Four years after acquiring Wrexham AFC from Wales, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney appear to have no regrets about their investment – despite the high costs of ownership.
Wrexham Red Dragons have recently achieved promotion and are now two tiers away from the top tier known as the Premier League.
The last few years have been a crash course for Reynolds and McElhenney in both English football and the economics behind it.
The experience was captured in the FX docuseries “Welcome to Wrexham,” premiering its third season on May 2. The actors spoke with the Associated Press about parting ways with their inner fan with government jobs as presidents and how the new episodes will be released closer to real time.
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McELHENNEY: No. I have to separate. I think what’s important about this is that it allows me to give Wrexham fans space because they deserve the right to complain and get upset when things don’t go well because that’s their right as fans.
I have that relationship with the Philadelphia Eagles. I both have respect for all the players in the organization, but (football) is a way to deal with my frustrations and anxiety and it’s something I look forward to on the weekend. It’s also something I feel passionately about and express to my friends, not necessarily publicly.
As club presidents, we have to follow a different standard. We have to have at least a modicum of decorum in our exchanges about how we talk about things, because these are human beings, not characters on a screen. These are not athletes who mean nothing to us. These are our friends. These are our employees. These are people that we have to treat with dignity, grace and respect, and recognize that this is their livelihood, so there is a very clear line of demarcation.
REYNOLDS: Just to enjoy this, we have each other. We have the public side of this, but we can also take a moment to enjoy a swear fest when we’re frustrated or if things aren’t going according to plan. Obviously, you express your joy at the team’s external success. You want to make sure this is expressed to all the supporters who were there.
Some spread the ashes of their grandparents and parents on the field where this club plays. We have an impossible respect for this tradition and this fan base and everything they’ve been through, all the ups and downs. But I’m always grateful that Rob and I can have that sidebar where we both go, you know, “Oh my (expletive), I can’t believe this is happening right now. I can’t believe we left the National League. I can’t believe we just lost to this club.”
REYNOLDS: Absolutely, but what we’re most excited about about Season 3 is that as the episodes end, we’re going to get closer and closer to the continuity of the actual season. So when we get halfway through season three, you’ll see that we have no idea what’s going to happen. Just from this 30,000 foot macro narrative point of view, we have no idea. Everything we are doing now is bankrupt. We have to be promoted. There is no real consolation prize if we don’t. So we’re all in.
McELHENNEY: That’s really the most exciting part of season three: It will coincide with the season finale. There was a very big gap between the end of last season and the release of the documentary. And we thought, ‘Well, if we’re going to keep doing the show, we want to innovate it a little bit, so it’s more exciting, so that both the fans and the documentary filmmakers don’t know what’s going to happen. ‘ We will follow the end of the season and the final episodes. We’ll actually have trucks in the speedway parking lot with editing facilities, and they’ll film and cut the show as quickly as possible to get it on the air, because we want it to happen in real time. .
REYNOLDS: And if this season so far has taught us anything, it’s going to be nail-biting once again.
REYNOLDS: Accountants really don’t want to hear about emotional investing.
McELHENNEY: You want to know how far into the red I am? It’s quite significant. It’s true that at the beginning, when we asked our consultants if this was a good economic investment, I don’t remember a single person who said “Yes”.
It was more like, “Don’t do that.”
REYNOLDS: Run away, yes. History has an unbelievable amount of examples of how this wasn’t the best idea, but we’re not in this to make money, and damn it, we’re not going to make it. (Laughter) I think we recognize how lucky we are to be able to be in this position where it’s not about making money or any of those things. I mean, for starters, you have to be in a pretty privileged position to be able to do that. But eventually, as we move up the leagues, we will need outside help to sustain this club. One of our big mission statements and – this is something that is still a big goal – is to create a sustainable model for a sports club like this and allow it to sustain itself long after we are dead and gone.
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