Why Hugh Jackman Got a Reality Check at Chiefs Game with Taylor Swift

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It’s probably not often that an Oscar nominee like Hugh Jackman feels overshadowed.

However, that’s exactly what happened when he attended a Chiefs game with megastar Taylor Swift. At the red carpet premiere of their film Deadpool & Wolverine, Jackman, 55, and co-star Ryan Reynolds admitted it was quite the ego check.

“If you ever really want to kinda not feel great about your career, go to [an NFL] game with Taylor Swift and Blake Lively — and then you’re Blake Lively, Taylor Swift and others at the game,” Jackman jokingly told People. “We’re just ‘and others’,” Reynolds, 47, added.

The two felt a bit slighted when they attended the October 1, 2023, Kansas City Chiefs game to join Swift as she cheered on her NFL star boyfriend Travis Kelce. Swift and Lively seemed to garner all of the attention at the game, as well as when they were seen hugging each other and cheering on February 11, 2024, when the Chiefs won the Super Bowl.

However, that doesn’t mean Reynolds wouldn’t join his wife and The Tortured Poets Department singer at Arrowhead Stadium for another game. “You don’t say no to that,” Reynolds responded, when asked if he would go again. Jackman agreed, adding, “Oh, I hope so.”

Lively, Reynolds’ wife, and mother of their four children, has been friends with Swift since 2015. As such, the pair have long been staples of Swift’s famous get-togethers, like the Fourth of July parties she throws at her Rhode Island mansion.

In fact, in 2016, a photo of Reynolds went viral thanks to a face he made while sitting alongside Lively, Swift and then-boyfriend Tom Hiddleston, and Swift’s friend Britany Maack and her husband. The women are all sitting in their partners’ laps, but Reynolds’ hilarious facial expression is what made headlines.

He later explained to Entertainment Weekly, “That’s a problem I’ve had all my life. If I’m not aware a photo is being taken, my natural resting face is one of a man dying.” He continued, “I had no idea somebody was taking a photo. Therefore, I was resting comfortably in my persona of a man whose soul is visibly exiting this earth.”

Deadpool & Wolverine hits theaters Friday, July 26, and Reynolds recently admitted to letting his 9-year-old daughter James watch the R-rated film. “I’m not saying that other people should do this, but my 9-year-old watched the movie with me and my mom, who’s in her late 70s, and it was just one of the best moments of this whole experience for me,” the Free Guy star told The New York Times in an interview published July 15.

The actor seemed to find it reassuring that the movie made his family feel exactly what he was intending. “Both of them were laughing their guts out, were feeling the emotion where I most desperately hoped people would be,” he said. In addition to James, Reynolds and Lively share Inez, 7, Betty, 4, and Olin, whom they welcomed in 2023.