Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney Get Their Kicks in Welcome to Wrexham

New docuseries follows Vancouver's own Ryan Reynolds and Always Sunny star Rob McElhenney as they buy the world's oldest football club... like, for real

New docuseries follows Vancouver’s own Ryan Reynolds and Always Sunny star Rob McElhenney as they buy the world’s oldest football club… like, for real 

Two Hollywood stars with nominal knowledge and no experience purchase an English football team and go on a journey. The triumphs and pitfalls they encountered along the way is the subject of a docuseries upcoming on FX. 

Welcome to Wrexham, premiering Wednesday with two new episodes follows Rob McElhenney (creator/star of FX sitcom It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and B.C.’s own Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool), the new owners of the Red Dragons of Wrexham, a working-class town in North Wales that is home to the third-oldest professional football club in the world. 

In early 2021, the pair completed the purchase of Wrexham, a fifth-tier team in the English Football League, in the hopes of restoring it to its former glory after nearly two decades of struggling. The problem is they have no experience running a football team nor working with each other, so there’s a learning curve. 

Luckily, they have a competent front office to show them the ropes, as well as Humphrey Ker, a Hollywood writer and British football fan who serves as the club’s executive director and a crucial go-between/translator for these North American actors and club management. 

WrexhamFX Canada“It’s been a great pleasure and also a total nightmare, as is the nature of these sorts of things,” explains Ker, who previously worked for McElhenney as a writer on his Apple TV+ series Mythic Quest. “They are both incredibly enthusiastic, very intelligent, very quick to pick up on things, which means I can’t really sneak anything past them.” 

“And it’s been tremendous fun,” the native Londoner continues. “I mean, to work for a football club in any capacity is a dream come true but then to do it with two guys who are—quite unusual for a lot of owners of football clubs—in it for very altruistic reasons, really, rather than as a means to kind of pad their own egos or their wallets or whatever it may be… it’s been great.” 

The partnership under the actors’ RR McReynolds Company LLC has taken its share of criticism as being a publicity stunt and even Apple TV+ comedy Ted Lasso made a joking reference to it last season. But the results on the field can’t be denied. Wrexham went from 11 wins, 10 draws and 16 losses in 2019-’20 to 19-11-12 in 2020-’21 (the season the transaction completed) and 26-10-8 in 2021-’22 under their full ownership, for a second-place finish in the National League. 

“Ultimately, we wanted to finish top of the table,” Ker explains, “and we came second. So we were a bit disappointed about that. But you know, it’s given us lots of excitement going through the next season… with the sense that we want to go one better and get promoted.”  

Welcome to Wrexham premieres Wednesday at 7 p.m. & 8 p.m. (repeating at 10 p.m. & 11 p.m.) on FX Canada