart and optimism but also for the fact that it’s an entirely original property rather than a sequel, book or comic adaptation.

Jodie Comer as Molotov Girl and Ryan Reynolds as Guy in a scene from Free Guy.

“The lead character is filtered through the prism of optimism and that’s something that I think is also pretty rare these days in a movie of this size,” he says. “To me it proves that you can do a movie that is still subversive in certain ways, incredibly funny and has all the spectacle and action that you would expect from a summer blockbuster but it can still have a bit of heart as well, which is important.”

While he hesitates to draw any parallels between a character stuck in the same loop day after day and the continuing Covid lockdowns around the world – “that’s obviously a very serious, real world issue” – he does acknowledge that he and Levy were looking to bring some joy into a rather grim world when they started filming in 2019.

Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds at the Free Guy New York Premiere last week. Picture: Jamie McCarthy/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP

“You leave the theatre with a big smile on your face and you really were taken away to another place,” he says. “And most of that was in response to what is a pretty doom-and-gloom, 24-hour news cycle of ink-black depression that we were all stuck in not just over the last year and a half but for the last five or six years it’s been pretty intense.”

Free Guy also reunites Reynolds with Kiwi actor-writer-director Taika Waititi, who plays an over-the-top, self-obsessed video game entrepreneur villain. The pair first shared the screen on the ill-fated Green Lantern movie, with Reynolds in the lead role and then Hollywood newcomer Waititi in a thankless role as his sidekick/comic relief buddy. Since then, Waititi has become one of the most in-demand talents in Hollywood, turning Thor: Ragnarok into a critical and commercial hit and winning an Oscar for the screenplay of his WWII comedy-drama Jojo Rabbit. The pair also hooked up as their respective Marvel characters, Deadpool and Korg, for a hilariously meta promo video commentating the Free Guy trailer.

Taika Waititi and director Shawn Levy on the set of Free Guy.

“I have been friends with Taika for about 12 years now and I have to say I am really excited to watch him step into the genius that we all kind of knew and saw early on,” says Reynolds. “He is a really revelatory filmmaker and I am very, very lucky to be in his orbit every now and again for a variety of projects. He is pretty amazing.”

Reynolds, who was genuinely burned by the failure of Green Lantern at the time, has been joyfully scathing of the DC blockbuster over the years, but time has healed some of the wounds. He made peace with it by live tweeting a viewing earlier this year – and he’ll always be grateful that it gave him the opportunity to meet Blake Lively, who he married in 2012 and is mother to their three daughters, James, Inez and Betty.

“I mean at the end of the day, that’s not going to fix the box office,” he says with a laugh, “but I think it was a pretty wild success.”

Free Guy opens in cinemas tomorrow (September 9 in NSW).