Ryan Reynolds and wife Blake Lively are known for keeping their private lives private, especially where their baby daughter, James, is concerned. They even waited three months before sharing her name for the first time on TODAY.
And when it came to sharing the first photo of her with the rest of the world, the shot simply showed her hand clasped around Dad's.
So it's no surprise to learn that the stars expected their friends and family to respect their wishes for keeping other pics out of the public eye. The only surprise is that one their friends betrayed them.
“A guy that I’d known for my whole life, one of my closest friends growing up, he had been shopping pictures of my baby around," Reynolds revealed in a recent interview with GQ magazine. "I kind of got in front of it, which is good. But it was a slightly dark period. A bad couple of weeks.”
He'd known the man for 25 years, and it marked the first time anyone he'd been close to had betrayed him.
"It was like a death," the actor explained. "It was like one of those devastating things to find out.”
And he had no doubt about his then-friend's motivation.
“Yeah, just for money," Reynolds said. "I mean, I don’t think he thought he would ever be caught. But it’s a pretty narrow group of people that I would send photos like that to. They’re just, like, my closest family and my closest friends: ‘Here’s us in the delivery room!’ ”
And after he found out what the man was up to, that was it — friendship over.
"There isn’t really a conversation to have," Reynolds said. "It’s just, ‘Oh, well, now I’m never going to see you or talk to you again, unfortunately.’ That’s kind of how it worked out.”