Ryan Reynolds sends gift to Dolly Parton to celebrate Welsh ancestry

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Hollywood star and Wrexham AFC owner Ryan Reynolds has sent a gift to country music singer Dolly Parton, after she was found to have Welsh ancestry.

A documentary series looking at her roots previously traced her heritage back to the Welsh valleys.

Parton, 78, began her music career in 1959, with the unsuccessful single Puppy Love, before The Last Thing On My Mind, a duet with Porter Wagoner, set her on the path to the worldwide fame she achieved with classic hits such as Jolene and I Will Always Love You.

Now in a video posted to Twitter by Reynolds, Parton can be seen with a Wrexham football scarf sent to her by the Deadpool star, which she described as “beautiful”.

Parton said: “You may have seen my recent announcement about possibly having Welsh ancestry, well I was tickled to learn that, and I was even more tickled when I received a lovely gift from the Welsh Board of Tourism and Docudramas.

“They sent me this beautiful scarf and asked if I’d say a few words about Wales.”

The video then shows the 9 to 5 star opening a letter, remarking “I hope these are not written in Welsh”, before announcing that new episodes of Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s Welcome To Wrexham series are now streaming.

The pair then appear and explain the organisation is not real and it was in fact them who sent the gift to the singer.

McElhenney told Parton: “You see when we found out your family might be from Wales, we thought who better to help promote our docuseries about North Wales and their beloved football club?”

A series of clips from the documentary are then shown, to which Parton replied: “Well, that is just so nice – it kind of makes me feel homesick.”

The second series of the docudrama showed the Welsh football team being promoted from League Two to League One under the US owners, with the new third series set to show the club’s attempt to achieve promotion to the second tier of English football, the Championship.

The third season of Welcome To Wrexham is streaming on Disney+.