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You might have seen previews or even bought tickets for the new film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s best-selling romance novel It Ends With Us, starring Blake Lively. But have you heard about the online soap opera surrounding a rumored rift among the film’s cast, its director and co-star Justin Baldoni, and possibly Deadpool? Once again, a film’s press tour is already stirring up more conversation than the movie itself.
The week leading up to the It Ends With Us premiere is already bringing back memories of the weeks-long, spit-covered scandal surrounding Don’t Worry Darling in 2022. In fact, it seems like the excitement of that previous drama has incited social media users to pull out their Sherlock caps and magnifying glasses. So far, any concrete details about this supposed on-set drama are sparse. Nor has anyone from It Ends With Us commented on the gossip directly. But the internet is still having a ball speculating.
It all started with It Ends With Us’s New York premiere on August 6, when fans noticed that Lively and Baldoni hadn’t been photographed on the red carpet together, nor have they been paired for interviews. Initially all signs of trouble pointed to Baldoni, but the narrative began to shift when a quote from Lively about her husband Ryan Reynolds’s involvement in the film’s script went viral. And on Friday, insiders confirmed to the Hollywood Reporter that there was a power struggle between the two parties when it came to the film’s final cut. At the same time, remarks from Baldoni praising Lively, while also hinting at a creative overhaul, are coming out.
Despite any PR manager’s recent attempts to smooth out drama, the internet has already made up its mind. It’s maybe not surprising that this has turned into yet another game of optics and who has the most goodwill online. It speaks to the quick, sometimes dangerous escalation of gossip in the post-Deuxmoi world.
Who is Justin Baldoni — and does his cast hate him?
Before we get into whether the It Ends With Us cast hates Baldoni, some information about the actor-turned-director. You might recognize Baldoni from the hit CW Jane the Virgin where he played Rafael, the hunky father of Jane’s child. In 2019, he co-founded the production company Wayfarer Studios with billionaire entrepreneur Steve Sarowitz. Baldoni has directed and produced a few movies under his Wayfarer banner, including the teen cancer romance Five Feet Apart in 2019 and the 2020 Disney+ musical drama Clouds. In 2022, it was reported that Sarowitz invested $125 million into the independent production company.
Even with all this power, you might still be wondering why this fairly new director was selected to helm such a massive IP about a woman’s experience with domestic abuse.
The answer seems to partially lie in his extracurricular work. As a vocal feminist ally, discussing women’s issues — or more accurately, men’s issues — has been a huge, if not defining, part of Baldoni’s brand. In 2017, the actor launched a panel series called Man Enough through Wayfarer, featuring actors Matt McGorry and Javier Munoz, exploring, in his words, “what it means to be a man.” In 2021, he published a memoir titled Man Enough? Undefining My Masculinity about his journey overcoming the expectations of traditional manhood. He later launched a podcast of the same name with co-hosts Jamey Heath and former Vox political correspondent Liz Plank. Like McGorry, he’s one of several self-identifying male feminists who emerged during the Trump era and gained both praise for their activism and criticism for a male-centered, “mansplain-y” approach to that activism.
Nevertheless, it seems appropriate that Baldoni would go after Hoover’s novel about domestic abuse. After he sent Hoover a letter about his love for the book, his production company optioned the project in 2019. Blake Lively was brought on as an executive producer in 2017, and from there, the project seemed to descend into chaos.
Throughout the press tour, Baldoni has been noticeably isolated not just from Lively but the entire main cast, posing by himself on the red carpet (or with other people not involved in the film) and giving solo interviews. His co-host Plank was also at the premiere but was not photographed with Baldoni. Baldoni and Plank did not immediately respond to Vox’s requests for comment.
Meanwhile, Lively has been doing press with her co-stars Jenny Slate and Brandon Sklenar and author Colleen Hoover. When Lively and Sklenar appeared on CBS Mornings to promote the film, as well as other media outlets, there was no mention of the director. A video of Slate at the premiere sparked further speculation, when she gave an indirect response to a reporter’s question about working with Baldoni as a boss and screen partner. Lively and Slate did not immediately respond to Vox’s requests for comment.
The cast’s Instagram activity doesn’t look great for Baldoni either. Based on quick searches, it looks like none of the main cast — aside from comedian Hasan Minhaj, who has a supporting role — are following him on the platform. Slate also made a post on Instagram earlier this week, shouting out Lively with no acknowledgement of Baldoni. The director is also absent from Sklenar’s recent It Ends With Us posts.
How is Deadpool involved in this?
Reynolds’s supposed involvement in this scandal went from confusion to outrage. A claim from Lively that her husband wrote the movie’s “iconic rooftop scene” at the premiere began to circulate. “He works on everything I do,” Lively told E! News. “I work on everything he does. So his wins, his celebrations are mine, and mine are his. He’s all over this film.”
People began to theorize that Lively and Reynolds seized creative control of the film from Baldoni, which led to the rift — although, that wouldn’t exactly explain why the rest of the cast has seemingly distanced themselves from him. At the premiere, Baldoni also made a telling comment about Lively. When asked about directing It Ends With Us’s inevitable sequel, he said, “I think that there are better people for that one. I think Blake Lively’s ready to direct, that’s what I think.”
Lively’s comments about Reynolds set off a wave of accusations that Reynolds was too involved in Lively’s career. It also sparked discourse on whether the pair were appropriately promoting a film about domestic violence.
Based on their combined marketing efforts, it seems that Lively and Reynolds were looking to create their own “Barbenheimer” with the closely timed releases of Deadpool vs. Wolverine and It Ends With Us this summer. Leading up to the premiere, Blake Lively and her husband’s co-star Hugh Jackman covered Vogue. Jackman also made a cameo at the It Ends With Us premiere, while Reynolds filmed a skit where he pretended to interview Sklenar for the film. Lively also released her new hair care line, Blake Brown, during the movie’s press run, a move some online critics found insensitive given the film’s subject matter.
Don’t Worry, Darling is written all over this scandal
It’s fair to say that the Don’t Worry, Darling kerfuffle both destroyed our brains and heightened our thirst for this kind of behind-the-scenes drama. It’s hardly the first time that the rumors of hostility between co-stars have made headlines, especially on high-profile romantic films, although, typically, they do not cause this much of a hullabaloo. The specific players involved in the Don’t Worry, Darling fiasco — namely, director Olivia Wilde, her ex-fiancé Jason Sudeikis, and her co-star Harry Styles — seemed to color everyone’s assessments of who was guilty and who was innocent, to the point where the internet was supporting claims about Wilde made by alleged abuser Shia LaBeouf. Social media’s perceptions of the people and relationships involved seemed to matter more than whatever actually occurred on-set.
You could argue that is happening with the suspicion toward Lively and Reynolds, but for perhaps more legitimate reasons than Wilde dumping Ted Lasso. Despite their power in Hollywood, Lively and Reynolds don’t have a ton of goodwill on social media — mainly for their controversial plantation wedding in 2012 that they eventually apologized for in 2020. (There was also that weird write-up celebrating antebellum fashion on Lively’s now-defunct lifestyle website Preserve.)
At the same time, the internet — although, certainly not moviegoers — has seemingly had enough of Reynolds’s snarky take on Deadpool. There’s also the couple’s highly documented friendship with Taylor Swift.
Whether we’ll actually get to the bottom of Baldoni and Lively’s alleged issues, the internet has already taken sides. As with Don’t Worry Darling, we’ll probably end up discovering that there are no winners in this whole mess.
