Blake Lively has addressed the domestic violence plot in It Ends With Us following some chatter on social media.
On Tuesday, the 36-year-old actress took to her Instagram Story to bring awareness to domestic violence, a central storyline in her new movie. This comes after some felt Lively was avoiding the subject amid her lighthearted promotion of the film.
Lively first reshared a clip from her interview with BBC News, in which she says her character, Lily Bloom, “is not just a survivor, and she’s not just a victim, and while those are huge things to be, they are not her identity.” Over the footage, Lively wrote a lengthy message, which she began by thanking “everyone who came out to show that people WANT to see films about women and the multitudes we hold.”
“It Ends With Us is a story of the female experience. All the highest highs, and lowest lows,” she continued. “And we are so proud of it.”
Before thanking everyone again, she added, “We have been in celebration of this film and of getting a message so important out there to the masses.”
In Lively’s subsequent Story, she shared statistics on intimate partner violence as well as a hotline link and access to “immediate help.”
“Everyone deserves relationships free from domestic violence,” she wrote in part.
Throughout Lively’s press tour, she has received criticism over not focusing on the movie’s serious themes. Instead, fans argue that Lively wants the movie to be a successful Barbenheimer-like event with her largely promoting Deadpool & Wolverine. Her husband, Ryan Reynolds, and his co-star, Hugh Jackman, have even crashed It Ends With Us press junkets.
People online have also criticized Lively for promoting her haircare line and focusing on her character being a florist by encouraging women to “grab your friends and wear your florals and head out to see it.”
“People who see this movie who relate to the topics on a deeply personal level, they’re really gonna wanna talk to you. This movie is gonna affect people, and they’re gonna wanna tell you about their life. … If someone understands the themes of this movie, comes across you in public, and they wanna really talk to you, what’s the best way for them to be able to talk to you about this? How would you recommend they go about it?” Lively was asked last week in an interview with Jake Hamilton that has widely circulated on social media.
Lively seemingly made a joke out of the question and responded, “Like, asking for my address, or my phone number, or, like, location share? I could just location-share you… I’m a Virgo, so like, are we talking logistics, are we talking emotionally?”
She did later answer the question seriously. But that clip didn’t go viral.
“What’s been beautiful about this movie is that unfortunately, we all know at least someone, but we normally know a lot more than someones, we know some manys who have experienced this,” Lively said. “And the beauty of this has been to see people, and to see this movie alongside women who haven’t experienced this — thank Goodness — go, ‘Woah, I fell in love too. I saw the red flags, but they didn’t look red; they looked kinda fuchsia and cute. But you know, I ignored them.'”
She continued, “This story is told with such empathy that I feel like this movie can be healing, can be a cautionary tale and can be inspiring. I think that the movie itself, Colleen [Hoover]’s work itself does that work and if anyone ever comes up to you and says that your work meant something to them outside of having that collective experience in the theater where you laugh and cry and feel together, like, what blessing the fact that we get to do this. It’s really significant.”
But the It Ends With Us press tour has focused somewhat on the serious subject matter in the film. Justin Baldoni, who portrays the film’s antagonist, Ryle Kincaid, has broached the issue of domestic violence while speaking about the movie. He’s even gone as far as providing NO MORE resources and help for victims of domestic violence in his Instagram bio.
“This isn’t my night. This is a night for all the women who we made this movie for,” Baldoni, 40, told ET earlier this month at the premiere of It Ends With Us. “This is a night for Blake, this is a night for Colleen.”
He added that he cared a lot about the “why” behind his work, telling ET, “The ‘why’ was that 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, maybe she sees herself on that screen and she leaves the theater and chooses something different for herself. That’s why I made the movie.”
Back in May, Baldoni also told ET that he was deeply moved by the bestselling book, which helped him to balance double duty as a director and actor. He said that honoring domestic survivors was always the most important thing to him when making the film.
“When you love something so much and when you’re touched and moved by something as deeply as I was by this book, it just comes naturally,” he shared at the time. “And I think what comes from the heart hits the heart and that’s what kept me going throughout this whole process, knowing that we’re working on something special that has the potential to impact millions of lives.”
He continued, “It was really important that we acknowledge that yes, this is a movie about love and hope, but that we don’t shy away from the issue and so we brought on our partners at NO MORE and they were involved in the making of this movie from the beginning because we really wanted to honor survivors in that way.”
“Just making sure that we honored all of the Lilys that experienced what she experiences in this book around the world,” he added.
Baldoni and Lively are currently rumored to be in conflict. Lively and Hoover, along with the rest of the It Ends With Us cast, do not follow Baldoni back on Instagram.
Following a lack of group cast photos and speculation of a fracture between Baldoni and Lively in the post-production stage, ET can confirm that Baldoni hired crisis PR manager Melissa Nathan, who represented Johnny Depp during the Amber Heard trial.
To add to speculation, TMZ reported on Wednesday that Lively felt fat-shamed by Baldoni for asking how much she weighed and that their kissing scenes lingered too long.
Regarding the report, an industry source tells ET that Baldoni notoriously has a bad back and there is a scene from the book where his character lifts Lively into the air — a scene they wanted to keep in the movie — so Baldoni went to his trainer to ask how much she weighed only so that he could train to protect himself from any injury in the lift. It was simply a “tactical” question asked with no ill-intent, the source says.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential.
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