This Week in Gossip #46

Ryan Reynolds isn’t mad at Martha Stewart, the Grammy noms are actually pretty good, and Star Wars is trying to make fetch happen again.

Why is Ryan Reynolds So Wound Up by Martha Stewart’s “Not Funny” Comment?

Let’s start things off with a hilariously petty and low-stakes story.

Martha Stewart, ever known for a great bitchy one-liner, made a casually scathing comment about her neighbour, Ryan Reynolds, being not funny but rather quite serious in real life. It was the kind of insult sandwich that Snoop Dogg’s BFF is known for and a nice little mood lifter during a hellish time. Reynolds responded on Instagram, because of course he did, then we all expected to move on. But then Reynolds talked to TMZ about it, dragging it out further by saying he’d only met Martha a couple of times. He seemed oddly wound up about it and kept talking about it.

This reeks of flop sweat, right? Reynolds’ entire shtick is being On all the time, entertaining everyone with a self-effacing smirk and quick one-liner. It works when he’s Deadpool, making him as close to universally beloved as any modern movie-star has ever been. It’s also worked with his many side-hustles, like Wrexham FC, which gave him a chance to be Ted Lasso for a worldwide audience. I can see why he’d respond to the Stewart comment with a joke then move on. That’s expected of him. But the TMZ bit? And making it seem as though she’s all wrong in her assessment of him? That’s a bit too desperate.

It makes him seem supremely bothered by the comment. And it wasn’t a damning indictment of Reynolds. Yeah, it was a tad bitchy because that’s Martha’s default mode but all she said was, “he’s not funny all the time but rather serious.” I imagine that’s an accurate and pretty fair assessment. Most comic actors aren’t wisecracking off the clock. Besides, getting into a battle with Martha Stewart seems like an instant loss.

I also don’t entirely buy that they’ve only met once or twice. Martha Stewart’s wedding magazine got exclusive first rights to his plantation wedding and Blake has talked a lot about hanging out with her. They’re not BFFs but I imagine they’ve met at least a few more times. This is a petty point, again, but this whole matter is petty. It’s the kind of celeb silliness that we prefer to invest in over, you know, the other stuff.

There is, of course, the chance that this whole thing ends up with Reynolds getting Stewart to perform in a Mint Mobile ad or something and he can get selfies with her for his Instagram where they’re all cozy and suddenly it’s water under the bridge. This guy truly is always On in that aspect, always hustling and looking for a new branding opportunity. And why not? It’s currently paying off very well, although I think many more online fans continue to have questions over how he and Blake Lively handled the It Ends With Us mess.

This just sums up why I’ve become so exhausted by Reynolds. I wrote a piece a while back for Pajiba about how Reynolds’ decision to become more of a one-man business has led to his acting becoming less interesting. He’s using his roles as an extension of his brands, forever looking for a new platform to shill his gin on. Every character he plays nowadays is just Ryan Reynolds (or, if I’m being generous, less profane Deadpools.) It’s a shame because he has done some interesting work in the past with quirky titles like The Voices and Buried. I suspect he’ll choose to do something very Oscar baity in the future, much like how Dwayne Johnson has The Smashing Machine on the way for the 2025 awards season.

I wonder how Reynolds feels about people publicly being either totally ambivalent about him or even mildly critical, albeit in jokey ways. His image is built on the idea that everyone likes him, that we can all agree on this one thing in a world of debate and argument. But that never lasts long, as his Red Notice co-star Dwayne Johnson can attest to. We’re hard-wired to get sick of stuff and the backlash discourse is mightily strong. Besides, I remember the gossip about him in his pre-Deadpool days and his reputation was not that of a nicey-nice dude who charmed everyone in the room. Hell, I wonder if that rep is making a return after the It Ends With Us mess, which had his fingerprints all over it.

Chalk this up to a Martha victory. She cuts then leaves, probably to bake a cake and light up with Snoop.

Oh, Shut up About Wokeness, Damian Lewis

Did you know that Henry VIII was super un-woke? Yeah, take that, PC scolds. Cancel culture ain’t gonna come for old Henry. Damian Lewis is once again playing the Tudor king for the final part in the Wolf Hall trilogy, The Mirror and the Light. So, he's on the promotional trail and is getting all wound up about something that nobody actually cares about.