Welcome to Wrexham Is Pitch Perfect

Once upon a time there was a floundering Welsh football club named the Wrexham Red Dragons, whose struggles mirrored those of the town they played in. For the team, the future looked bleak.

That is, until the fateful day of February 9, 2021, when showrunner-performer Rob McElhenney and film star Ryan Reynolds stepped in and purchased the club. Since then, Wrexham AFC, as it's known, has been given a stunning Hollywood makeover, and its new owners have become beloved figures in the community.

Their odyssey is documented in FX's entertaining fly-on-the-wall series Welcome to Wrexham, streaming on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ overseas.

If this all sounds like a modern-day fairy tale, well, that's because it is.

"I'm not sure Rob or I ever fathomed how big this thing would become and how fast — not just within Wrexham and Wales but across the football-loving planet," Reynolds says.

Produced by Boardwalk Pictures (Chef's Table, Cheer), Wrexham turns the traditional sports docuseries on its head. While some pundits were quick to dub it an unscripted Ted Lasso, it's much closer in spirit to Boardwalk's Last Chance U, an underdog story about football players at a junior college.

As FX copresident Nick Grad observes, "What sets Wrexham apart is, it's not just about the results on the pitch, it's about the relationship between a town and its team."

"From the beginning," McElhenney says, "we were attempting to dial in to what I think is at the heart of sports viewership and fandom, and that is storytelling."

When the two stars first embarked on their mission, Wrexham AFC — a fifth-tier club entrenched at the lowest level of the English football league pyramid — had been mismanaged to the point of near-financial collapse.

McElhenney (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Mythic Quest) and Reynolds (Deadpool, Free Guy) knew little about soccer and less about owning a sports franchise, and they had yet to meet in person or step foot in Wales.

But in the eighteen episodes that comprise Wrexham's first season, the club makes a thrilling playoff run, attendance and merchandise sales explode and its celebrity owners bond with the community, the players and — in a bromance subplot — each other.

The origin story begins with McElhenney, a Philadelphia native and lifelong fan of its NFL team, the Eagles. "It's always been a dream of mine to be involved in an ownership group," he says. "Growing up, I was a massive fan of sports, but I couldn't play anything."

McElhenney's interest in soccer (as English football is known stateside) had been piqued by one of the writers on the Apple TV+ show he stars in and cocreated, Mythic Quest. That would be British-born actor and comedian Humphrey Ker, who also stars on the NBC sitcom American Auto.

"I induced Rob to watch Sunderland 'TiI I Die," Ker says, referring to the Netflix docuseries about a football club in northeastern England, "and Rob kind of fell in love with it. He saw the bizarre communion that goes on between football clubs and their towns in the U.K."

When the pandemic hit in March 2020, McElhenney had ample time to research the sport. He became fascinated by the English football leagues' system of relegation and promotion, something unheard of in U.S. pro sports.

"It's something I still don't believe a lot of Americans know about or understand," he says, "this idea that you can take a club from the lower leagues to the next level and keep going up the pyramid."

At the top of that pyramid sits the Premier League, home to million-dollar salaries and household names like Chelsea and Manchester United. Five levels down is the National League, where Wrexham AFC has toiled for fifteen consecutive seasons.

McElhenney recalls telling his wife, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Kaitlin Olson, "I think we should buy one of these lower-league football clubs." But his big-picture goal went beyond just winning; he wanted to make the club a sustainable, profitable business that could run for years.

"I realized that if the whole endeavor was about infusing the club and the town with enough capital to succeed, it would take a pretty big check," he recalls. As McElhenney states in the series, "I have TV money ... I needed superhero-movie-star money."

Enter Ryan Reynolds. Equally at home in the Marvel-verse and in wisecracking rom-coms, the versatile Canadian actor also sports a diverse investment portfolio, with ownership stakes in Aviation Gin, Mint Mobile and the production company Maximum Effort.

McElhenney, based in L.A., and Reynolds, based in New York, were already social-media buds. "I thought he would understand what I'm trying to do here," McElhenney says.

When Reynolds received a text late one night outlining McElhenney's proposal, he was immediately hooked. "You don't turn your back on a great idea," the actor says. "It was so unexpected."

When McElhenney told Boardwalk Pictures executive producer Andrew Fried that Reynolds might come aboard, Fried quipped, "I think we just went from 'American TV star buys European soccer team' to 'Ryan Reynolds and friend buy European soccer team.'"

Responding via email, Fried writes that McElhenney thought that would only add to the fun. "Even at that early stage in the project, Rob was always focused on what was best for the story and best for the team and its success."

Next came the search for the right club. As Ker — who now serves as Wrexham AFC's executive director — recalls, eight to ten clubs were considered, but Wrexham stood out, not only for its doggedly loyal fan base, but for its storied history. Founded in 1864, it's the third-oldest football club in the world; its stadium, the Racecourse Ground, is the world's oldest international football stadium still hosting international matches.

"Wrexham had everything," Reynolds says. "History, a supporter base that was passionate, dynamic and unwavering ... and it had fallen on some pretty hard times of late. The entire story was right there barking at us."

McElhenney, who's simultaneously running shows for FX and Apple TV+, gave first crack at the pitch to his respective bosses. Apple TV+ passed, citing a show already in development about an American football coach who leads a team in the U.K. But FX Networks chairman John Landgraf, with whom he has a twenty-year-plus relationship, "got it right away," McElhenney recalls.

Though some in Wrexham were skeptical of their new benefactors' true intentions, the fan-based ownership group — collectively known as the Wrexham Supporters Trust — voted them in with an overwhelming 98.4 percent.

"A lot of people at the beginning were saying, 'Oh, this is all about a TV series, and it's about you guys wanting to make something entertaining,'" McElhenney recounts. "And while that's partly true, we were honest from the beginning. The whole thing doesn't work if we make a great TV show that people love to watch — and the business doesn't also work."

Reynolds adds, "We said from the beginning: we didn't want Wrexham to become part of our story. We wanted to be part of their story."

Two years in, McElhenney and Reynolds have made good on their promise to build a sustainable future. They've completed the purchase of the Racecourse Ground to assure fans they wouldn't move the club, spent lavishly on refurbishments and hired a team of seasoned executives to overhaul it. They've also brought in new sponsors like TikTok and Expedia, as well as a celebrated manager (Phil Parkinson) and franchise players like top goal-scorer Paul Mullin and hulking striker Ollie Palmer, each of whom left teams in higher-ranked leagues to play for Wrexham.

The series is peppered with McElhenney and Reynolds's trademark self-deprecating comedy, but they've been careful to make only themselves the butt of jokes.

"I think the biggest challenge in putting this show together," Fried says, "was the right balance of emotional, character-driven storytelling and something that was a bit lighter, comedic and entertaining. Rob and Ryan were masters at finding that perfect balance."

Even as veterans of film and episodic television, the two stars had to adjust to the rigors of being portrayed in a docuseries.

"We're used to being in control of the cameras," McElhenney says. "Rarely in my life have I had a camera pointed in my face and a microphone trying to capture what's happening at all times."

If there's one group that thrives in front of the cameras, it's Wrexham 's unheralded stars — the fans, those hard-working, instantly relatable folks who live and die by the club's every move.

There's Shaun Winter, a single father who works as a painter for the town council ("That guy's my uncle, my cousin, one of my best friends," McElhenney says). There's Annette Gardner, a school librarian and longtime club volunteer who's not shy about expressing her opinions over Wrexham's personnel decisions.

And there's Wayne Jones, the popular owner of The Turf, a pub that sits on the Racecourse Ground. "I worry where the club and the economy would be without Rob and Ryan and the boost and hope they've given the entire region of Wales," Jones says.

One amusing aspect of the series is how quickly Reynolds himself transformed into a superfan of the "beautiful game," as soccer is known.

"Ryan looked at this in the beginning as more of a business opportunity," McElhenney observes, "and then he slowly and surely fell in love with the club like I did." (So much so that Reynolds reportedly purchased a home for his family just five miles from the Racecourse Ground.)

"I'm suddenly that guy who screams at the top of his lungs in an otherwise quiet home with my daughters," Reynolds admits.

His wife, actress Blake Lively (Gossip Girl), has also had to grapple with her husband's new obsession. "There's a sequence in the show where I say to Rob, 'My wife wants to kill you,'" Reynolds says. "She said that when I was absolutely paralyzed after we won a match; I was struggling with coming down from it."

Still, as much fun as the lads appear to be having onscreen, getting a crash course in team ownership hasn't always been easy.

"It's a difficult process, because none of us had ever worked in this medium before," McElhenney says. "There would be moments where we realized we're severely in the red and would have to figure out a way to subsidize all these initiatives. I'd be on the set of Sunny or Mythic Quest, and I'd call Ryan, and he'd be like, 'I'm in the middle of rehearsing a tap-dance routine,' and I'd be like, 'Yeah, I'm running a TV series, but we have to figure this out.' The buck stops with us. So he'd be in Vancouver and I'd be in L.A., and we'd have to fly over to the U.K."

Their unfamiliarity with English football rules has led to some awkward gaffes, like the time they were caught prematurely celebrating a goal at the FA Cup championship game at Wembley Stadium, not realizing it had been nullified by an offside flag.

Minor stumbles aside, they've enjoyed a hero's welcome from long-suffering fans who regard them as saviors. Local band The Declan Swans even wrote a song about the takeover, "Always Sunny in Wrexham," that fans now regularly sing at matches.

McElhenney hopes season two — due this year — can retain the first season's innocence and charm. One highlight is sure to be a visit from King Charles and Queen Camilla, who toured the Racecourse Ground in December.

This summer, Wrexham mania could break out in the U.S., as the club makes its first scheduled tour of America. In June, they'll play in a million-dollar, winner-take-all, seven-on-seven tournament in North Carolina that will include legendary players from Wrexham's past.

"Our ultimate goal," McElhenney declares, "is to get Wrexham AFC to the Premier League." In April, Wrexham moved one significant step closer to realizing that dream, winning promotion to League Two. Playing their way to the very top of the pyramid could take years, but for its owners, the journey is greater than the destination.

"Ryan and I are having a blast," McElhenney says. "We wanted to be honest and tell some of the stories of heartache, but also a story of triumph and joy. And hopefully, this show is bringing people some joy."

Wrexham AFC co-owners Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds are executive producers of Welcome to Wrexham. Nicholas Frenkel, George Dewey and Boardwalk Pictures' Andrew Fried, John Henion, Dane Lillegard, Jordan Wynn and Sarina Roma are also executive producers. 

This article originally appeared in emmy magazine issue #6, 2023, under the title, "Pitch Perfect."

The interviews for this story were completed before the start of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.