Blake Lively is available for kids’ birthday parties – with a NSFW twist.
“My birthday cakes always have a sense of humour,” Lively, who stars in “It Ends with Us,” recently told BBC Radio 2 of her son Olin’s first birthday party. “For my baby, I’ve just made a huge series of t—s that I think will haunt him for life. But what do they want with a year old? He can’t say what he wants. So, boobs.”
Lively joked: “I’ll show you a picture later, they’re pretty great – from the cake, not mine… but also great.”
The actor also told the crew, “No, the cake is incredible. You guys have to see this cake. You all have to see the cake.”
Besides one-year-old Olin, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds have three daughters together: James, 9, Inez, 7, and Betty, 4.
Lively and Reynolds are never afraid to gush about parenthood — and to joke about it. In July, Reynolds told Amanda Hirsch, host of the podcast Not Skinny But Not Fat, that the couple enjoys “the chaos” of parenthood, whether it’s co-sleeping with all the kids or trying (not very successfully) to keep their home clean.
Meanwhile, the former “Gossip Girl” star and the “Deadpool” actor are so protective of their children’s privacy that few photos of the kids have ever been released (apart from Reynolds’ ceremony on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2016).
Her friend Taylor Swift may have let a detail about the children slip on July 25, when she referred to Reynolds as the “sperm donor of her godchildren” in a humorous message about his film “Deadpool & Wolverine.”
Still, Lively and Reynolds have said just enough over the years to put together a little family biography for curious fans. Learn more about Lively and Reynolds’ children: James, Inez, Betty and Olin.
James
The Green Lantern co-stars married in 2012 and started a family just months after their second anniversary with the birth of their daughter, James, whose name was confirmed here at TODAY.
“You said a few months ago, before she was born, that you were going to name her Excalibur Anaconda Reynolds,” host Willie Geist mentioned during an interview with Reynolds in March 2015. “So can we at least call her Anna – short for Anaconda?”
“That’s not the child’s name!” Reynolds replied. “It’s called Butternut Summersquash.”
At some point he stopped making dad jokes and admitted: “It’s James.”
You didn’t have to look far into the family tree to see where the inspiration for her name came from.
She was named in honor of her father’s father.
“It felt right,” Reynolds told Mr Porter of the gesture in 2018. He added: “My father died shortly after my daughter was born, but he was able to see her, which makes me happy.”
Although she is not quite as famous as her parents, James can officially call herself an entertainer thanks to an early record deal.
At just two years old, James’ voice was featured in a song called “Gorgeous” by Swift.
Inez
Almost two years after James’ birth, she had a little sister. In September 2016, Inez joined the family and Reynolds didn’t wait long to tell his fans and followers that he and Lively had another girl at home.
The mobile above my daughter’s crib is made of a pile of NuvaRings to remind her how lucky she is.
— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) 20 October 2016
“The mobile above my daughter’s crib is made out of a bunch of NuvaRings,” he tweeted the following month, referring to the birth control method, “so she can remember how lucky she is.”
As for her name, it was initially rumored that Inez would be spelled “Ines.”
“I had a new baby, Inez, with a ‘z’ even though everyone says it’s with an ‘s,'” Lively told People in 2018. “I don’t know why, please tell Wikipedia.”
As a toddler, Inez spent some time on the set of Deadpool 2. According to Reynolds, the visits did not go well.
“I would leave the house in the morning and be a dad,” he recalled during a conversation on Entertainment Weekly Radio. “Then at lunch it looked like I had fallen asleep on the stove. My one-year-old daughter cried for hours after she saw me. It’s torture because you can’t rip it off in the moment and say, ‘No, no, no! Look, I’m down here’ and undo four hours of makeup work.”
Betty
In October 2019, Lively and Reynolds expanded their family with the birth of another daughter, and although it took a while for them to make her name public—already a family tradition at that point—they quickly posted a photo of the little one.
In a way, yes.
In a social media post to draw attention to the Canadian election scheduled for October of that year, Reynolds posted a photo of himself and his wife smiling while standing in the woods and holding a baby. The baby’s face was not visible, however. Instead, it was airbrushed out and replaced with a drawing of a smiley face.
This fuzzy bundle of joy was named Betty, a fact first hinted at by unofficial aunt Taylor Swift. “Betty” was also the name of a song on Swift’s 2020 album, Folklore. Fans figured out the connection after noticing that the only other names mentioned in the song were James and Inez.
Betty’s parents were delighted with the honor.
“I mean, the names are our kids’ names, but we trust her implicitly and she’s very sensitive to all of these things,” Reynolds said of Swift during a SiriusXM town hall meeting. “And of course the song has nothing to do with our kids other than their names.”
Olin
Lively announced her fourth pregnancy in September 2022, both by showcasing her baby bump during a red carpet appearance at the 10th annual Forbes Power Women’s Summit and in a series of photos she shared on Instagram a few days later.
“Here are photos of me pregnant in real life so the 11 boys waiting outside my house for a 🦄 sighting will leave me alone,” read an excerpt from the post’s caption. “You scare me and my kids.”
Perhaps it was all this unwanted attention that prompted Lively and Reynolds to keep details about their fourth baby to themselves. The child was born in February 2023.
During an appearance on TODAY on May 13, Savannah Guthrie asked if Reynolds’ youngest child’s name appears on Swift’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department.”
Ryan Reynolds jokes on TODAY about the name of his and Blake Lively’s fourth child: “We’re always waiting for Taylor (Swift) to tell us what the child’s name is going to be. And we’ll put it this way: We’re still waiting.” pic.twitter.com/CimgAjffOM
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) May 13, 2024
The actor dodged the question with a witty answer, saying, “We’re always waiting for Taylor to tell us what the baby’s name is going to be. “We’ll say that. We’re still waiting, so Taylor, maybe let’s get started.”
In the same interview, Reynolds also discussed raising his four children during Lively’s absence.
“You know, single dad. I’m a Reba McEntire song. Single dad that does it all. Yeah, I just do it for them, right?” he said, before jokingly adding, “(I) took them all to the park. I told them mommy left when they were little. Surprisingly, you get a lot of action that way.”
Making Hoda Kotb and Savannah laugh, Reynolds added, “No, we had a good time. Nobody died, which was nice.”
On July 22, at the premiere of Reynolds’ film Deadpool & Wolverine, Reynolds appeared to announce the name of his and Lively’s fourth child.
“I want to thank my children, James, Inez, Betty and Olin, who are here,” he said. “I hope that this moment — and indeed the content of this film — will, if I’m lucky, be the most traumatic thing that can happen in your wonderful lives.”
On July 26, Reynolds revealed in a promotional video that his fourth child is a boy. In the clip, he spoke with a man named John Bell, whose son Jake, a Deadpool fan, died.
After listening to the man’s story, Reynolds said, “I want to tell you that I have a son, too. Boy, John, if I love him even a tenth as much as you love Jake, I think I’ve done a damn good job.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com.
