- Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney star in a new Ancestry.com commercial tied to their Wrexham AFC co-ownership, with McElhenney playing Reynolds' fictional 18th-century ancestor "Innocent George" in a colonial dream sequence.
- The ad supports a limited-edition fan bundle, a DNA kit paired with a Wrexham AFC scarf, available to the club's supporters while supplies last.
- This is not the duo's first Ancestry.com collaboration; an earlier holiday spot featured Wrexham players Aaron James and Matty James taking DNA tests to find out if they're related. (They're not.)
- Reynolds, whose endorsement portfolio includes Aviation American Gin, Mint Mobile, and Hyundai, continues leveraging his Wrexham ownership as a brand marketing engine alongside McElhenney, who recently appeared in DirecTV's 2025 campaign alongside Kumail Nanjiani.
Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney are taking their bromance back to the 1700s. The Wrexham AFC co-owners just dropped a new Ancestry.com commercial that blends genealogy, humor, and colonial cosplay into one very on-brand minute of television.
In the spot, McElhenney dons a tricorn hat and lacy cravat to play Reynolds’ ancestor “Innocent George,” who, standing in a field with a cane and pipe, declares that one day he will have a great-great-great-great-great-grandson who is a “profound d—.” Reynolds is less offended by the insult than by the fact that he wasn’t included in the dream sequence at all.
It’s a playful callback to a Season 4 episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where the gang reimagined themselves as colonists who cracked the Liberty Bell.
Just as Reynolds and McElhenney have done with other campaigns, including Reynolds’ viral Monday.com collaboration with Hugh Jackman, the pair leans hard into their real-life chemistry to make the ad feel more like a bit than a brand push.
The partnership extends beyond the commercial. Ancestry.com is offering Wrexham AFC fans a limited-edition bundle featuring a DNA kit and a club scarf, building on a holiday campaign that featured Wrexham players Aaron James and Matty James.
The genealogy brand, which previously ran its well-received “It’s a Family Thing” integrated campaign through Wieden+Kennedy and has long supported NBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?, is clearly leaning into sports-entertainment crossovers as a strategic direction.
This is a similar playbook to what we saw when Morgan Freeman and Chase Infiniti starred in a campaign for Audi, big names, familiar chemistry, storytelling that sells.
Off the pitch, Wrexham is fighting for a Championship play-off spot in 2026, having grown from a $2 million acquisition to a club now valued at $450–500 million, per recent Apollo Sports Capital investment figures.
Takeaways
Reynolds and McElhenney have quietly built one of the most effective celebrity-brand machines in sports by using Wrexham AFC as a living, breathing content studio.
The Ancestry.com partnership is smart precisely because it doesn’t feel like an ad, it feels like an extension of their friendship and the Welcome to Wrexham universe that fans already love.
Ancestry.com gets credibility, reach, and entertainment value without having to explain what it does. Reynolds gets another notch in a brand portfolio that has consistently turned personality into profit.
And McElhenney, fresh off his DirecTV campaign with Kumail Nanjiani, is proving he’s no longer just Reynolds’ sidekick in the endorsement world, he’s a brand draw in his own right.
Is Wrexham AFC quietly becoming one of the most valuable brand partnership vehicles in global sports, and if so, how long before brands start competing to get in? Does Ancestry.com’s pivot toward celebrity-driven, sports-linked storytelling signal a broader shift away from its traditional genealogy-focused advertising?
