Names and faces
■ Wrexham’s shirts will have a taste of Hollywood next season. The Welsh soccer team has secured its latest celebrity linkup and co-owner Ryan Reynolds is keeping it in the family. Actor Blake Lively, who is married to the “Deadpool” star, will sponsor the team’s training kit from next season through her soft drink company Betty Buzz. “Our team had, of course, heard of Wrexham AFC but once we officially learned about their refreshing vision, we knew it was the right official fit for our refreshing sparkling beverage,” Lively said in a statement. Wrexham has gained a global following since it was bought by Reynolds and fellow actor Rob McElhenney for $2.5 million in 2021. A documentary series about the team has streamed around the world and has made household names of its players, management and fans. Reynolds and McElhenney have used their own celebrity to raise the profile of the club, which spent 15 years out of the English Football League before earning promotion last month.
■ Taylor Swift’s surprise Ice Spice collaboration on the deluxe version of her “Midnights” album is raising some eyebrows. Following Wednesday’s announcement that the “Munch” rapper would be featured on Swift’s “Karma,” fans of both artists criticized the collaboration. That’s because of Swift’s association with Matty Healy, the frontman of English band the 1975. In January, Healy disparaged Ice Spice while he was a guest on a podcast. Healy has been romantically linked to Swift since early May and has made many appearances at her Eras tour, including one onstage. Neither has confirmed a romantic relationship. Healy mocked Ice Spice’s ethnicity on “The Adam Friedland Show,” laughing at the hosts’ jokes speculating about the New York rapper’s ethnicity. Nick Mullen and Friedland, who are both comics, called her an “Inuit spice girl” and a “chubby Chinese lady” and imitated Hawaiian and Chinese accents. (Ice Spice is Nigerian and Dominican.) In the same podcast, Healy egged on jokes about Japanese incarceration during World War II by encouraging the hosts to mock Japanese accents before joining in and joking about masturbating to a video of a woman “getting, like, brutalized” on a porn website that prominently features Black women. In April, Healy (kind of) apologized to Ice Spice during the band’s performance in Auckland, New Zealand, saying his 1apology was “not because I’m annoyed that me joking got misconstrued. It’s because I don’t want Ice Spice to think I’m a d***. I love you, Ice Spice. I’m so sorry.” Fans were quick to note that Ice Spice will be the first Black woman on one of Swift’s songs. “First collab with a black woman ever because your man a racist who used racist terminology in reference to the person you’re collaborating with … very [calculated] miss swift,” CTRLZA tweeted.