Image: Getty
He spent several weeks in the region while shooting his latest film, and it turns out Ryan Reynolds went home with quite the souvenir – a “horrible haircut”. The 41-year-old Canadian actor opened up about his time in the UAE, where he shot upcoming Netflix film 6 Underground, this week in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres, telling the TV host the memento was the only downside of his trip. “I went to a barber in a strip mall there,” the Deadpool star revealed. “It looked like somebody had cut my hair with a loofah, like they just sort of rubbed it off, or maybe used a hammer.”
However, the star, who is married to Gossip Girl actress Blake Lively, enjoyed the rest of his time in Abu Dhabi, where filming was based. Reynolds even brought along his spouse and their two daughters, four-year-old James and two-year-old Ines, for some of the six-week filming schedule, he told DeGeneres. “It was a lot of fun,” the actor said of the Emirati capital. “It was interesting, it was cool to bring my kids to this entirely new culture.” The couple made time for sightseeing in amongst filming, with Reynolds revealing the family spent Thanksgiving in the UAE.
“We got around and looked around and absorbed as much of the place as we could,” the star added. “Both our kids were there and we wanted them to see as much as possible. I liked it, I actually really quite liked it, I had a bit of time off and got to cruise around.”
Filming for 6 Underground, Netflix’s biggest budget movie to date, kicked off in November, with Reynolds joined in the Emirates by co-stars Mélanie Laurent, Manuel Rulfo, and Ben Hardy. Shooting also took place further afield in the UAE, with the Liwa desert, Sharjah, and Ras Al Khaimah also hosting the 6 Underground cast and crew for scenes. “Shooting in Abu Dhabi is going to be one of the highlights of this production, although you’ll have to wait until the movie hits Netflix to find out why,” Reynolds told The National at the time. Director Michael Bay added: “Abu Dhabi is a unique place to make a movie, with a lot of great looks. It’s got the diversity and architecture I need in front of the camera – plus the professional facilities, crew and infrastructure to back it up. I’m very excited to be shooting here over the next few weeks.”
Although the plot has been kept under wraps, the movie is described as a collision between Deadpool and Mission Impossible, the latter of which also filmed scenes in the UAE. The film, scheduled for a worldwide release on Netflix in 2019, is the streaming platform’s biggest production to date, with a budget of approximately AED 460,000,000 (US $125,000,000), surpassing The Irishman, which reportedly had a budget of US $106,000,000. Other productions to have been filmed in the UAE include Star Trek Beyond (2016), Syriana (2005), Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011), and Star Wars Episode VII – The Force Awakens (2015).
Now Read: Amal Clooney Has Been Named the UN’s Global Citizen of the Year
