Ryan Reynolds Says ‘I Let Go of Getting Paid’ on ‘Deadpool’ and ‘Took the Little Salary I Had Left’ to Pay for the Screenwriters to Be on Set

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Ryan Reynolds recently spoke to The New York Times ahead of the release of “Deadpool and Wolverine” and remembered the humble beginnings of his R-rated superhero franchise. The actor said the first “Deadpool” movie finally got off the ground at 20th Century Fox after he’d already spent a decade trying to get it made. Reynolds even paid out of pocket for his screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick to be on set because the scrappier production was not that of a normal comic book tentpole.

“No part of me was thinking when ‘Deadpool’ was finally greenlit that this would be a success,” Reynolds said. “I even let go of getting paid to do the movie just to put it back on the screen: They wouldn’t allow my co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick on set, so I took the little salary I had left and paid them to be on set with me so we could form a de facto writers room.”

“It was a lesson in a couple of senses,” Reynolds continued. “I think one of the great enemies of creativity is too much time and money, and that movie had neither time nor money. It really fostered focusing on character over spectacle, which is a little harder to execute in a comic-book movie. I was just so invested in every micro-detail of it and I hadn’t felt like that in a long, long time. I remembered wanting to feel that more — not just on ‘Deadpool,’ but on anything.”

Reese and Wernick revealed back in 2016 as the original “Deadpool” movie was opening in theaters that they worked on the script with Reynolds for at leasts six years, adding: “It was really a core creative team of us, Ryan, and the director Tim Miller. Fox, interestingly, wouldn’t pay for us to be on set. Ryan Reynolds paid out of his own money, out of his own pocket.”

The screenwriters shared credit for the first “Deadpool” screenplay before Reynolds himself was added to the mix as an official co-writer on 2018’s “Deadpool 2.” Now the three men are joined by Zeb Wells and director Shawn Levy for the “Deadpool and Wolverine” script. Reynolds recently said during a Variety cover story that he tried to preserve the spirit of making the original “Deadpool” movie while filming “Deadpool and Wolverine,” which now had the backing of Disney money following the studio’s acquisition of Fox.

“Necessity is the mother of invention. The more constraints you place on a creative process, the more you think outside of the box,” Reynolds said. “So, personally, I didn’t want more money than we needed. We wanted just enough money to make what we set out to make, but also find ways to creatively pivot.”  

Levy added on the topic, “Certain stars or directors get some swagger from how big a budget they got from the studio. We want to make the movie for what it needs and not a penny more.”

Elsewhere during his New York Times interview, Reynolds said that he recently watched a cut of the R-rated “Deadpool and Wolverine” with his nine-year-old daughter.

“Well, I’m not saying that other people should do this, but my nine-year-old watched the movie with me and my mom, who’s in her late 70s, and it was just was one of the best moments of this whole experience for me,” he said. “Both of them were laughing their guts out, were feeling the emotion where I most desperately hoped people would be.”

Reynolds allowed his nine-year-old to watch the R-rated movie because “when I saw rated-R movies when I was a kid, they left a huge impression on me because I didn’t feel like people were pulling punches,” he said. “It’s been a huge inspiration to so many of the things that I look to make now.”

“Deadpool and Wolverine” is set for release on July 26 from Disney.