Justin Baldoni, Blake Lively, and the ‘It Ends With Us’ Controversies, Explained

Lively, It Ends With Us book author Colleen Hoover, Jenny Slate, and Brandon Sklenar don’t appear to follow Baldoni on Instagram.

Baldoni’s podcast cohost and friend Liz 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.

No one wanted 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.’”

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.

How did Ryan Reynolds play into this?

Lively (who is a co-executive producer on the project) 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.” (Did his work constitute a scab during the 2023 writers’ strike? Allegedly, no.)