‘Unimaginable Talent’
After watching the Eras tour in New Orleans this past weekend, the actor published a praising recap that compared the show to what it would be like if “Super Bowl or Mardi Gras had a baby with music”
By the time Taylor Swift concludes the Eras tour in December, more than six million people will have watched her perform the career-spanning show at one of the more than 50 stadiums she took over during the run. Ryan Reynolds made his contribution to the attendance tally when he attended one of three dates at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans over the weekend. Nearly a week later, the actor is still reeling from the experience and wishing Swift could switch places with someone in the audience to witness it herself.
“I’ve shot movies in New Orleans most of my career. It’s a special place on a normal day — but this weekend, felt like Super Bowl or Mardi Gras had a baby with music,” Reynolds wrote on Instagram. “I don’t understand the unimaginable work, care, talent and discipline @taylorswift generates to create an experience like this because I’m not a scientist. It’s an athletic event and a collective cultural phenomenon. It’s gigantic but intimate. The only bummer is she can’t be in the audience to experience what everyone else sees and feels. To watch herself up there is something I wish she could know. But that isn’t physically possible and even if it were, you can’t just get tickets last minute.”
The caption appears beneath a carousel of photos Reynolds captured at the show. One shows Swift on the massive screens on stage, in another he poses with Rufus Wainwright and there’s also a mirror picture with his wife Blake Lively. The final slide in the post captures the end of the Tortured Poets Department single “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.”
Even without the video evidence of his attendance — or the Eras tour concert film that premiered last year but doesn’t include performances of the newly added Tortured Poets songs — Reynolds won’t be forgetting the show anytime soon. In fact, he predicts it will still be fresh in his mind nearly 50 years from now.
“When I’m 95 yrs old and my wife and kids wheel me outside and into the sun so I can drink a sandwich, I’ll still be talking about seeing this show in New Orleans,” he wrote. “Not just because it’s one of the best things I’ve seen/heard/felt. And not only because you see the staggering and positive economic impact this tour has on small businesses all over NOLA — a town that’s been thru so much for so long. The main reason I’ll never forget this show is because it brings people together in so many ways. And in 2024, (where that feeling is scarce as hell) it’s a special and incredibly rare thing.”