Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have released an advert repeatedly urging fans to ‘act now’ and purchase football kits for their co-owned club Wrexham.
Joking that running a football club ‘is like lighting money on fire’, the pair address the camera with a series of self-deprecating pleas, changing their outfit in each clip to a different iteration of the kit.
The actors bought the Welsh club in November, 2020, for a reported £2million and have since loaned it £9million, with football experts estimating their total input at £20million.
‘You may have seen a lot of announcements recently,’ Reynolds says in the clip, referring to the signing of ‘pretty legit players’ in the recent transfer window.
And McElhenney tells of plans for a ‘shiny new’ stadium which Reynolds calls ‘expensive.’
‘Running a football club is like lighting money on fire except it doesn’t keep you warm,’ he quips.
And his co-owner joins in: ‘Picture a black hole. Now throw your wallet in it.’
The pair point to a 50 per cent off sale and encourage viewers to ‘act now’, asking: ‘Are you acting now yet?’
Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have released an advert urging fans to purchase football kits for their co-owned club Wrexham (Pictured: Reynolds in the video)
The pair address the camera with a series of pleas, changing their outfit in each clip to a different iteration of the kit (Pictured: McElhenney in the video)
Reynold’s wife Blake Lively is caught up in a highly publicised $250million legal battle with actor Justin Baldoni (Pictured: The couple at the premiere of It Ends With Us)
‘Because running a football club is like running into a financial brick wall.’
Reynolds says: ‘You may think it’s all fun and games but you haven’t received a call from Rob McElhenney at 3am screaming bloody murder “this thing is bleeding me dry every single f***ing week.”‘
At this point McElhenney breaks the fourth wall and chimes in: ‘No, um, I wasn’t screaming at you Ryan, I was crying.’
And Reynolds rounds off the clip by once again echoing the catchphrase: ‘Act now. Or whenever you can. Just kidding, act now.’
Fans were impressed with the ‘awesome marketing strategy’ but roundly disappointed by the club’s website which appeared to time out and crash.
Commenters joked that ‘everyone has listened’ to the actor duo’s announcement, leading the site to shut down as they were trying to place their orders.
The advert comes as Reynold’s wife Blake Lively is caught up in a highly publicised $250million legal battle with actor Justin Baldoni.
Baldoni is suing Lively for defamation after she claimed that he sexually harassed her on the set of It Ends With Us.
Fans were impressed by the self-deprecating marketing strategy but roundly disappointed by the club website which appeared to time out and crash (Pictured: Reynolds in the video)
Baldoni is suing Lively for defamation after she claimed that he sexually harassed her on the set of It Ends With Us (Pictured: Lively and Reynolds in the stands at Wembley Stadium)
In December last year, Lively filed a legal complaint against Baldoni, accusing him of sexual harassment and orchestrating a smear campaign against her (Pictured: Reynolds and Lively)
Baldoni stars in and directed the movie based on the novel by Colleen Hoover, which came out last August and co-stars Lively as florist Lily Bloom.
Although the film was an enormous success, bringing in more than $350million globally, things were not operating as smoothly behind the scenes.
In December last year, Lively filed a legal complaint against Baldoni, accusing him of sexual harassment and orchestrating a smear campaign against her.
In December, 2024, The New York Times published a bombshell report that ignited the legal feud.
The article, titled We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine, the paper shed light on allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation made by Lively against Baldoni during filming.
Baldoni firmly denied the accusations and his PR team accused the NYT and its journalists of being in league with Lively with the article that ‘cherry-picked and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead.’
While the initial lawsuit in California has been dropped, the NYT has been added to Baldoni’s amended complaint in New York, which also names Ryan Reynolds and the couple’s publicist Leslie Sloane.
Now, Lively is standing firmly behind the NYT as the publication fights to be removed from the lawsuit.
The outlet filed a motion in a New York federal court on Friday, defending its reporting on Lively’s accusations against Baldoni, according to Deadline.
The NYT maintains that its reporting on Lively’s sexual harassment claims against Baldoni was fair and accurate, while asserting that Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios’ ‘one-sided’ allegations have no relevance to the publication.
