You’ve definitely heard of the upcoming movie It Ends With Us, because Blake Lively has been promoting it nonstop for months. But you know who hasn’t been quite as visible on the press tour? The film’s other star and director, Justin Baldoni. Once the internet noticed this, it sparked a whole host of speculation that there is and/or was some kind of drama happening behind the scenes.
For some context, It Ends With Us is a film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s 2016 best-selling novel. In the book, florist Lily Bloom (Lively) finds herself falling for the devastatingly handsome but abusive and controlling neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni). Baldoni's production company, Wayfarer, optioned the book in 2019 before casting Lively, who eventually signed on as a co-executive producer as well.
Somewhere along the way, fans believe Baldoni and Lively’s relationship soured. We’re going to break down all the It Ends With Us feud rumors here, but be mindful that most of this is very speculative.
Baldoni casts Lively in the film after securing the rights to It Ends With Us.
“I just thought that she would make an incredible Lily, so I flew out to meet her,” Baldoni told reporters of the decision. “We had a three-hour meeting, and, you know, at the end of the meeting, I just said, ‘You are absolutely Lily. I would love for you to play her.’”
He continued, “And luckily, she signed on and didn’t just sign on as an actor. She signed on as a producer and an executive producer, and was a big part of all of production, and I’m so grateful that she agreed to because she really, I believe—and I’m biased—but I believe she gives the performance of her life in this film.”
Meanwhile, Baldoni says he was asked to play Ryle by Colleen Hoover herself. “It was her thinking that I could do it that actually gave me the confidence and the freedom to explore it for myself.”
Now, no one in the cast seems to be taking pictures with Baldoni.
Looking through photos from the movie’s New York premiere, some creators on TikTok noticed that while the rest of the cast is photographed together, it doesn’t look like anyone took photos with Baldoni. Instead, Baldoni posed on the carpet with his wife, Emily Baldoni, and some of his friends.
“I am convinced him and Blake do not get along. How is there ZERO promo of them together, and there is was no photo at the premiere,” one fan questioned on one of Baldoni’s Instagram posts. That comment section is flooded with similar questions and opinions about the alleged drama.
Baldoni’s podcast cohost and friend Liz Plank wasn’t pictured with him either. Plank did attend the It Ends With Us premiere and posted about it to her Instagram Stories. However, she didn’t pose for pictures with Baldoni and didn’t tag him in any of her posts. What’s more, they haven’t released a new episode of their podcast, Man Enough, since mid-June.
It looks like Baldoni has been unfollowed by the rest of the cast.
Lively, It Ends With Us book author Colleen Hoover, Jenny Slate, and Brandon Sklenar don’t appear to follow Baldoni on Instagram.
And they don't seem to want to talk about him, either.
Asked what it was like having Baldoni as both a scene partner and a director, Slate pivoted and said that it’s a “tough job” to do both things at once, and that she, herself, wouldn’t want to have two jobs at the same time.
Meanwhile, Lively appeared to dodge a question about building trust with Baldoni as a scene partner during a Yahoo! Entertainment interview posted on TikTok on August 9. “I mean, this movie was such a challenge because you have scenes that are deeply painful and traumatic and physical, but you also have scenes that are full of levity and light and romance,” Lively said. “And normally, when I see this type of character like Ryle on screen, you know what’s going to happen, and you’re like, ‘Ah, that guy’s full of red flags.’”
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She continued, “But the way that Colleen wrote Ryle, I think, is just so—I think that’s why the story resonates with so many, is [because] you get why Lily stays. You get why Lily chooses to believe a different reality because you’re watching her in real time. You, too, are going like, ‘I know what I just saw, but I don’t want to…maybe I didn’t just see that.’ That is the the magic of this film is, is how she how she made these characters so, so winning.”
Multiple viewers in the comments described Lively’s answer as “wild,” given that she did not mention Baldoni in her answer at all.
Isabelle Ferrer—who plays a younger version of Lily Bloom—also appeared to omit Baldoni's name during an interview, though her example is a little less clear. She and Lively share a similar mole on their cheeks, which Ferrer claims her “director” initially believed was fake.
“Even in my director session, my director asked if the mark was real,” she told MTV UK. "And I said, ‘The Mark? You mean my mole?’ I was like, ‘What do you mean the mark?’ I literally didn’t know what he was talking about for, like, two minutes, I was like, ‘I have my tattoo.’”
Some fans were confused by the phrase “my director,” while others felt her statement was disrespectful. One fan commented, “This gives mean girl vibes. Justin Baldoni is the director of the movie and the lead actor. He is also the reason for the novel being turned into a movie. Say his name.”
How does Ryan Reynolds play into this?
Well, Blake Lively (who is a co-executive producer on the project) recently revealed that Reynolds wrote a pivotal scene of the film. “The iconic rooftop scene, my husband actually wrote it,” Lively told E! News. “Nobody knows that but you now.” She continued, “He works on everything I do. I work on everything he does. So his wins, his celebrations, are mine and mine are his.”
This has led to a lot of fan speculation that Reynolds and Lively may have seized creative control of the film, to Baldoni’s dismay.
“You literally can’t convince me that Ryan Reynolds isn’t the reason for all this Justin Baldoni/It Ends With Us drama, and I feel like Justin doesn’t want anything to do with the drama, and for that reason, has chosen a step back from the PR events leading up to the movie,” pop culture TikToker Arianna Lillie said in one video. “And I’m not saying that Blake Lively has specifically been problematic, but I knew something was up the second I heard that Ryan Reynolds was coming in and rewriting scenes of a movie that Justin Baldoni is not only starring in, but also directing, and is the whole reason this project is happening.”
The TikTok user noted that Reynolds interviewed Lively’s other love interest from the film and claimed he is trying to make Deadpool and It Ends with Us “the next Barbenheimer,” adding, “It seems like Justin is getting pushed out of this whole situation, which is honestly kind of sad because he was most excited about this whole thing from the start.”
Many believe there was a power struggle between Lively and Baldoni.
In an interview with People back in April, Baldoni said there “wasn’t a part of this production that [Lively] didn’t touch and have influence on,” adding, “everything that she put her hands on and her mind to, she made better.”
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She seems to have confirmed this in an interview with Variety. “It was so important to me to work off camera,” Lively told Variety on August 6. “The work I did as a producer was far more all-consuming than anything I did playing Lily. I just did it all. There’s nothing I didn’t touch on this film.”
Meanwhile, Lively’s response to a question about Baldoni is fueling speculation.
At the premiere, Baldoni implied that he doesn’t want to direct the film’s potential sequel based on Hoover’s follow-up novel, It Starts With Us. “I think that there are better people for that one,” he told Entertainment Tonight at the New York premiere on August 6, per People. “I think Blake Lively’s ready to direct, that’s what I think.”
Meanwhile, in Lively’s cover interview with Vogue, she paused when asked about her own interest in writing, questioning why the interviewer brought it up. Then, when asked if she would be interested in writing a script from scratch, here’s what she said: “A blank page is not nearly as exciting to me as starting with a script and finding something people have overlooked. Saying no, no, no, there’s something there! To me, it’s a treasure hunt. And so when I can see the treasure, then I get to be an archaeologist. I get to excavate, I get to carve it out and find this thing and show people the value in it. That, to me, is what I love.”
The actor grilled his wife Blake Lively’s love interest in the movie, as one does.
What else are people saying?
While many fans are suggesting that Baldoni’s isolation could be a PR strategy aimed to remind viewers that his character is the “villain” of the story, others are not convinced, given that he is also the director of the film and that feels like an odd strategy for Baldoni to agree to.
One TikTok user also described some of Lively and Reynolds’s press tour moments as “tone deaf,” considering the somber themes of the book and film—and this is not the first time It Ends With Us has faced this critique. In January 2023, Hoover and Atria Books were accused of “romanticizing” domestic violence when a coloring book based on the bestseller was announced. Atria ultimately decided not to move forward with that project.
“When are they gonna start talking about emotional and domestic abuse in a relationship and raise awareness for that,” one user commented on a video of female cast members and Colleen Hoover, which was posted to Lively’s Instagram feed. “The clothes are cute but there is a deeper meaning to this movie.” Another added, “Where is Justin on all of this?”
“Am I the only one that is seeing that [Lively is] promoting stuff in her name but not talking about what the book is actually about? 😐,” one user commented on Lively’s Instagram post promoting her beverage company in conjunction with It Ends With Us.
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Meanwhile, many of Baldoni’s interviews are heavily focused on the film’s depiction of abuse. “I want men to go to the theater and in some ways see a version of themselves,” he said in one interview with CBS News. “You have two very different characters. Both of them in Atlas and Ryle have had past trauma. One handles it very different than the other, and my other hope is the men who have not done the work, who have not done the work to heal, if they see bits of themselves in Ryle, have a chance to step back and say, ‘You know what? I don’t want to blow up my life. I don’t want to hurt the person I love the most.’”
Has anyone involved in the film actually commented on the rumors?
Not officially, though publications are starting to share conflicting reports about the alleged rift. On August 9, Page Six reported that “multiple sources” claim Baldoni made Lively “uncomfortable” on set and created an “extremely difficult” working environment for the entire cast.
Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter's report suggests the alleged “fracture” occurred after the movie was filmed. “According to multiple sources, Lively commissioned a cut of the movie from editor Shane Reid, who was an editor on Deadpool & Wolverine, and who cut the Lively-directed music video for Taylor Swift’s ‘I Bet You Think About Me,’” the publication reported. “It’s unclear if any of this cut was ultimately used in the final project, which was credited to editors Oona Flaherty and Robb Sullivan.”
The report continued, “One insider played down any friction, noting that it is not uncommon for a film to have several cuts emerge during post, adding that the team was in agreement on the final cut.”
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Then on August 12, another anonymous source backed up the claims reported by Page Six, telling People that there was more happening behind the scenes than a dispute over creative differences. "All is not what it seems," the insider claimed. "There is much more to this story. The principal cast and [author] Colleen Hoover will have nothing to do with him."
Baldoni has, however, responded to criticism that It Ends With Us “glorifies” domestic violence, saying critics are “are absolutely entitled to that opinion, and it makes perfect sense as to why they would feel that way.”
The film’s press tour, in particular, has sparked major online discourse.
He continued, “Look, we live in a culture where, unfortunately, too many things are glorified. And we are fighting for attention, we're in an attention economy. We’re in a clickbait world and everyone is trying to figure out how to gather attention. Look at the news cycle—it’s everywhere around us and so it makes perfect sense that people would feel that way.”
“Also, if anybody has had that real-life [domestic violence] experience, I can imagine how hard it would be to imagine their experience being in a romance novel,” he said. “To them I would just offer that we were very intentional in the making of this movie.”
So what’s going on, exactly?
Well, we don’t actually know—but many fans are aligning themselves with Baldoni. “I am not gonna go see this if they are bullying Justin,” one user commented on Baldoni’s Instagram, while another added, “I’m so heartbroken 💔 to see them all apart. So sad that whatever the issue is it cannot be communicated and fixed behind closed doors for the sake of the movie. I mean he produced it. No one is thanking him.”
While it’s possible fans are right about the rift between Baldoni and Lively, it’s important to note how quickly society tends to turn against women in these situations. Remember what happened with Don’t Worry Darling? Perhaps we should wait for more information before jumping to conclusions.
It will be interesting to see if Lively and Baldoni address these rumors directly as the press tour continues. We’ll keep you posted.
The film itself is pretty good. Everything else? Kind of a mess.
