In an early episode of Welcome to Wrexham, there is a scene recorded on a movie lot shortly after Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney meet in person for the first time. Recently approved as the new owners of a fifth-tier football club located in a working-class town in north Wales, the actors are filmed admiring what appears to be a brass plaque on a studio wall commemorating the first film in which the Deadpool star Reynolds appeared. A closer inspection and impromptu act of minor vandalism reveals the plate to be made of cheap plastic and rubber, prompting McElhenney to observe gleefully: “This is just Hollywood to a tee; beautiful on the outside but just … shit.”
Previously acquainted with Reynolds only through a series of mid-pandemic video calls on which they had discussed and negotiated the purchase of Wrexham Football Club from its supporters trust, McElhenney was the driving force behind the takeover. He couldn’t do it alone and needed the “movie-star money” provided by Reynolds, who has supplemented his already obscene acting income with lucrative stakes in Aviation American Gin and Mint Mobile. Neither man had ever set foot in Wales, let alone Wrexham, and the prevailing concern among fans regarding the Hollywood duo’s peculiar interest was that their stardust-sprinkled stewardship and the documentary series that would chronicle it might turn out to be as tacky as the studio sign.
When news of Reynolds’s and McElhenney’s pursuit started percolating in 2020, the understandable question on everyone’s lips was: why Wrexham? More specifically, what possible motivation could a couple of TV and movie heavyweights from across the pond have for investing in a club that have been treading National League waters for well over a decade and what would their involvement mean for the future of the club and town?
They are queries addressed in the opening episode of their Disney+ series, which is halfway through an opening run of 18 episodes. In the first one, McElhenney lays out his blue-collar credentials as the son of a working-class man who grew up in Philadelphia and says he feels an affinity between his home city and the Welsh town.
During his and Reynolds’ online pitch to the supporters trust, he tells his bemused audience that seeing his beloved Philadelphia Eagles win the Super Bowl in 2018 was one of the top five moments in his life, up there with marrying his wife and having children. He also stresses his fascination with the idea of promotion and relegation and on more than one occasion in the series makes no secret of his ambition to move Wrexham up to the Premier League.
To begin this ambitious odyssey, Wrexham first have to escape a purgatory in the National League now in its 15th year, with the club trying to achieve promotion back to the Football League at the third time of asking under Reynolds and McElhenney. With that pair taking a backseat during the early episodes, we are invited behind the scenes at the club and, in film that calls to mind Sunderland Til I Die, introduced to the town of Wrexham and many of members of a population to whom the club means everything.
