Ryan Reynolds made an appearance Tuesday night, January 7, at the National Board of Review Awards at the Cipriani in New York City, which HELLO! attended.
The 48-year-old Canadian-American actor was on-hand to present the final award of the night, Best Picture, to Wicked, his first public appearance since his wife Blake Lively's lawsuit against her It Ends With Us director and co-star Justin Baldoni.
Amid the controversy surrounding the lawsuit and all the figures involved (including Ryan himself), he was able to deliver a hilarious yet tender tribute to the Jon M. Chu film, which has already become a critical darling and was one of 2024's highest grossing films.
While at first poking fun at the Creative Collaboration award not going to him and Hugh Jackman for their work in Deadpool & Wolverine (instead going to Wicked's Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo), he recalled his experience with the film.
Ryan started off his introduction sharing with the crowd that he saw Wicked at the Metrograph Theater in Manhattan's Lower East Side, a moment which turned out to be quite the full circle for him.
"I saw Wicked at the Metrograph Theater here in New York City," he started. "It is the very same theater I attended in 2017 when I took my then three-year-old daughter to see her first film on the big screen…which was The Wizard of Oz."
In this instance, Ryan is referring to his oldest daughter James, who turned 10 years old last month. Ryan and Blake also share daughters Inez, eight, and Betty, five, plus son Olin, who will turn two years old next month.
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In his speech, he also spoke at length about the work of the director and its two leads, praising Cynthia for perfectly meeting the lofty expectations that were set upon her and Ariana for delivering a comedic performance he believed Gene Wilder would be proud of.
Wicked ended 2024 as the year's sixth highest grossing film, grossing over $682 million worldwide, and is now the highest grossing musical film adaptation of all time. The sequel, Wicked: For Good, is slated for a November 21, 2025 release.
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Ryan also had a major box office winner of his own on his hands with Deadpool & Wolverine, the third in the Deadpool franchise and the first to be released as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The film reunited Ryan with his off-screen best friend and put Wade Wilson and Logan on the same screen for the first time in 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
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The highly-anticipated release received mostly positive reviews and became a box office smash, grossing over $1.3 billion at the box office and surpassing the collections by the previous two films.
Deadpool & Wolverine became the highest grossing R-rated film of all time, only the second to gross over $1 billion at the global box office (following 2019's Joker), plus the second highest of 2024 behind Inside Out 2. It was nominated for the Golden Globe for Box Office Achievement, but lost to Wicked.