“Somebody stop me!”
Ryan Reynolds has been leaning into his comedy chops since he started acting, according to his former co-star Matthew Lawrence.
During a discussion about Reynolds and Blake Lively’s legal battle with Justin Baldoni on Friday’s episode of his “Brotherly Love” podcast, Lawrence, 45, shared a story about when he and Reynolds, 48, worked together on the 1998 Frankenstein movie “Boltneck.”
“It just missed the mark, but it was a really interesting movie, great script,” Lawrence recalled. “Anyway, the funny part about it is that the production team was having a really hard time with Ryan. This is young Ryan.”
“I had grown up in the industry so I had known by way around a set by that point. I was dialed in,” Lawrence said. “He wasn’t dialed in.”
The “Mrs. Doubtfire” star explained about Reynolds, “He’d walk out, just wanted to kind of do his thing. And the producers were getting really upset, and they even told them that, ‘Ryan, this is a bad Jim Carrey impersonation. This is not what we hired you to do. You can’t impersonate someone. You got to do your own thing.’”
“And he got upset at that,” Lawrence claimed. “And he was like, ‘I’m doing my thing.’ And then I was privy to a meeting between the director. This crew, I think they were just nominated for an Oscar, so they were kind of a big deal at that moment. Talk about frustration on set with actors.”
Lawrence said that, at the time, he thought to himself, “I can’t believe this guy. We had so much hope for this guy. He’s going nowhere.”
“You never know in Hollywood, folks,” Lawrence added with a laugh. “You never know.”
Lawrence alleged that the people behind “Boltneck,” which was directed by Mitch Marcus, written by Dave Payne, and produced by Paul Colichman and Mark R. Harris, blamed Reynolds for the movie “not working.”
But Lawrence said that he actually commends the “Green Lantern” star for how he acted at the time.
“I’m not even mad at Ryan in the sense that he honestly stayed true to who he truly is authentically,” he shared. “Honestly, he was trying to ‘Deadpool’ it. That’s what he was trying to do to the script on set.”
“That is where my experience with Ryan Reynolds,” Lawrence said. “He obviously matured as a human being. But he was doing the same thing. That’s always been his shtick, his thing.”
The Post has reached out to Reynolds’ rep for comment.
The “Deadpool” star and Lively, 37, are currently in a major lawsuit with her “It Ends With Us” co-star and director.
Lively sued Baldoni, 41, last December, accusing him of sexual harassment and orchestrating a public smear campaign against her.
The “Jane the Virgin” actor has denied all Lively’s accusations and countersued her and Reynolds, alleging defamation, extortion and more. Lively and Reynolds have denied Baldoni’s claims.
In her complaint against Baldoni that was published by the New York Times in December, Lively said her husband — who wrote the rooftop scene in her movie, despite not being a producer on the project — has been “affected mentally, physically and professionally” by the “pain” inflicted on Lively and their four children.
Baldoni, in his lawsuit against the NYT, accused Reynolds of “berating” him at a meeting at the couple’s New York City penthouse over Baldoni allegedly fat-shaming Lively. Baldoni said the incident was “traumatic” and that he’d “never been spoken to like that in his life.”
Lively and Reynolds have laid low amid the drama with Baldoni — aside from when they attended the “SNL 50” special on Feb. 16, where Reynolds cracked a joke about the lawsuit.
