“It Ends With Us,” The New York Times bestselling novel by Colleen Hoover, was recently adapted into a film starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni that depicts the unfortunate story of a woman ending up in a relationship filled with violence. After box office success, the movie-making process was revealed to be fraught with controversy and lawsuits from both the lead stars. Fans are scrambling to pick sides in this ongoing battle and as more and more is revealed, it is hard to learn who to trust. Ultimately, we should just stop supporting Hoover.
When the press tour initially began for the film, Lively seemed to be taking the lead. Baldoni was rarely featured with the rest of the cast and seemed to be completely separate from her, causing raised eyebrows among fans. Lively, who is most well-known for her role in “Gossip Girl,” was deemed to be very insensitive to the themes within the movie.
“Grab your friends, wear your florals and head out to see it,” said Lively in a promotional video for the film.
Similar to everyone wearing pink to “Barbie,” she has been called out on numerous occasions for her chipper tone in describing a movie that should be and is about domestic violence.
However, Baldoni, well known for his role in “Jane the Virgin,” discussed the central issue of domestic abuse and his hopes that the movie will help someone get out of their dangerous situation.
During filming, Lively claimed that Baldoni was making comments about her body and the amount she weighed, which he responded by saying it was due to his back issues and a scene where he needed to carry her and how best to do it. These juxtaposing promotions of the film along with the claims of Baldoni making comments about Lively were the first signs of something amiss between the co-stars.
Lively faced the most criticism at the onset of the film’s release. However, she later revealed in an article for The New York Times that Baldoni had orchestrated a smear campaign against her and sexually harassed her throughout the filming process.
These claims came as a surprise to fans because of Baldoni’s long history of promoting equal rights and the deconstruction of modern masculinity. Baldoni quickly sued the news site for libel and Lively responded with a lawsuit of her own against him and a group of others she claimed to be a part of the campaign. In response, Baldoni sued Lively and the ongoing controversy has continued to make waves within social media, because if both are claiming the other is just trying to ruin the other’s reputation, then who is telling the truth?
It is easy for someone to quickly shift to Lively’s side when they hear sexual harassment and it is hard to trust someone who has a history of making herself a victim. However, in an industry where women’s claims rarely get heard, sometimes all they need is a little support to change the results of a trial. No matter how much power a woman has in her career, men always seem to find a way to dismiss their value when it gets in the way of their goals. Until she states that it is a lie, we have to take precedence into consideration because too many women have been silenced by those who held a higher position than them.
Baldoni claims that all of her statements are false and that it was all a ploy to redeem her career from the criticism she faced after the movie’s release. He and his lawyers are launching a website to reveal messages between him and Lively, among other content, in order to sway public opinion and give his side of the story. Some have claimed this is him proving her claims against him because it seems like a personal attack against Lively, while others have considered it as plain old evidence of Lively’s guilt.
In response to all of the drama, Hoover has disabled her account on Instagram and has been rumored to have retired from writing, although it is all speculation. Nothing has been confirmed but the day she retires will be a day I’ll personally celebrate as a national holiday.
This ongoing legal battle would not have happened if Hoover hadn’t shaped a career based on novels that featured abuse and yet were constantly romanticized. These stories are not cute romances, they are traumatic, and their primary demographic is teenage girls with minimal relationship experience. These girls cannot understand the implications of some of what is featured in Hoover’s novels and yet it is them who are the driving force of her BookTok infamy.
While “It Ends With Us” was supposed to be about abuse, drawing inspiration from Hoover’s own experiences with it, it is still shelved with the rest of her novels in the young adult romance section. Hoover continues to make poor marketing moves that seem to have ultimately inspired the way Lively held herself in the promotional tour for the film and how she viewed the production of it which a lot of the criticisms stemmed from. Maybe if the abuse and the ramifications of such a power dynamic were prioritized, this legal feud would not have gone the way it did.
