In an interview with Fast Company, Reynolds mentioned their wedding and how they felt about it after the fact. The article notes how the wedding was not criticized as much in 2012, but accusations of "hypocrisy" started in 2018 when Reynolds tweeted about how much he enjoyed Black Panther.
He told the interviewer, "It’s something we’ll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for. It’s impossible to reconcile. What we saw at the time was a wedding venue on Pinterest. What we saw after was a place built upon devastating tragedy."
Reynolds continued, "Years ago we got married again at home—but shame works in weird ways. A giant...mistake like that can either cause you to shut down or it can reframe things and move you into action...repatterning and challenging lifelong social conditioning is a job that doesn’t end."
Lively and Reynolds have been vocal supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, and made their stances clear on social media.
In a May Instagram post, the couple issued a statement, acknowledging their privilege and vowing to do more. The statement read, "We're ashamed that in the past we've allowed ourselves to be uninformed about how deeply rooted systemic racism is."
The couple also made a large donation to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund: "Last week we contributed $200,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund...And this is just a start...[W]e want to use our privilege and platform to be an ally. And to play a part in easing the pain for so many who feel as though this grand experiment is failing them."