Colleen Hoover’s book, “It Ends With Us,” has been turned into a movie adaptation starring Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively. It came to theatres on August 9th.
I’ve been very open about my distaste for Colleen Hoover in previous posts. I find that her books lean heavily into misogynistic stereotypes that are just subtle enough that young girls who read her books may not notice and think that her characters should be idolized.
When I heard this book was going to be adapted into a movie, I knew that they would have to be very particular with how they went about it to try and bring awareness to domestic violence rather than make it just another “romance” movie, even though the book itself should never have been promoted as a romance. It’s Womens fiction.
What’s the Drama?
During the promotional run for the film, there has been a public turning against once-worshiped Blake Lively.
This is because the way that she’s promoting a movie about domestic violence is…questionable. She launched her new hair care line, Blake Brown, and was using the promotion of the film to style guests’ hair and talk about the launch. She turned it into a fashion show as well- in one ad for the film she stated, “Get your girls, wear your florals…” as if it’s Barbie 2.0
Many people, rightfully so, were upset about how little Blake had spoken about the true topic of the movie. The movie came out on the 9th, but promotion started considerably before, and it took her until August 13th to post an Instagram story (that will go away in 24 hours), with the domestic violence hotline.
“1 in 4 women aged 18 and older in the U.S. alone have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime,” the post read. “Intimate partner violence affects all genders, including more than 12 million people every year in the United States. Everyone deserves relationships free from domestic violence.”
This isn’t the only reason people are upset. It seems like Blake and all of the film’s cast have shunned Baldoni. They all unfollowed him on Instagram and he has not been pictured with any of the cast, despite the fact that he is the director. They have even been avoiding talking about him in interviews. Jenny Slate, who plays his on-screen sister, was asked what it was like working with someone who was both directing and acting, and she turned the question into her own experience working on the film.
Most of the speculation is that Blake got too involved in a movie that was supposed to be Justin’s project. Rumors are that she made her cut of the movie behind Justin’s back along with the fact that she brought her husband, Ryan Reynolds, into the process by asking him to rewrite some scenes.
That’s basically it. Blake is now being accused of being horrible to work with and many people are siding with Justin saying what the cast did to him was not fair. And I care way too much about this and how we talk about D.V. survivors so let’s break it down.
Justin Baldoni: Activism, Casting Himself as an Abuser, and Mansplaining
When it was announced Justin Baldoni would be directing, I was almost certain that they would take it in a good direction, though I have negative thoughts regarding him directing as well. Baldoni has been a mental health and healthy masculinity activist for years now, so I was thinking that he would put a spin on the film adaptation that makes some of the questionable parts of the book more realistic toward what domestic violence survivors experience as well as not romanticizing the character he played- Ryle Kincaid.
In the book, Ryle Kincaid is Lily Bloom’s (the main character) ex-husband. He is a neurosurgeon who gets physically violent with her several times throughout the story as well as emotionally manipulative. There was something very odd to me about how Baldoni made the decision to cast himself as the abuser. Maybe he felt that since he is very openly comfortable with his masculinity and emotions he could portray such a jealous and angry man without turning into the character? He claims that Colleen Hoover herself recommended he play the role, which personally, I would be insulted by, but hey. Who knows.
I think considering Baldoni’s history as an activist, he would have been a great selection. And I’m still very torn about it. He seems like a genuine guy who cares about his work and the message behind what he creates, as seen in the promotion for this movie which I’ll talk about later. But something about him has always thrown me off and I’ve never been able to put why into words.
One X user quote tweeted a video of Baldoni talking about how he was afraid to direct this movie as a man and responded, “Being a man is so easy all you have to do is say leaving abusive relationships isn’t simple and all of the women on twitter will be clapping and jumping for you like monkeys.”
Another tweeted, “Justin Baldoni has spent his entire career trying to prove he’s a feminist and “one of the good ones” only to turn around and hire Johnny Depp’s PR manager after directing a movie about DV. a reminder that even the men who try to convince you they can be trusted, can’t.”
Or, “The way that Justin Baldoni speaks doesnt feel sincere at all and yall just want to take this guy’s side because he said women are human in one interview my god.”
I think these tweets put into words my feelings on Baldoni. One, why do we set the standard so low for men? He so much as said that we should listen to survivors and everyone used that as solid proof that he could never be the problem on set. I think we as a society are so used to men screwing everything up or being douchebags (sorry male readers) that any time a man says anything remotely pro-women, we bow down to them. And we certainly should praise them- it’s good that Baldoni has been using the promotion to talk about domestic violence. But should we use that as a reason to immediately bash on the women involved in the making of the film? I don’t think so.
This second part may be more my opinion and that’s fine, but I’m going to stick with my opinion because it hasn’t faltered since his Jane the Virgin days. I don’t think he’s entirely genuine with his activism. I believe that many celebrities see the positive attention they receive for speaking up about things like mental health, and they ride on their newly proclaimed, “One of the Good Ones,” title. If Baldoni didn’t care about using activism to fuel the public perception of him, why would he hire a crisis PR manager to…fix his reputation? Certainly, if he was a good guy who was truly and 100% genuine with what he preaches he wouldn’t need to hire a famous crisis PR manager?
He also has continuously preached that this story is a woman’s story of surviving domestic violence. It should have been left to a woman or even a D.V. survivor. Sure he could have played Ryle and probably have given a lot of depth to his character and un-romanticize him a bit. But “It Ends With Us,” is not his story and it makes me uncomfortable that he often speaks for women. In his interviews he says how he wanted to make women feel heard and tell their story- I am not a D.V. survivor but as a woman I do not want a man to “tell my story!” If he cared enough, he would have backed away from directing and allowed a woman or female survivor to take on this project, and he could continue to act and advocate for what he believes in.
I’m by no means saying he is a horrible person. It is great to see a man speaking up about mental health and toxic masculinity- but do I think that he should be mindlessly praised? No.
Blake Lively: Controlling Husband, Being A Brand, and Diva Claims
I never watched Gossip Girl in full, so I was never a Blake Lively superfan like some people are. If you search her now, all of this drama is showing up and overshadowing previous articles on various little things she did that people fawned over. She’s a “fashion icon,” to many people even though she’s never actually modeled or designed clothes. But that’s fine some of her outfits are cute.
She’s also been in the public eye for her very candid relationship with Ryan Reynolds, the Deadpool actor. They’re “couple goals” as proclaimed by the media mostly because they always post bad pictures of each other. I’m not even kidding. They’re also both best friends with Taylor Swift, with Swift even using their children’s names in her songs on the album, “Folklore,” which I think boosted their “it couple,” status more.
However, this drama points out something that I never noticed before- Ryan Reynolds is involved in everything she does. Reynolds completely inserted himself during the promotion of this movie, even bringing along Hugh Jackman, clearly as a way to promote his own movie, Deadpool and Wolverine. Blake rarely acts anymore and does a movie once every four years maybe, but there is some trace of Reynolds in everything she touches. There’s even little things like in her 2018 movie, “A Simple Favor,” they made sure to include Reynold’s gin brand in a scene. This isn’t the first time he’s been accused of being controlling. There are a lot of blind items that say that he and Scarlett Johansen got divorced because he told her she needed to stop acting to have children.
“Remember when Scarlet Johansson divorced Ryan Reynolds and all the rumours at the time said it was because he was an overbearing control freak trying to have a say in her career? Yeah…” said one X user.
“Ryan Reynolds is one of Hollywood’s biggest heavyweights these days, as sources exclusively tell In Touch his increasingly controlling nature is comparable to that of notorious show business tyrant Tom Cruise,” said In Touch.
When I saw this, I realized that maybe the way Blake Lively is promoting this movie is heavily based on what Ryan Reynolds tells her to say. Yes, she’s a grown woman who can make her own decisions, but that’s certainly a possibility, no? To be so blindsided by love that you think that the controlling behavior is okay? Especially if she sees the films that he has inserted himself in become successful, she likely allows him to insert himself.
I find this likely considering that Blake has been an activist similarly to Baldoni for a large part of her career. She has previously spoken out against child pornography and worked to raise awareness about it. She gifted $2M to fund Social Justice Initiatives with the NAACP LDF and the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. She donated $1m to the Red Cross for Gaza relief. I have a hard time believing she just doesn’t care about domestic violence considering her extensive activism background, and I wouldn’t be surprised if other factors were at play.
But of course it still is a possibility that she is controlling the narrative about the movie by herself. I don’t know. Blake notably has had feuds with a lot of her costars. Leighton Meester from Gossip Girl and her don’t follow each other or speak, Anna Kendrick from A Simple Favor didn’t get along with her, and a journalist who interviewed Blake in 2016 revealed Blake made her want to quit her job. It gets to the point where it’s easy to think that maybe she is the problem.
That being said, she isn’t completely rid of controversy. She and Ryan Reynolds got married on a plantation. A plantation. That’s unforgivable, because how in the 2000s are you going to claim that you “didn’t know the history of plantations.” They claimed they found the venue on Pintrest too which I find questionable.
This is very similar to what I said about Justin Baldoni- just because someone claims to be an activist or has a history of activism does not mean they should be worshipped. Plenty of people donate to charity but those same people can also do horrible things to people. One good thing does not mean you should idolize a celebrity.
Why this Drama doesn’t Matter
I think what we really need to do about all of this drama?
Stop talking about it.
Every single person has turned this movie into bashing Blake Lively and defending Justin Baldoni train, which is hypocritical. We’re mad at Blake Lively for not speaking up about the theme of the movie so we’re going to completely overshadow the theme of this movie with petty drama. In the end, it doesn’t matter. As with all other celebrity drama, people are going to forget about it in a couple of weeks and the celebrities still have their name and fortune. But this movie being out and popular is the perfect time to speak up, and we shouldn’t have to wait until celebrities post fake apologies to help others. If the rich people want to be stupid, we shouldn’t stop and stare and let all the other atrocities in the world float by. We need to start advocating for people ourselves.