The children of Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively have not seen their father’s latest film IF before the film’s premiere on Monday, May 13, but they watched the trailer and were fired up.
“They saw the trailer and they can’t stop watching it,” Reynolds, 47, tells PEOPLE on the red carpet at the SVA Theater in New York.
Reynolds and Livelyn’s kids watched the trailer so much that it got “a little awkward” in the morning, Reynolds says. He would have to remind them, “We’re going to school right now. We’re not watching a trailer. We’re going to school,” he says.
Children “love trailers” for IF and they were “excited” to finally see the film, says the actor.
“They love the trailers, and then they watch all those thirty-second videos that you can put on YouTube. They’re pretty obsessed with it,” Reynolds tells PEOPLE.
Reynolds also jokes that they “love” their dad’s co-star, Cailey Fleming, his top choice to babysit them among others. IF honor.
Lively (36) and Reynolds are parents to daughters Ines (7½), James (9) and Betty (4½). In February 2023, they had a fourth child, whose name has not been publicly revealed.
Ryan Reynolds and Blue (Steve Carell’s character in ‘IF’).
Mike Coppola/Getty
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IF Director and screenwriter John Krasinski was joined by wife Emily Blunt and co-stars Reynolds, Steve Carell, Maya Rudolph, Bradley Cooper, Matt Damon, Awkwafina, Amy Schumer, Bobby Moynihan, Christopher Meloni, Fleming and more on the red carpet on Monday.
IF is about a girl (played by Fleming) who has superpowers that give her the ability to “see everyone’s imaginary friends” and uses her gift to “reconnect forgotten IFs with their children,” according to the synopsis.
The film’s first trailer opened with Reynolds tiptoeing across a child’s bedroom toward a closet door while saying, “What if everything you believed in as a child was real?” flashed across the screen.
The closet opened to reveal a large, furry, purple imaginary friend (voiced by Carell) who came out and greeted him before giving him a big sneeze.
Then she asked, “What’s going on?” prompting Carell’s character to explain, “I’m IF, get it? An imaginary friend.”
IF it effectively reunites Carell and Krasinski, who starred together on the hit NBC sitcom Office from 2005 until Carell’s departure in 2011.
While appearing on Today show on Monday, Reynolds discussed whether his children with wife Lively (who also voices the character in IF) have their imaginary friends.
“My daughter, Betty, has a very vivid imagination, so there’s always someone standing behind me, and I quickly turn around like in a horror movie and realize no, it’s just Harvey from the old movie Harvey. It’s a 6-foot-5 rabbit,” said the father of four.
“At least it’s not Dead pool. That would be… it’s NSFK. Not safe for kids,” co-host Savannah Guthrie teased.
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Ryan Reynolds and Blue from ‘IF’.
ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty
“No, I destroyed them with that because I have the original suit … like a mold of my body down in the basement,” Reynolds said as Guthrie joked that she was “starting to understand the issues you’re talking about.”
“Yeah right. One night it was kind of a silhouette and one of my kids went downstairs, yelling bloody murder,” Reynolds recalled. “I ran downstairs because I forgot it was downstairs and I was yelling bloody murder. So yeah, no, they’re all pretty damaged.”
IF is in theaters from Friday, May 17.
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