How Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman Won Over Madonna

It took a little sweet talk to get an iconic song into Deadpool & Wolverine, Ryan Reynolds recently revealed. The 47-year-old actor, who also is a co-writer and producer on the film, says it took an in-person pitch to mega-star Madonna to secure her 1989 smash, “Like a Prayer,” with co-star Hugh Jackman and director Shawn Levy at his side.

The trio spilled the beans during a joint Friday interview with Andy Cohen on SiriusXM, during which the Bravo patriarch expressed marvel that the third movie in the action franchise managed to score such an influential hit. According to Levy, it took more than the usual set of calls between managers and lawyers to put the creative deal together.

“Let’s preface it with the fact that they don’t license — that Madonna doesn’t just license the song, particularly that song,” Ryan Reynolds told Cohen.

“It was a big deal to ask for it and certainly a bigger deal to use it. We went over and met with her and and sort of showed her how it was being used, and where, and why.”

Reynolds said that he approached the meeting with a little bit of trepidation, asking a member of the singer/writer/actor/director’s team “Like am I allowed to just say, ‘Madonna?’ Like, ‘Hello Madonna, I’m Ryan?”

Tensions eased when Madonna told the Deadpool crew that her son was a fan of the trilogy’s previous films. She even acted as a quick-hit consultant when she watched the scene in which “Like a Prayer” would be used.

“She gave a great note,” Reynolds says. After watching the footage, she said “‘You need to do this.’ And damn it, if she wasn’t like spot on.”

“We literally went into a new recording session within 48 hours to do this note. … It made the sequence better,” Levy said.

The result is one of the few re-uses of Madonna’s fourth-biggest Billboard hit, though the song is arguably one of her most controversial. As fans might recall, “Like a Prayer” was actually released as part of a Pepsi commercial, an ad that so thrilled Pepsi execs that they pre-purchased $10 million in airtime to broadcast the spot. But after Madonna’s separate, Mary Lambert-directed video for the song dropped on MTV, the campaign screeched to a halt.

In the video, which relies heavily on religious imagery, Madonna dances in front of burning crosses while clad in a slip, and kisses a Black statue of a saint after the figure comes to life. In an Instagram post from 2023, Madonna writes that “The commercial was immediately canceled when I refused to change any scenes in the video where I was kissing a black saint or burning crosses.”

“So began my illustrious career as an artist refusing to compromise my artistic integrity,” she continued, saying that “artists are here to disturb the peace.”

That embrace of controversy might be another commonality that Madonna and Deadpool (and Reynolds) share. Speaking with Vanity Fair last month, Levy notes that the character of “Deadpool has transgressive DNA.”

“He’s still an equal opportunity offender, but it’s all done with the same cultural awareness and fluency that both Ryan and the character of Wade Wilson have,” Levy said. And the latest, “Like a Prayer” using film, isn’t “a more careful Deadpool movie. It’s as aware of the culture and as aware of being in a movie as the character always has been.”