Ryan Reynolds: Plantation Wedding Was a 'Giant Mistake'

For almost 200 years, enslaved people suffered and died on Boone Hall Plantation in South Carolina. Ryan Reynolds now acknowledges that it was a poor choice of wedding venue. The Canadian actor tells Fast Company that he and wife Blake Lively will "always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for" the insensitive move in 2012. "It’s impossible to reconcile," he says. "What we saw at the time was a wedding venue on Pinterest. What we saw after was a place built upon devastating tragedy." He says they feel "shame" over the "giant f---ing mistake," which led to him being called a hypocrite after he praised Black Panther in 2012.

Reynolds says a mistake like that can "cause you to shut down or it can re-frame things and move you into action." He says the actions he and Lively have taken since the controversy include $1 million donations last year to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights, CNN reports. He says they donated another $200,000 to the legal defense fund in June this year, and his production company and marketing agency, Maximum Effort, is focusing on diverse hiring and providing workers with equity. "When you add perspective and insight that isn’t your own, you grow," he says. "And you grow your company, too." (More Ryan Reynolds stories.)