Saturday Night Live legends helped make Ryan Reynolds a ‘motormouth’
Ryan Reynolds says his motormouth persona didn’t just happen — it was shaped by Saturday Night Live legends, and he’s sharing what they taught him.
On a recent episode of On Film... With Kevin McCarthy, Ryan Reynolds said the secret behind his famous fast-talking delivery came from studying one person: Dan Aykroyd. He fixated on how Aykroyd could fire off lines at high speed and still sound completely natural — not rushed, not rehearsed — and he tried to build that gear into his own voice.
"I would watch Saturday Night Live the second I got old enough which is only about seven or eight," Reynolds said. "I would have my nose two inches from the television," he added, saying that’s how he "really learned how to make be a motormouth" from Aykroyd.
That homework didn’t stop at SNL. Reynolds said he rewatched Aykroyd across movies to absorb the cadence, singling out Stripes and admitting he saw it somewhere between 60 and 70 times before he turned 15. He framed that repetition as a kind of do‑it‑yourself acting class rather than just fandom.
Other comedy teachers
Reynolds also credited a few more comedy heavyweights — and even one classic sitcom bartender — with shaping how he times a line and when he holds back. He grew up more glued to TV than movies and treated those hours like study.
- Bill Murray — a model for timing and offhand delivery
- Chevy Chase — an example of effortless looseness on screen
- Ted Danson as Sam Malone in Cheers — a character he studied with the same intensity
All of that filtered into the voice audiences know now — especially the mile‑a‑minute banter of Deadpool . On the podcast, Reynolds called Aykroyd, Murray and Chase his personal teachers, even if they never knew it.