Samuel L. Jackson is reflecting on the un-bee-lievable gift he once gave now-exes Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds to celebrate their 2008 wedding.
While speaking with Vulture, the Secret Invasion actor explained what inspired him to give the pair the outlandish present.
Jackson starred in 2017’s Hitman’s Bodyguard alongside Reynolds, whom he coined a “savvy motherfucker,” but explained that he first met the Canadian actor through Johansson, his Marvel co-star.
Because Jackson said the Black Widow actor “was always talking about nature,” it only made sense for the Shaft star to bestow her and Reynolds with a beehive containing “10 pounds of bees.”
“So I had my assistant go out and buy 10 pounds of bees, and then I bought them bee suits and the whole thing,” Jackson recalled. “They kept bees for a while. They got honey for a couple of years while they were married.”
He added: “And then one day the bees abandoned the hive or they abandoned the queen or some shit.”
Johansson and the Deadpool star called it quits in 2011. Just a year later, Reynolds tied the knot with actor Blake Lively. The pair share four children.
The Lucy actor moved on to marry French journalist Romain Dauriac in 2014, but the two parted ways in 2017. The exes share an 8-year-old daughter, Rose Dorothy.
Johansson is now married to comedian Colin Jost after they wed in October 2020. The two welcomed their son, Cosmo, in August 2021.
In February, Reynolds dished about the unconventional gift while appearing on Late Show With David Letterman in 2009, quipping that he halfway expected to receive a “bloodless corpse of a frat boy” as a wedding gift from the Pulp Fiction star.
“But no, [Jackson’s assistant] comes back [to my front door] from the trunk, and he brings this square box, and it’s humming to an insane degree. He tells me that there are 10,000 bees in here, and Mr. Jackson would like you to have this beehive,” Reynolds explained.
He added: “So I said, ‘I guess we’re putting that in the backyard?’ And he says, ‘Yes.’ So he hands me a couple of beekeeping outfits and a lifetime subscription to the American Beekeepers Journal. The next thing I know, I’m making honey.”
Reynolds went on to joke that, despite being petrified by the gift, the bees turned out to be “a great security system” for his home.