In 2016, Colleen Hoover, a famous romance author, released a new book called “It Ends With Us.” It’s a book that discusses difficult themes in today’s society through the story of a girl named Lily and how she navigates those hard situations.
Starting in January 2023, Hoover began to talk about the movie being made about her book and the people who would be cast. Blake Lively would be Lily Bloom and Justin Baldoni would be Ryle Kincaid, Lily’s abusive significant other in the book. Baldoni would also be the director of the movie, with Lively as the producer.
Filming for the movie began in May of 2023. Lively was photographed with red hair and in unique outfits for her character. This got fans of the book talking about what they thought the movie would be like.
Throughout the promotion of the movie as the premiere date was closing in, Lively and Baldoni promoted the movie separately, never together. Then, at the movie premiere in New York, the two were not photographed together. Lively was photographed on the red carpet with her husband, Ryan Reynolds, and other co-stars from the two’s most recent movies, “Deadpool & Wolverine,” and “It Ends with Us.” Baldoni took pictures by himself and with his wife. This is when the public picked up on the tension between the two co-stars. The two co-workers never did any interviews together. Baldoni did his solo and Lively did hers with other cast members.
“It Ends with Us” was released to theaters on August 9, 2024. Within two weeks, the movie had made $100 million. Not long after the release, fans began to express their discomfort with the way Lively conducted her promotion of the film. They were upset because she had talked about her haircare and drink line a lot. It was also at this time that a journalist who had interviewed Lively in 2016 shared the interview where Lively was rude to her. The journalist captioned it “The Blake Lively interview that made me want to quit my job.” The video got over 5 million views and this ramped up the talk amongst the public about Lively’s actions.
Toward the end of August, the actor who plays Atlas in the movie, Brandon Sklenar, expressed in an Instagram post that putting down the women who worked hard to make the film happen is the opposite of the point the movie is trying to make.
Four months after the movie was released, Lively filed a sexual harassment complaint against Baldoni. The complaint was specifically that Baldoni crossed boundaries during intimate scenes, that he improvised physical intimacy that had not been previously discussed.
There were more things included in the complaint about different situations Lively had felt uncomfortable in with Baldoni.
After the press tour for the movie started, Baldoni supposedly hired a crisis communication team to start a sort of social media manipulation against Lively to ruin the public’s image of her. I am not saying I believe that is true, I don’t know the intentions. A spokesperson on behalf of Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios expressed that the claims Lively made against them in her lawsuit were “completely false, outrageous, and intentionally salacious with an intent to generate their own views and opinions.” It was uncovered later that Lively also hired a PR representative, who also represented her husband, to plant false stories within the media before promotion of the movie had even started. This is said to have been a reason that Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios hired their crisis specialist.
The day after the lawsuit campaign was released against Baldoni, his talent agency dropped him. Colleen Hoover also posted to her Instagram story in support of Lively, telling her to “never change.” Within the next few days, other cast members came out in support of Lively saying they “stand by her side.”
On Christmas Eve, Baldoni and his PR team received a lawsuit from his former publicist, Stephanie Jones, claiming that his PR team at the time planned to defame Lively and steal clients at the same time as their so called “smear” campaign.
Because the New York Times was the first to release an investigative article into the sexual harassment lawsuit against Baldoni filed by Lively, Baldoni returned the lawsuit, but to the New York Times on Dec. 31 seeking $250 million for the news organization defaming Baldoni and his publicists. The organization came out after the lawsuit was filed against them saying they planned to “vigorously defend against the lawsuit,” referring to the one Lively filed. It was that same day, Dec. 31, that Lively filed a federal complaint against Wayfarer Studios. The complaint had been previously with the California Civil Rights Department.
Baldoni’s attorney released the information that they planned to sue Lively on Jan. 3rd, even stating that they “plan to release every single text message between the two of them.” The lawsuit against Lively by Baldoni was officially filed on Jan. 16 claiming that Lively, Reynolds, Leslie Sloan, and Sloane’s PR film of defamation and other claims. The almost 200-page complaint accuses Lively of inserting herself into the creative scene of the movie and her character, withholding promotion of the movie until she was able to produce her own edits of the movie and many more things. Lively’s legal team played into the victim story, that the lawsuit was another play in the abuse, specifically that Lively was being punished for speaking up against the alleged sexual harassment.
On Jan. 21, Baldoni’s attorney released raw footage from “It Ends with Us” stating that the takes of the scene don’t support Lively’s sexual harassment claim, while Lively’s legal team says it does.
The U.S. District Court Judge Lewis J. Liman wrote on Jan. 27 that the two lawsuits against each person would be seen in trial together on March 9, 2026. Lively’s legal team supposedly wrote a letter to the judge asking for a gag order to be put on Baldoni’s attorney for his apparently false statements about the situation to the media.
Now, I’m sure you’ve read this whole article waiting to read my opinion on it. Well, here it is.
I have been following this situation as the events unfolded. At first, I was really confused, because I didn’t see Baldoni as someone to commit these actions toward someone else, but wanted to believe Lively due to the seriousness of the claims. However, my opinion has changed as things have come out. Specifically, Lively’s husband’s involvement in being able to rewrite scenes with Lively, which neither should have been able to touch or get their hands on, and the scene in “Deadpool & Wolverine” that clearly was talking about the situation with the co-stars in “It Ends with Us.” I love Candace Owen’s take on this, that Ryan Reynolds is insecure in his relationship with Lively. He saw the chemistry between the two co-stars and decided he would embed himself into the production of the movie in any way he could to ensure nothing happened. I believe this is why Lively would ask to see daily scenes and other weird requests, her husband had to see it first. Do I believe that Baldoni could have communicated differently toward Lively? Yes, but I think it has to do with the fact that he was excited to work with such a big name in the industry. I think he was gracious towards Lively during the process of her trying to embed herself into the direction of the movie, which can be seen in the text messages between the two. He didn’t have to be kind to her. He was the director and she was an actress, he owed her nothing. I’m not sure how this will turn out. All I know is that Lively is a mean girl and could most definitely be capable of falsifying stories to keep her reputation intact.
I think we will definitely see more things come out and the story unfold a little bit more, so expect a part two on this.
