2
Credit: Wayfarer Studios
On August 9, author Colleen Hoover’s hit book-turned-movie, It Ends With Us, hit theaters nationwide. The film starred Blake Lively as Lily Bloom and Justin Baldoni as Ryle Kincaid, a florist and a neurosurgeon who meet and fall in love. However, their relationship is thrown into chaos when Ryle begins to abuse Lily.
Things become even more complicated when Lily’s childhood love comes back into the picture, and she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant with her abuser’s baby.
Even before the movie was released, it faced a lot of backlash. Critics felt that the movie romanticized abuse and didn’t show just how dangerous things can become.
On top of that, Blake Lively made headlines when a reporter revealed that she had almost quit her job after a horribly uncomfortable interview with the actress. People then started to notice that while Lively’s costar had used the film to speak about domestic violence and give women a voice, Lively was seemingly using the film to promote her new haircare line.
But things changed dramatically when Ms. Lively filed a lawsuit against Mr. Baldoni.
Related: ‘X-Men’ Star Says Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds Bait-And-Switched Her About ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’
Prior to the lawsuit, fans had learned that the relationship between the It Ends With Us costars had not been good for a while. Filming had started just months after Lively gave birth to her fourth child, and he felt that Baldoni had fat-shamed her while filming.
Mr. Baldoni’s team countered with the fact that he had suffered from back problems for quite a while and was simply trying to figure out how to pick Ms. Lively up during filming without injuring his back further.
But in her lawsuit, Ms. Lively claimed that things were much worse than that. She said that she was subject to constant sexual harassment. She said she was constantly shown nude images and videos and had to listen to stories about Mr. Baldoni’s sexual conquests. The actress also felt that Mr. Baldoni was trying to add unnecessary sex scenes to the film.
The lawsuit also contained text messages that were reportedly between Mr. Baldoni and his PR team. They appeared to indicate that he wanted to launch a “smear campaign” against his costar.
Lively’s costar Jenny Slate and author Colleen Hoover quickly came to her defense, as did Ms. Lively’s Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005) costars. Mr. Baldoni was also dropped by his talent agency and an award he was receiving was revoked. Not only that, but his podcast cohost quit, and his former publicist filed a lawsuit against him.
Things do not look good for the actor. However, according to his team, he is planning on filing a countersuit against Ms. Lively that will “shock everyone.”
Related: ‘Gossip Girl’ Actress Claims She Went to “Disney Prison”
Per a report from The Daily Mail, Mr. Baldoni claims that Ms. Lively is actually the one who smeared him by planting stories in an attempt to make Ms. Lively look better.
The nub of the legal action which Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman has spent the past few days preparing is that Lively’s complaint, unusually submitted to the California Civil Rights Department rather than a court, is a ploy to rebuild her public image.
It will be claimed that an admittedly poor working relationship with Baldoni and a misconceived marketing strategy to sell a movie about domestic abuse suitable for a fun ‘girls’ night out’ became a social media frenzy in which millions of people turned detective to delve into the evident froideur between Lively and Baldoni.
An inside source claims that someone as powerful as Ms. Lively — along with her husband, Marvel star Ryan Reynolds — would never just sit around and let herself be sexually harassed for months.
A source who was involved in the situation tells me: ‘Do you seriously think that Blake Lively, married to one of the most powerful men in town and represented by one of the most powerful publicists, is going to sit meekly by if she is sexually harassed on a film set, and then hang on for four months after the film is released before making a complaint? It makes no sense.’
The source adds: ‘Look, they never got on. Justin is very spiritual and a kind of unusual person. He is what you might call ‘hippie dippie’. He thinks he can talk to dead people. Would he have said that he had spoken to Blake’s dead father? Yes absolutely. Did he harass her? He says not.
One of the things that reportedly caused tension between the two was the fact that Ms. Lively brought her own editor onto the project and created a separate cut of It Ends With Us. Mr. Baldoni’s production studio owns the rights to Ms. Hoover’s books, and he was also directing the film. In the end, both cuts of the film were viewed, and the majority decided that the studio’s cut was better.
Tensions between Mr. Baldoni and the rest of the It Ends With Us team exploded when fans noticed that he did not do press with his costars and did not walk alongside them on the red carpet at the film’s premiere.
Whose side are you on, Blake Lively’s or Justin Baldoni’s? Do you think Mr. Baldoni was as toxic as Ms. Lively claims, or is she merely trying to improve her struggling image? Share your thoughts in the comments!