Blake Lively cannot get a leg up in the great It Ends With Us battle of 2024. While rumors continue to swirl about some kind of falling out she had with her director and co-star Justin Baldoni, large swaths of the film’s audience have decided to turn their backs on her. Their reasoning is that Lively, who served double duty as both star and executive producer, has taken too light a tone while promoting the film, which follows Lively’s Lily Bloom as she falls into an abusive relationship with Baldoni’s Ryle Kincaid.
By contrast, fans are noting that Baldoni has used his solo press tour to frame himself as an advocate for domestic-abuse survivors. It seems as though every time a microphone was put in front of him, Baldoni was talking about how he wanted this movie to help women get out of horrific cycles of abuse.
A video from Evie Magazine juxtaposing Baldoni and Lively’s different approaches to promoting the movie has over 4 million views across TikTok and X with people largely siding with Baldoni.
Now, is it completely fair to open this video with Baldoni saying, “If a Lily Bloom in real life can sit in this theater and maybe make a different choice for herself than was made for her … that’s why I made the movie,” before quickly cutting to Lively saying that her childhood dream was to wear Britney Spears’s Versace dress? No! But it certainly does a good job of painting Lively as a frivolous woman who wants to wear a pretty dress.
Among Lively’s perceived crimes are not taking the subject of the movie seriously, allegedly making her male feminist director look bad, and launching her hair-care line in the middle of her press tour.
Over on Instagram, Lively’s most recent post is a video from six days ago titled “Girl Talk,” in which she gabs with co-stars Jenny Slate and Isabela Ferrer as well as It Ends With Us author Colleen Hoover. In the video, they discuss their zodiac signs and talk about what kind of jobs they would have if they had to pick new ones.
It’s a gigglefest, and people in the comments are writing paragraphs about how disappointed they are with Lively. “You don’t have the maturity required to respectfully represent the audience you were depicting in this film. I’m deeply disappointed to witness the flighty tone and bubble-headed manner used in promotion of a story about a deadly serious subject,” wrote one commenter.
“I’ve always been a Blake fan, but the PR you’ve done for this film is beyond tone deaf — it’s offensive and self-serving. DV is a dark reality for so many women and it’s such a key aspect of the film,” wrote another. “The way you’re continually minimizing, glossing over it, and trying to *capitalize* on it with haircare products and canned cocktails is so insulting to victims of DV … This just ain’t it.”
The backlash against Lively must have sparked a memory for journalist Kjersti Flaa, who added to the maelstrom when she uploaded a video called “The Blake Lively interview that made me want to quit my job” to YouTube.
In the video, Flaa was interviewing Lively and Parker Posey for their 2016 film, Café Society (directed by Woody Allen). Flaa opened by congratulating Lively, who was pregnant with her second child, on her baby bump. “Congrats on your little bump,” Lively shot back, before turning to Posey and icing out Flaa for the rest of the interview. When Flaa asked about the costumes for the 1930s period piece, Lively (still looking only at Posey) wondered aloud, “Everyone wants to talk about the clothes, but I wonder if they would ask the men about the clothes.”
At time of writing, the video is No. 13 on YouTube’s Trending chart and has over 900,000 views. The top comment reads, “This is exactly what Maya Angelou was referring to — ‘I’ve learned that people will never forget how you made them feel.’” Yikes.
In what seems like an attempt to turn things around, Lively shared an Instagram Story about the realities of domestic violence on Tuesday. “1 in 4 women aged 18 and older in the US alone have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime,” Lively wrote. “Intimate partner violence affects all genders, including more than 12 million people every year in the United States.” She then included information about the National Domestic Violence Hotline, as well as a link with more information.
Baldoni, meanwhile, is also working to help provide domestic-abuse survivors with resources and access to help. On Wednesday, Variety published an exclusive report about Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios, partnering with the No More Foundation. Per Variety, there’s an end card in the It Ends With Us credits and a dedicated page on the No More website that directs people to help.
There was never going to be a winner in this situation. The subject matter is too tricky, especially when Lively’s job as an executive producer is to help the movie make money. Amid all of this, Baldoni just hired a crisis-PR firm. Will this drama ever end?
This post has been updated.
