Ryan Reynolds voted for the first time. Well, maybe that’s not so accurate.
Reynolds is famously Canadian, and since he only became a dual citizen in 2018, he just cast his ballot for the first time in the United States. It was one of the last things he did before turning 44, an occasion Canada’s official Twitter account marked by wishing him a happy birthday on behalf of all Canadians. (Reynolds is a Scorpio.)
Still buzzing and spry from the newness of the U.S. voting experience, the actor took a wholesome photo with his wife, Blake Lively, to immortalize the moment, then posted it to Instagram with a winking caption.
“This is my first time voting in America. I’d like to thank my wife Blake for making my first time so gentle and loving,” he wrote. “It was super scary at first, then exciting and now I’m a little tired. But proud. #VoteEarly.”
And of course, true to form, Lively posted a photo to her own account, too, complimenting her husband’s caption with some classic Lively-Reynolds banter. “It was Ryan’s first time,” she wrote. “He was understandably scared. It all happened so fast. Like, REALLY fast. He wept. I pretended to weep. Then he called all his friend[s}. #voteearly”
At first glance, the photos look pretty similar. Same backdrop. Both are holding their absentee ballots. Ryan’s hand is in his pocket. Blake is wearing a coat from Oak and Fort, a subtle Canadian tribute. But when you look closer, you notice one particular difference: in Ryan’s post, Blake is barefoot, pushed up onto her toes. But in her post, she’s wearing heels … kind of?
Actually, what’s happened here is that Lively decided to digitally draw shoes onto her bare feet, which you can see by just zooming in on the photo. She even tagged the Christian Louboutin Instagram account, which makes sense, considering the heels are (upon closer inspection) red bottoms.
And since it’s Reynolds’ birthday week, and even growing older can’t help him from getting off his jokes, the actor quickly made a joke out of the whole thing, trolling his wife by posting the photo on his Instagram story and … drawing boots over top of her feet.
Lively seemed to take the joke in stride and reposted the photo, adding the caption “...I don’t see the issue.” And in another post to her story, she zoomed in on Reynolds’ poorly drawn Louboutin boots and left another joke: “@louboutinworld are you hiring? Barefoot iPhone doodler with vast experience avail.”
Her final Instagram story post summed it all up: “Sure it was an absentee drop off ballot with a mask covering most of my look. But dammit I exercised my right to vote. And to not wear shoes that ruined my outfit.”
It’s unclear whether this was all coordinated as a way to troll the world, or if Lively truly did think she could pull a fast one by drawing different shoes on her feet. Maybe she was just being fashion forward, and her husband called her on it. Maybe she had to take it all in stride because it is, after all, Reynolds’ birthday, and you can’t get mad at someone on their birthday. What you can do is wish them a happy one, as so many celebrities have been doing today, like Hugh Jackman:
And Jimmy Fallon:
And Chris Hadfield:
And from Ryan, himself, who prefers if no one shares a birthday with him:
And finally, from us: Happy birthday, Ryan Reynolds.
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