Ryan Reynolds and wife Blake Lively made sure to keep quiet about Taylor Swift‘s song “Betty.” Why? To surprise their kiddos whose names were revealed in the tune!
Swift, 31, publicly revealed the name of Reynolds’ and Lively’s third daughter Betty, 22 months, in her album, which dropped in July 2020. Swift also name-dropped the couple’s daughters James, 4, and Inez, 4, in the song “Betty.”
We surprised them with it,” Reynolds, 44, said on Thursday’s SiriusXM Town Hall of letting their daughters hear the track.
“They didn’t know,” Reynolds admitted. “They had no idea.”
He continued on, joking: “We don’t tell them anything, we find they’re most compliant if you offer them no access to outside information.”
The choice for Swift to announce the name of Reynolds and Lively’s daughter, whom they welcomed in October 2019, wasn’t a hard choice as they “trust” their longtime friend.
“We trust her implicitly,” Reynolds said on Town Hall. “She’s very sensitive to any of that stuff.”
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He continued, “And obviously the song is, has nothing to do with our kids other than our kids’ names.”
“But I mean, what an honor,” Reynolds said. “We thought it was pretty, pretty damn amazing. We still do. I still walk down the street and shake my head thinking ‘I can’t believe that happened.'”
After the release of the album, many of her fans guessed “Betty” was a name reveal of Reynolds and Lively’s third child since their other two kids were included.
“Betty, I know where it all went wrong,” Swift sings on the folklore track. Later lines include: “You heard the rumors from Inez/ You can’t believe a word she says” and “She said, ‘James, get in, let’s drive.”
Swift eventually confirmed this, sharing: “I named all the characters in this story after my friends’ kids… and I hope you like it!”
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Reynolds also recently opened up about how his children are a huge factor in him sharing his battle with anxiety.
“Part of it is that I have three daughters at home,” Reynolds recalled in a recent interview, “and part of my job as a parent is to model behaviors and model what it’s like to be sad and model what it’s like to be anxious, or angry. That there’s space for all these things.”
He went on to share how he hopes to set a healthy example of emotional regulation for his kids as it is something he didn’t see growing up.
“The home that I grew [up] in, that wasn’t modeled for me really,” Reynolds said. “And that’s not to say that my parents were neglectful, but they come from a different generation.”
In an Instagram post for Mental Health Awareness Month in May, Reynolds spoke on his “lifelong pal, anxiety,” in hopes to “model things for anyone who might need to hear it.”