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Louise Thomas
Editor
It appears that Taylor Swift may be the godparent to more than one celebrity child.
On July 25, the 34-year-old pop star took to Instagram to give a shout-out to actor Ryan Reynolds following the release of his latest action flick, Deadpool & Wolverine. Swift shared a photograph of herself posing alongside Reynolds, his wife Blake Lively, actor Hugh Jackman, and Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy.
Under the photo, the 14-time Grammy winner celebrated the release of Reynolds and Jackman’s film, while highlighting the amount of work that “one of [her] best friends” put into making the Marvel movie.
“Over the past few years I have watched one of my best friends on the planet pour every bit of his heart, soul, sweat, time, energy, jokes, pain, joy, rebellion, darkness, and magic into this film,” Swift began her message. “He’s created the best work of his life, and this film feels like an actual joy portal, a wild escape from reality, and an abs sandwich. I don’t know how he did it.”
She joked: “But that’s just Hugh for you! These other randoms crashed the photo and we were too polite to ask them to leave.”
The “Anti-Hero” singer then encouraged her fans to see Deadpool & Wolverine in theaters, before making a reference to Reynolds’ Deadpool character. “Shout out to Wade Wilson, aka my godkids’ sperm donor!” Swift wrote.
Reynolds and Lively, who have been married since 2012, are parents to four children: James, nine, Inez, seven, Betty, four, and Olin, one. While it’s unclear if Swift is the godmother to all of the couple’s brood, this isn’t the first time the singer has been given the honorable distinction. Swift is also the godmother to actor Jaime King’s nine-year-old son, Leo.
The “Bad Blood” singer has been close pals with Reynolds and Lively for nearly a decade. She first connected with the Gossip Girl alum in 2015, after fans surprisingly believed Lively was throwing shade at Swift on social media. Amid the speculation, Lively quickly cleared up confusion by posting a photo of her and Reynolds’ family backstage with Swift during the singer’s 1989 tour.
“Umm whoever thought I was throwin’ shade clearly doesn’t know I have a ‘Taylor Swift Please Be My Wife Voo Doo Doll,’” she wrote at the time, alongside the hashtag #obsessed. “Look how rad she is here making my niece Heather feel like a rock star. Love my Canadian family almost as much as I love Taylor Lively. I mean Swift. Ok, FIIINE we can hyphenate our last names. Xo Blake Swift-Lively 4eva.”
Later that year, Swift and Lively finally met up in Australia. The “Shake It Off” singer shared a photo of the two, in which they could be seen holding a koala - marking the first time the soon-to-be best friends posted a photo together.
For Swifties, it may come as no surprise that the “Karma” singer was chosen to be the godmother of Reynolds and Lively’s children. Swift famously included their daughter James on her 2017 album Reputation, where the then-two-year-old can be heard saying the word “gorgeous” in the opening of Swift’s song, “Gorgeous”.
In her 2020 album Folklore, Swift also used the names of their daughters Inez and Betty as fictional teenage characters in the song, “Betty”. During her record-breaking US Eras Tour last year, Swift introduced the track by giving a shout-out to their three girls.
“I named the characters after real people in my life who I love more than anything, and their names are James, Inez and Betty,” Swift said onstage at the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, tour stop, per USA Today.
Despite Swift name-dropping their children throughout her 2020 album, the A-list couple had yet to publicly reveal the name of their youngest daughter at the time. However, it didn’t seem to bother the couple. Speaking to Jess Cagle during a SiriusXM Town Hall event in 2021, Reynolds explained that he and his wife were flattered when Swift chose to use their daughters’ names in her song because they trust the singer “implicitly”.
“The names are the names of our kids, but you know, we trust her implicitly and she’s very sensitive to any of that stuff. And obviously the song has nothing to do with our kids other than our kids’ names,” Reynolds said. “We thought it was pretty, pretty damn amazing. We still do. You know, I still walk down the street and shake my head thinking: ‘I can’t believe that happened.’”
Reynolds and Lively also welcomed a fourth child in February 2023. Earlier this week, while giving a speech at the New York City premiere for Deadpool & Wolverine, Reynolds revealed he and his wife named their youngest child Olin.
