Ryan Reynolds is used to being popular. His performance in the Deadpool films has earned him a Golden Globe nomination, as well as loyal fans and a small fortune. So it was a shock when he found himself at a pub in Wales having to win over a suspicious community. Not content with Hollywood stardom, Reynolds was there because he had bought the local football club for $2.3 million, with his fellow actor Rob McElhenney from the television show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
“The challenge was people looking around and thinking: ‘What are these guys doing here?’” McElhenney says. They battled hostility from fans (and Reynolds’s wife, the actress Blake Lively, who didn’t understand why he had spent so much on a Welsh football team), and were teased for not knowing the offside rule. Now their story of winning over a failing team they bought in November 2020 is the subject of Welcome to Wrexham, a moving and funny six-part documentary on Disney+.
