Oscar-nominated actor Hugh Jackman tends to maintain a playful presence on social media, whether he’s posting videos of himself grunting, growling, or gasping Recording of film sound for a scene as Wolverine, or practice sitting before the Met Gala. He’s also not too bad about pretending to be pompous and competitive for a comedy bit, like his dueling slash duet with Neil Patrick Harris at the Tony Awards, where they battled to see who was the better presenter of the awards show is. So his recent Instagram/Twitter post asking the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences not to nominate Ryan Reynolds for an Oscar this year is fitting.
Reynolds recently starred opposite Will Ferrell in the Apple TV Plus film Spirited, another of Charles Dickens’ never-ending seasonal iterations of A Christmas Carol. When the Academy published its shortlist of potential Best Original Song nominees, the spirited number “Good Afternoon” was on that shortlist. Which prompted Jackman to ask the Academy not to vote for the song to get into the nomination stage because Jackman is in the process of filming Deadpool 3 with Reynolds and he doesn’t want to hear him brag about it for a year .
We’ve known since last fall that Deadpool 3 would bring back Jackman as Wolverine, the fast-healing, short-tempered (and only brief) superhero he’s now played in nine different films. (And that both Jackman and Reynolds promise the film won’t reverse Wolverine’s death at the end of the fan-loved 2017 film Logan.) What we didn’t know is that Hugh Jackman saw Reynolds’ Spirited and has a personal take on what an Oscar nomination would do to Reynolds’ ego.
Amazingly, Jackson didn’t oppose “Good Afternoon” for the more obvious reason of being the worst song on Spirited, an upbeat and catchy yet repetitive and empty song that tries to transform “Good Afternoon!” into the new “Fuck you!” This number’s Oscar nomination is the equivalent of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut getting “Blame Canada” nominated for Best Song. Spirited has some significantly better music, including Octavia Spencer’s soulful “The View From Here” and Farrell’s similarly emotional “Unredeemable,” which gives Spirited full Broadway stage treatment.
But no, Jackman claims (obviously with a wink) that he wants the Academy to give “Good Afternoon” a pass because he may have to spend a year listening to Reynolds be “insufferable” about it in the Deadpool 3 shoot . (By the way, in his post he refers to the film as Wolverine and Deadpool, a title that hasn’t been officially announced yet.) “Trust me,” he says. “It would be impossible. It would be a problem … Please, please, from the bottom of your heart, don’t endorse Ryan Reynolds that way.”
The nominations for the 95th Academy Awards will be announced on January 24th. By that point, we’ll all have a better idea of whether Jackman’s year will be unbearable as Reynolds will spend it all rejoicing at his nomination or sulking at his lack of nomination. Wolverine and Deadpool, or whatever it’s officially called, is currently scheduled for release on November 8th, 2024.