Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney brought Hollywood and a lot of eyes with them to Wrexham when they bought the non-league club in November 2020.
Welcome to Wrexham on Disney+ was a raging success, with cameras following the two actors on their learning journey of football. They’re now on the cusp of guiding Wrexham into League Two, with a Phil Parkinson-led team sat on 103 points, three clear of title rivals Notts County, with four massive games to go.
And Bank Holiday Monday's clash with Notts County was widely watched on BT Sport, with the winner placing one hand on the National League trophy. John Bostock opened the scoring for Notts County at the Racecourse Ground before goal machine Paul Mullin drew Wrexham level.
Jacob Mendy then handed Wrexham but the Wales-based club weren’t ahead for long as Notts captain Kyle Cameron stabbed home the equaliser. Luckily for Wrexham, in their ranks are players who played in England’s top two leagues, or were at least on the books of some of the Premier League ’s biggest clubs, and former West Ham academy hot shot Elliot Lee scored the winner before Ben Foster stopped a stoppage time penalty.
Reynolds and McElhenney’s influence off the pitch can be seen in astonishing Twitter interaction numbers. According to dataPOWA, Wrexham’s crunch clash with Notts County had 61,923 total Twitter interactions, 128 more than Liverpool ’s 2-2 draw with table-toppers Arsenal at the weekend.
To add to that, Wrexham’s ecstatic full-time announcement received 10.5million total views on Twitter, 5.8m more than Liverpool and Arsenal combined. “Oh hi there,” Wrexham co-owner McElhenney tweeted alongside a graphic of the Twitter stats.
Since owning Wrexham, both Deadpool star Reynolds and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia familiar McElhenney have admitted they had football all wrong. Their previous perception of the sport being “boring” has disappeared. “I can’t believe there was a time when I thought football was boring,” McElhenney said after full-time on Monday.
Reynolds and McElhenney’s stay at Wrexham isn’t set to end any time soon. In fact, Reynolds is reportedly set to buy a $1.85m (£1.5m) house in a small Welsh village. It will be a stark contrast from Reynolds' £4.3m in the Big Apple, where he lives with actress wife Blake Lively and their four children.
"Ryan is moving to Marford and it’s all the locals can talk about. His house is on the poshest road," a source told The Sun. "The most famous person from Marford is Tim Vincent from Blue Peter, so a Hollywood star is a step up! It might not be the Big Apple but the red carpet will be rolled out when Ryan comes to town.”
