MY LIFE WITH RYAN
Actress Blake Lively opens up about nerves, pranks and raising her girls with husband Ryan Reynolds
With a successful acting career, a hilarious heartthrob husband in Ryan Reynolds, 41, and two beautiful little girls, James, 3, and Inez, 1, Blake Lively personifies the woman who has it all. Shot to fame by teen drama Gossip Girl in 2007, the actress who turns 31 on Aug. 25, has made a series of interesting career choices since then, eschewing blockbusters for more unexpected, thoughtful films that have allowed her to hone her acting skills. In the upcoming A Simple Favour (in cinemas Sept. 20), she plays glamorous wife and mother Emily Nelson, whose disappearance turns the world of her mummy-blogger best friend, Stephanie (Anna Kendrick), upside down. “It was always like jumping without a net—that is what it felt like,” Lively says of making the twisty thriller.
The actress has also emerged as one half of a self-deprecating celebrity double-act, sending herself and her husband up in interviews and on social media. “We poke fun at each other in real life all the time,” she admits. And he returns serve: “My wife’s been shooting a film overseas so I’ve been having a ton of time to pretend like I’m watching the kids,” he joked in July. “She’s probably filing [divorce] papers as we speak.” In a wide-ranging chat with WHO, Lively clarifies how unlikely splitting with “best friend” Reynolds is, whether the two will appear onscreen together again, and how he has taught her to swear.
You and Ryan are great at making fun of each other on social media. Who started it?
It was just sort of an organic thing. I don’t know where or why or when it happened. But all day long we are just taking the piss out of each other because that’s my best friend. And I always win ... I am not competitive at all! [ Laughs]
Do you two plan to work together again or do you both actively avoid it?
Well, we have done our greatest work together—our family—and that is the work I am the most proud of. Maybe one day, there is nobody I would love to work with more than him. But I would also have the hardest time working around him because I don’t really care what other people think but I really care what he thinks and so I would be really nervous to act around him. I just want him to think I’m awesome and not ever find out that I am not.
When you look back at your time on Gossip Girl, how would you describe that experience?
Gossip Girl was a cultural phenomenon. Most TV shows you make for three weeks and take a break for a week but we were doing 27 episodes a year, shooting three episodes at once and getting our lines at the last minute and having 18 costume changes an episode and working 16 to 18 hour days! It wasn’t doing Shakespeare’s Coriolanus at the Donmar Warehouse theatre company, where you were rehearsing and you build a character. But without [ Gossip Girl], I wouldn’t be able to improvise like I did in [ A Simple Favour]. You had to be on your toes and adapt. You had to be able to learn five or six pages of dialogue 10 minutes before shooting. I’m not saying, “Oh, this is my greatest work as an actor,” but it was a totally different type of boot camp. I appreciate every single experience I had because I learned from all of them.
Speaking of improvising, you came up with some mean things to say in A Simple Favour and have a bit of a potty mouth. How easy was that?
I think I am maybe too nice most of the
time, which is probably why I could come up with so many mean lines—like all the things I may be filtering in life. But [the] more racy lines, I think, come from the fact that my mum doesn’t swear. I remember I said to my friend once something about cussing and I said, “Oh, I cuss,” and she responded, “Anyone who uses the word ‘cuss’ has never said ‘f--k!’ ” And that’s probably true. For me, it’s really the shock value you get out of saying racy words, and it’s more potent for me because I grew up in a family where you just never heard those words. “Damn” and “hell” were considered bad words, and I thought my parents were getting a divorce when my mum called my dad a jackass once—the only swear word I ever heard!
Your husband loves to swear, though!
Yes, so then imagine being married to my husband—you have seen Deadpool, right? You can imagine what that did to my vocabulary. But our director, Paul Feig, is also someone who has characters say very provocative things but is more conservative in real life. So there would be these scenes where he would say, “Instead of the S word, let’s try the T word” and on camera I’d say the words from here to kingdom come, but as soon as he called “cut,” we were like speaking in code about the words because we were flustered to say them in real life.
Did you rely on the script or the book or your own take on the character?
I read the script and the characters were funny, but the script wasn’t a comedy, it was a thriller. So I sat down with Paul and said, “What is this thing?” He described it as a bit of a throwback to old films that he loved like Hitchcock or Robert Aldrich—films where these characters are completely heightened, but the source is more emotionally grounded and more of a thriller. So I avoided the book because I would have been even more confused. And even then, each day as I am
putting on my petticoat and twirling, I was like, “Is this a comedy or a thriller?” If this is just a straight drama, I am never going to work again because what I am doing is so over the top.
In the movie, we see what happens when a parent says no to a child. What’s your experience with kids being told no, whether it was your parents saying it to you or you to your kids now?
“No” is actually something I really appreciate in my household because my mum is one who never takes no for an answer, which is a reason why she is one of the strongest and most incredible women. She grew up on a farm where her dad built [the house] out of logs and mud, and I am sitting here wearing pearls and diamonds that aren’t mine and I have to give them back. It just shows that this is a woman who fought against the circumstances she was born into and created an amazing life for herself and her children. But it’s also infuriating when she wants to eat your food and you say, “No, Mum, go get your own, but I know you are going to eat mine anyway.” She doesn’t understand no.
And your kids?
I think they like it because it’s one of their favourite words. They are pretty good about no. I mean nobody likes [ being told] no, but I guess it teaches you how to negotiate, right?
How good are you at asking for a simple favour?
I don’t really ask for favours much because I am somebody who likes to do everything myself. And I think if you want something done, you need to do it for yourself because nobody is ever going to care about you or your life as much as you will. So I actually— to a fault—do too many things myself. I also feel like I want to own my failures as well as my successes, so I tend to take everything on myself.
How important are clothes for you to be a powerful woman?
Well, it sounds so clichéd—i guess it’s a cliché for a reason—but it all comes from within. Sometimes you don’t feel powerful but you have to summon that and so you think, “OK, well maybe if I put that out early then I will be confident to become something I am not feeling right now.” Or maybe sometimes you feel just awesome, so it doesn’t matter because you have this internal strength.
Was it your wrist that was badly injured filming The Rhythm Section (in cinemas in February)?
It was most of my hand. Was it supposed to be a dangerous action movie stunt or how did it happen? Well, The Rhythm Section was made by the James Bond producers and Olivia Schneider, one of the greatest fight coordinators around, so it is that kind of movie. I play an assassin, so I didn’t fall and hurt myself while crying! [ Laughs] It was a really cool action scene, and it was me and Jude Law, and we thought, “Wouldn’t it be great to do one take with no edits of two people beating each other up, but in a very scrappy, untrained way?” Because he’s a trained fighter but she’s not, so it’s just two people fighting with all they have got and not using stunt doubles and never cutting during a three-and-a-halfminute fight. We thought it would be great because you don’t ever see that in a movie. And you don’t see it in a movie for a reason: because we are not MMA fighters, we are actors. So I got hurt, but it’s OK. We finished the movie and it’s incredibly strong and really special and I could not be more proud of that film. It could not be more different than [ A Simple Favour], but boy, it’s a special movie.
What kind of nurse was Ryan during your recovery from surgery?
Are you just trying to kinkily think of him in like a little nurse’s outfit? Are you trying to fetishise my husband here? [ Laughs] I had a lot of people in my family taking good care of me. But life goes on and you are a mum and you just figure it out. I just started using my arm instead of my hand. It’s really not that bad, and I can’t be complaining about my hand when you watch a Youtube video of that mum with no arms who changes her son’s diaper and carries him around.
A Simple
Anna Kendrick’s character in Favour fangirls over your character. Have you had any crazy fangirl moments?
I fangirl a lot. I am the person who should not be let into Hollywood because I see people and freak out. I remember I was presenting at the [MTV] VMAS and all I could think of was Britney Spears, and me getting to meet her. Recently, someone on Twitter found a photo with me at a Spice Girls concert where we had met and I remember feeling so cool that a little girl actually thought I was Baby Spice at the time in my pigtails. I was 10 and all I wanted to do was be Baby Spice. But then Baby Spice commented on that photo on Twitter and I just couldn’t believe she knows who I am. I can’t even fathom that, so I am still very much a fangirl at heart!
“I want to own my failures as well as my successes”