Blake Lively vs. Justin Baldoni: An In-Depth Analysis Of Their Ongoing Legal Battle – And What It Means To Men And Women In The Workforce

In my previous blog entry where I used Anna Kendrick as the main subject matter, I used an inspiring quote said by her: ‘I get really excited every time there’s a female character who is really strong because a lot of females in film are really soft.’ I also mentioned that it was an important quote to remember for this particular blog entry, which will be about Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, and the drama that unfolded during the ‘It Ends With Us’ saga. I’d previously written multiple blog entries here when the movie, which is based on the book of the same name by Colleen Hoover, came out in August 2024. A sequel book is also available, but with everything that had happened behind-the-scenes and beyond, it’s doubtful that a sequel movie will ever happen in the future despite how successful the movie was. With a budget of $25 million, it grossed $351 million in the box office. To add to it, it had positive reviews from movie-goers.

I wasn’t one of the movie-goers who contributed to the movie’s massive success. The subject matter was too triggering for me as it followed Lily Bloom, a florist, played by Blake Lively, and her relationship with a charming, but abusive neurosurgeon, Ryle Kincaid, played by Justin Baldoni, as she realized she must learn to rely on her own strength to make an impossible choice for her future. It was just too close to home for me on a personal level, and I just didn’t think I could handle seeing a glimpse of my own past life on screen. I’m in a loving, healthy relationship with my husband, but there was a time where all I knew was turmoil and abuse. Nevertheless, I felt compelled to write about it when the movie first came out – for the subject matter itself, but mostly for the drama that was going on at the time.

I remember the time when ‘It Ends With Us’ came out very vividly. Blake Lively became the most hated woman on the internet, whereas Justin Baldoni became the most beloved man on the internet. Lively was the one who encouraged her fans: ‘Grab your friends, wear your florals, and head out to see it.’ Baldoni, on the other hand, actually talked about domestic abuse when promoting the movie. The first sign of trouble between the two came to light at the movie’s New York premiere. They were completely separated. They didn’t take any photos together, and none of the other actors, nor Hoover herself, pose for photos with Baldoni, who also directed and produced the film. Throughout their entire promotional tour, they were completely separated, and it seemed as though they were promoting two separate films entirely. Hoover, Lively and the rest of the cast promoted it as a rom-com, whereas Baldoni was promoting the film for its actual subject matter and starting a real conversation about it.

The weirdest part about the entire promotional tour was that Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman somehow became a part of it too. Reynolds is Lively’s husband, and at the time, he and Jackman’s hit movie, the third instalment of ‘Deadpool’, came out simultaneously with ‘It Ends With Us’. It seemed as though the married couple were trying to recreate Barbenheimer’s marketing strategy that happened the year prior. I remember seeing Lively and Reynolds all over my Instagram at the time, and I remember being so pissed off. It felt like I was being mocked; like my story was made into this one big fat joke. All I wanted to do was scream at my screen every time I saw either one of their faces. Lively, in particular, seemed to have been tone deaf about the subject matter when she was challenged by reporters and asked about the subject matter of abuse and her character’s journey of getting out of an abusive relationship. Whenever asked about it, she seemed to have been dismissive.

Justin Baldoni, on the other hand, had a very different marketing plan than that of Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Colleen Hoover, and the rest of the team. He was a lone wolf, but he was a good lone wolf; one that I personally never wanted to stop listening to. At the time, I really felt like I couldn’t get enough of him. I finally felt that there was a man who truly got me. The promotion of the movie wasn’t the first time he ever advocated for women’s rights. He’s actually been an advocate for women for years. His TED Talk presentation that he did back in 2017 was breathtaking. It was there that he spoke about being ‘Man Enough’. The title of the presentation was, ‘Why I’m Done Trying To Be ‘Man Enough.’’ He starts by saying:

‘As an actor, I get scripts and it’s my job to stay on script, to say my lines and bring to life a character that someone else wrote. Over the course of my career, I’ve had the great honor playing some of the greatest male role models ever represented on television.

You might recognize me as “Male Escort #1”, “Photographer Date Rapist,” “Shirtless Date Rapist” from the award-winning “Spring Break Shark Attack.” “Shirtless Medical Student,” “Shirtless Steroid-Using Con Man” and, in my most well-known role, as Rafael. A brooding, reformed playboy who falls for, of all things, a virgin, and who is only occasionally shirtless.

Now, these roles don’t represent the kind of man I am in my real life, but that’s what I love about acting.

I get to live inside characters very different than myself. But every time I got one of these roles, I was surprised, because most of the men I play ooze machismo, charisma and power, and when I look in the mirror, that’s just not how I see myself.

But it was how Hollywood saw me, and over time, I noticed a parallel between the roles I would play as a man both on-screen and off. I’ve been pretending to be a man that I’m not my entire life. I’ve been pretending to be strong when I felt weak, confident when I felt insecure and tough when really I was hurting.’

I also saw Baldoni in the 2012 Hallmark movie, ‘Undercover Bridesmaid’, as well as ‘Jane The Virgin’, which became a benchmark for his career as an established actor. He then went on to work as a filmmaker. He directed movies like ‘Five Feet Apart’ and ‘Clouds’. He also works as a producer. Through his production company, Wayfarer Studios, Baldoni has produced movies such as ‘The Garfield Movie’, ‘Ezra’, ‘Will & Harper’ and ‘A Nice Indian Boy’. ‘It Ends With Us’ saw Baldoni on triple duty – actor, director, AND producer. As to why he felt the movie needed to be made, he previously told The Hollywood Reporter, ‘So often in our industry, we’re told we’re not curing cancer, we’re not saving lives, just making art, just making movies. To that I say, well, I wonder if we’re making the right movies then. And that’s what we want to do differently at Wayfarer. And I thought, well, this is one that could actually make a real difference, this could save lives.’ Baldoni was then asked 3 questions on playing the character of Ryle and how it came to be:

After signing on to direct initially, how did you fall into the role of Ryle? 

‘Originally I had optioned this to direct. And Colleen and I struck up a friendship via email. And by the way, I highly suggest finding a pen pal that’s a romance novelist. The emails are just exquisite and you can frame them. But just before we finished our option agreement, she wrote me a very short email that simply said, “Have you ever considered acting in the movie, playing Ryle perhaps? I could see it.” I think there was a part of me that wanted to play Ryle, but I think we all have those things that come and go in our lives that are distant dreams: “Oh, I wonder if I could do that and then that part of our brain shuts us up like, no, no, no, you couldn’t do that. You’re not good enough.” And I think I had that part of me that wanted to play Ryle, but I just didn’t have the confidence or didn’t know if anyone would believe that I could. But when Colleen sent me that email, it kind of gave me permission to believe that I could ‘cause her belief in me kind of inspired my belief in myself. So we ended up developing it together. We brought on Christy Hall to write and then two years from that email is when I decided that I was gonna play Ryle. But it was a big choice and a challenge and an undertaking because it’s a very complex character and I wanted to get it right.’

Knowing it was a difficult character to play, how did you prepare to take on a role like that?

‘I had the blessing of being the filmmaker, so I was able to see the project from a bird’s eye view and understand what I needed from Ryle as a character throughout the course of the film. But as an actor, it was a serious undertaking because I was scared. But again, sometimes the art that scares us is the art that we should pursue. So I worked with a few different acting coaches. 

I did some really interesting dream work and worked on the subconscious. I did some Alexander Technique to try to get into his body. And then I also worked with our partners at [the organization] NO MORE because I was really trying to understand the psychology of an abuser and I only know what I don’t know. And I needed to understand why and how he could do these things from a truthful place. I wanted to feel it because if I couldn’t feel it, I couldn’t play it.

Luckily our partner ended up introducing me to an organization that works with rehabilitating perpetrators into society. And I got a chance to be a part of some closed-door meetings with perpetrators who were court-mandated to listen and hear them talking about why they’re there, their stories, hearing them hold each other accountable, hearing them victim blame, hearing all kinds of things that I would have never had the opportunity to hear. And then talk to the person who was actually facilitating to try to understand what the psychology would be of somebody like Ryle, and that was deeply eye-opening. It really helped me frame who Ryle is and build out the character. The final thing that I did that I think was so helpful for me was from my acting coach. I started to keep a journal as if I was Ryle and I wrote down in detail the things that happened to him that he never healed. I had to believe that it was as real for me as it was for him, and trying to feel so much of the pain that Ryle felt in order to figure out how I could portray what he does, which is unjustifiable and inexcusable in the film.’

How did you balance all that came with portraying Ryle and the sensitive subject of domestic violence while also being in the director’s chair?

First and foremost, I as a man know what I don’t know. And the first of that is that I have no idea what it’s like to be a woman and have the experience of a woman. So in order for me to even take on this project, I needed a lot of support and I needed to surround myself with women. I need to surround myself with an organization like NO MORE to even understand how to make this movie and not have my own biases as a man injected into it. … So in some ways, I stepped back and I said, “OK, how can we make this as truthful and honest as possible?” Because the reality is in different hands and without that care of someone like a NO MORE, the movie could do more harm than good. While on one hand this is not a movie about domestic violence, this is a movie about love and hope and making different choices, we needed to honor the reality of what this was about and not run from it, and make sure we didn’t romanticize it.

They (NO MORE) were integral in that, in addition to bringing on an intimacy coordinator, early, early, early on in pre-production, finding a female stunt coordinator – Lauren Shaw who’s a good friend of mine and a veteran in the industry – and making sure that from that perspective, everything was safe. And to be very candid, in many of the situations I would give my vision and then I would step back and let the women actually run the set and the show. Blake [Lively] was very involved as well and had a lot of ideas of how this should work. There were many times where I didn’t even say a word, where I was just watching and I was like, yes, that sounds great. And I was actually able to then go into Ryle because in those moments, it was the most complex for Ryle and the hardest for me as an actor. So they took a lot of weight off my shoulders, and also ensured that each of those scenes were handled with care and also did not have a male gaze but at a female gaze because that was one of my early concerns when I was questioning if I could even direct this movie. I wanted to ensure that it kept and maintained the message of the book through a female perspective.’

Very intriguing…

…and I’m not being sarcastic by any means. Through his own promotional tour for the film, Baldoni showed care, empathy, and compassion towards women’s rights, as well bringing awareness and advocacy surrounding the subject matter of domestic violence and sexual assault. He became an ally for female survivors all around the world. This amount of advocacy coming from a man was groundbreaking. We, as women, couldn’t get enough of him. He challenged the notion of toxic masculinity, starting with his TED Talk in 2017. His ‘Man Enough’ tagline became an entire character on its own. It became a movement. It became a book and a podcast. I watched the two parter first episode, and honestly, it was phenomenal. I loved it. It made me think and reflect of how exactly I want to raise my own son for the next generation so that he can be the best version of himself as a man. The one moment that resonated with me the most was when Derek Hough, who appeared as one of the guests, talked about being bullied because he was a boy who danced. Almost daily, I show my son 2020’s Netflix film ‘Feel The Beat’ with Sofia Carson. Whenever the scene with the little boy comes on, I tell my son, ‘You see, dance isn’t just for girls. It’s for boys too. Boys can dance too. So if you want to dance, you can.’ Hearing Hough saying that told me everything I needed to know; I was doing something right.

Baldoni’s career was thriving, and he was finally getting the recognition that was so well deserved. Even the drama going on between him and Blake couldn’t stop his success. Just this past December, he was honoured by Vital Voices with The Voices of Solidarity Award for being a women’s ally, which was presented to him by Hasan Minha, who played Marshall on ‘It Ends With Us’. The award ceremony celebrates ‘remarkable men who have shown courage and compassion in advocating on behalf of women and girls’. In his since-deleted Instagram post about the award ceremony, Baldoni wrote, ‘My hope is that we can teach our boys, while they are still young, that vulnerability is strength, sensitivity is a super power, and empathy makes them powerful.’

All seemed fine and well in the world of Justin Baldoni…until December 20, 2024. That was when news broke that Blake Lively filed a complaint against Baldoni. It accused Baldoni and company of 5 major things and more:

• Baldoni and others agreed to address the ‘hostile work environment – ‘Ms. Lively was forced to address concerns about Mr. Baldoni and Mr. Heath’s misconduct with them directly and began doing so months before filming began. The concerns she raised were not only for herself but for the other female cast and crew, some of whom had also spoken up.’
• Baldoni added ‘graphic content’ to the film without Lively’s knowledge – ‘When Ms. Lively objected to these additions, Mr. Baldoni insisted he had added them because he was making the film ‘through the female gaze. Although he agreed to remove the scenes, he made a last-ditch attempt to keep one in which the couple orgasm together on their wedding night, which he said was important to him because he and his partner climax simultaneously during intercourse. Mr. Baldoni then intrusively asked Ms. Lively whether she and her husband climax simultaneously during intercourse, which Ms. Lively found invasive and refused to discuss. Ms. Lively was alarmed and asked Mr. Heath if his wife knew he was sharing the video, to which he replied, ‘She isn’t weird about this stuff,’ as if Ms. Lively was weird for not welcoming it.’
• Baldoni ‘abruptly’ shifted away from their agreed-upon marketing strategy – ‘What the public did not know was that Mr. Baldoni and his team did so in an effort to explain why many of the Film’s cast and crew had unfollowed Mr. Baldoni on social media and were not appearing with him in public.’
• Baldoni and his team engaged in ‘social manipulation’ to ‘destroy’ her reputation – ‘What Ms. Nathan (a crisis communication manager hired by Baldoni) proposed included a practice known as ‘Astroturfing,’ which has been defined as ‘the practice of publishing opinions or comments on the internet, in the media, etc. that appear to come from ordinary members of the public but actually come from a particular company or political group. To safeguard against the risk of Ms. Lively ever revealing the truth about Mr. Baldoni, the Baldoni-Wayfarer team created, planted, amplified, and boosted content designed to eviscerate Ms. Lively’s credibility.’
• Baldoni retaliated against Lively to protect his image as a ‘feminist ally – ‘In sum, Mr. Baldoni has crafted a public image of himself as not just an ally, but also a fierce advocate for women. Contrary to this image, as set forth in detail above, Mr. Baldoni has spent the last several months and significant resources on his goal of wanting to ‘bury’ and ‘destroy’ Ms. Lively for raising concerns about his and his CEO’s harassing behavior and other disturbing conduct.’

Lively received an enormous amount of support, starting from Colleen Hoover herself and continuing on to her co-stars and even her ‘A simple Favour’ director. The public started taking notice too. We supported and applauded her for her courage. Lively suddenly became the hero in all of this. His former publicist also filed a lawsuit against Baldoni & Co. over Lively’s smear campaign. Since Lively filed her complaint, Baldoni has been dropped as a client by his talent agency, WME, his podcast co-host, Liz Plank, quit, and his women’s solidarity award was rescinded. But he hasn’t stopped fighting.

Just before the new year, Baldoni filed a lawsuit against the New York Times for a whopping $250 million over the story they published of Lively’s lawsuit against him, claiming it relied on her ‘Self-Serving Narrative’. The 5 takeaways from the lawsuit are as follows:

• The lawsuit claims the Times relied on Lively’s narrative and caused Baldoni damage.

• Baldoni and his fellow plaintiffs claim the Times article missed key context, wrongly bolstering Lively’s case.
• Baldoni pushes back on harassment claims.
• Baldoni claims he never agreed to a document seeking safeguards.
• Baldoni alleges Lively’s PR launched a negative press push against him.
  

I just knew…

I just knew something was off about Lively’s legal complaint. As much as I’m a girls’ girl, and as much as I want to support women, I just couldn’t with her. For a moment, I did. But then, as I analyzed it further, I realized that some things just didn’t add up. For one, the text messages she provided as her proof seemed to have been edited. That’s already a red flag in itself. But then again…

A couple of days ago, a Threads user by the name of S. Lee Clements (@phemiusthebard) posted the following:

‘I hadn’t paid any attention to the Blake Lively situation before the lawsuits started. What’s weird for me about the whole situation is that Justin Baldoni was an actor on the first feature film I worked back in 2009, and I had to make sure that it was the same guy when I first saw that uncommon name.

Suffice it to say, nothing I’ve heard has surprised me.’

Comments flooded with others who’d worked with/for either Baldoni or Lively, and had the same testament: Baldoni was ‘too cool’ to be there, and Lively was a kind soul. I never worked with either one of them. I never even met them. My take on the Blake Lively vs. Justin Baldoni fiasco is simply just an opinion from the outside perspective; and probably one that no one actually cares about. The thing about this is that they both could be sh*tty people. Baldoni could be not the nicest person in the world on set, but does it really mean that he actually did everything that Lively has accused him of? No, not necessarily. And Lively already f*cked up her image long ago. She didn’t Justin Baldoni’s help with that. She has all her interviews – old and new – to prove it. She also decided HERSELF to promote her hair care line and alcohol ventures that came out during the movie’s promotional tour. She couldn’t get enough of talking about fashion during the promotional tour for the movie, when really, she should’ve talked more about her character’s bravery and the metaphorical nature in her and florals.

BOOM!

When I first started working on this post, it was meant to defend Blake Lively. Heck, I was even going to message her on Instagram to apologize for being part of the problem during the smear campaign against her back when ‘It Ends With Us’ first came out. And boy, am I so glad I didn’t get to do it. It’s hard to defend someone who has a long history of not being credible. The thing about Lively is that she’s actually a great actress. She’s not only beautiful, but she’s talented too. Her performance in 2015’s ‘The Age of Adaline’ was phenomenal. But her privileged nature overshadows her talent. We’ve just all been too blind to see it up until now. She’s a nepo-baby. She comes from a family of well-known actors. Her sister is Robyn Lively, an actress. Her brother-in-law is Bart Johnson, an actor and coach. Her father is the late Ernie Lively, an actor. Her mother is Elaine Lively, a former talent agent. Finally, her husband is Ryan Reynolds. Justin Baldoni, on the other hand, came from absolutely nothing.

I’m not here to bash Blake Lively. I’m not here to call her a liar. I’m not here to say that Justin Baldoni is innocent. I’m only here stating opinions strictly based on the information that’s been made public. There are three sides to every story: side A, side B, and the truth. Here’s to the truth coming out very, very soon in the court of law. Comedian Nikki Glaser is set to host the Golden Globes on Sunday evening. She recently said of the matter, ‘I think the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni thing is such a hot-button thing right now that even a mere mention of it will seem like I could be on the wrong side of things, even though I would never be. I also don’t want to give his name any … I’m mad I even know his name, to be honest with you, so I don’t need to say it anymore. just want to walk out there and make everyone feel like we’re in good hands, because the host really does set the tone for the whole evening. The tone is celebratory, but also, let’s laugh about how ridiculous this is with the state of the world that we’re all dressed up and giving out awards for playing pretend. We have to acknowledge that that’s silly, even though it is amazing.’

To that I say…

…please wait until the truth actually comes out before you make a judgement. Just because Blake Lively is a woman doesn’t mean we automatically should fully believe her. And just because Justin Baldoni is a man doesn’t mean we should fully dismiss him. This isn’t a battle of the sexes. This is a battle of people; of right and wrong.