Actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney welcomed King Charles III and Camilla, the queen consort of Britain on Friday as co-owners of the Wrexham A.F.C. soccer club in Wales, Entertainment Tonight reported. Gathered on the pitch, the four took photos, shook hands and laughed together.
“Welcome to Wrexham Season 2: Charles in Charge,” Reynolds later tweeted alongside a photo of him and the king.
Reynolds had never met McElhenney when he messaged the “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” actor about acquiring the team during the 2020 lockdowns. They did just that in 2021, however, and filmed the process for the Disney+ docuseries “Welcome to Wrexham.”
“You really have to watch Welcome to Wrexham for this to make sense,” McElhenney tweeted Friday alongside a photo of the four. “And even then, it still [might not] make sense.”
Reynolds previously told Yahoo the two actors acquired Wrexham, the world’s third-oldest professional soccer club, to lead an underdog team to victory. While meeting kings and queens surely didn’t factor in, sources told ET the royals agreed to be filmed for the series.
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“I had the opportunity to see one of the other wonders of Wrexham, namely the football club, which is busy putting Wrexham on the map as never before,” said Charles in a speech later that day, ET reported.
“And, of course, this comes after the Welsh national team has brought unprecedented international recognition to Wales through qualifying for the World Cup,” the newly crowned king continued.
While Reynolds is riding high after the People’s Choice Awards this week, the royal family has been fielding questions about Thursday’s release of “Harry & Meghan” — a Netflix documentary series about royal life from Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle.
The series has already sparked controversy. A Buckingham Palace source told HuffPost that Netflix had made no attempt to contact the royal family about it. The streamer itself, meanwhile, said that both Charles and Prince William’s offices had been contacted beforehand.
“They really don’t want to be drawn into it for the simple fact that they don’t want to give an already much-hyped docuseries even more oxygen or publicity,” royal expert Katie Nicholl told ET. “So, I think if they can ride this out without being drawn into it, then that’s probably the strategy.”