Ryan Reynolds spent his salary to keep screenwriters on set

‘Deadpool’ star Ryan Reynolds spent his salary to keep screenwriters on the set

Ryan Reynolds grinning with his mouth closed and wearing a green shirt with a collar

July 17, 2024 1:16 PM PT

Ryan Reynolds revealed that he “let go of getting paid” for “Deadpool” so the other screenwriters could be present on the set.

“When I finally got to make [the movie], it had been almost 10 years at that point,” Reynolds told the New York Times. “No part of me was thinking when ‘Deadpool’ was finally greenlit that this would be a success. 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.”

Reese and Wernick revealed Reynolds’ actions in 2016 during an episode of AMC’s “Geeking Out.” The writers said that Reynolds covered the expenses to keep them involved in the creative process.

“We were on the project for six years. It was really a core creative team of us, Ryan, and the director Tim Miller,” Wernick told hosts Kevin Smith and Greg Grunberg. “Fox, interestingly, wouldn’t pay for us to be on set. Ryan Reynolds paid out of his own money, out of his own pocket.”

In his New York Times interview, Reynolds also noted that having limited time and money on the project proved beneficial.

“It was a lesson in a couple of senses,” Reynolds said. “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.”

What started as a labor of love for Reynolds has spawned two sequels. The third movie, “Deadpool and Wolverine,” is set to premiere in theaters on July 26.

The film will follow Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman, who is recovering from his injuries when he encounters Reynolds’ motormouth Deadpool.