Justin Hartley is not Ryan Reynolds. They are, in fact, two different people. Hartley plays Kevin Pearson on NBC's smash hit This Is Us, and Reynolds is the new Deadpool. But that didn't stop Hartley from pretending to be Reynolds when a fan mistook his identity.
"I went to this charity event," Hartley tells Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. "It's really neat because you get to raise money for good causes, and people recognize you, and they're really nice to you. This woman recognized me, and I could tell she did because she made this face." Hartley then makes an exaggerated shocked facial expression, which frankly, we just took a screen shot of and made it our laptop background.
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"She really likes me! I was feeling pretty good about myself," Hartley continues. "She starts telling me how great I am and how in love with me she is...she asked how Blake was, and I didn't know what she was talking about— I said 'great!'" The Blake reference didn't tip off Hartley, until the woman asked him if he knew that Deadpool would be a huge hit. That's when he realized that this woman was mistaking him for Ryan Reynolds. Fallon covers his mouth and doubles over in secondhand mortification.
Hartley says he was insulted for "half a second," and that he "didn't have the heart to tell her." So for five minutes, "I just pretended like I was the coolest guy on Earth, Ryan Reynolds." As he left the event, he gave the woman a wave goodbye, and "she was staring [like] death at me," Hartley says. "Somebody told her."
You can watch the full video below, in which Hartley also discusses the very real dangers of frying an entire turkey on Thanksgiving. At least he lived to tell the tale.