Chatter around Ryan Reynolds’ SNL 50: The Anniversary Special joke amid his legal drama with Justin Baldoni continues.
“He had a different line in rehearsal and he pitched that to replace it,” Wally Feresten, better known as Cue Card Wally, alleged on the Tuesday, February 18, episode of Australian breakfast radio show Fifi, Fev & Nick.
“That was his idea to do it,” Feresten continued.
Feresten went on to say, “We wouldn’t want to do anything too controversial unless they were in on it. So yeah, that was his line. That was his idea to do it.”
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A source close to Reynolds denied Feresten’s claims to Us Weekly. Representatives for SNL added that Feresten’s claims are “not true.”
During the Sunday, February 16, SNL special, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler took the stage and called on celebrities in the audience for a Q&A session. When Reynolds, 48, raised his hand, Fey and Poehler asked how he was doing.
“[I’m doing] great. Why, what have you heard?” he replied. Reynolds’ wife, Blake Lively, 37, kept her face void of emotion while sitting next to her husband during the moment.
Lively has been embroiled in a legal battle with It Ends With Us director and costar Baldoni since December 2024. At the time, she filed a complaint against the actor’s Wayfarer Studios production company, accusing him of sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment. (Lively has since filed a lawsuit against Baldoni that includes similar accusations. Baldoni continues to deny all allegations against him.)
In January, Baldoni filed his own lawsuit against Lively, Reynolds and publicist Leslie Sloane for $400 million, accusing them of extortion, defamation and false light invasion of privacy, among other claims. Lively’s legal team called Baldoni’s strategy “desperate” in a statement to Us last month. The legal battle is set to go to trial next year.
Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, criticized Reynolds’ SNL 50 joke on the Monday, February 17, episode of the “Hot Mics With Billy Bush” podcast.
“I’m unaware of anybody, frankly, whose wife has been sexually harassed and has made jokes about that type of situation. I can’t think of anyone who’s done anything like that,” Freedman said. “So it surprised me.”
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However, former Real Housewives of New York City star Bethenny Frankel praised the Deadpool & Wolverine star for not shying away from the recent legal drama.
“Absolutely brilliant of SNL to invite and include Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively to lean into the humor. They are the epicenter of pop culture. It is the zeitgeist. Bullseye,” Frankel, 54, said in a TikTok video posted Sunday. “For Ryan and Blake to participate is nothing short of genius because the only way to weather a storm is to go straight through it.”
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She continued, “As I keep saying, no one knows what actually happened. So, all of the speculation is tricky and risky business, but that was very smart. Bravo.”
On Tuesday, Lively filed an amended lawsuit against Baldoni, 41, accusing him of making other women “uncomfortable” on the set of It Ends With Us. “Our clients have been transparent in providing receipts, real-time documents and video showing a completely different story than what has been manipulated and cherry-picked to the media,” Baldoni’s lawyer, Freedman, said in a statement to Us on Wednesday, February 19. “Our clients have taken this matter and these issues very seriously notwithstanding the jokes made publicly by the plaintiff and her husband.”
