Justin Baldoni found it difficult filming scenes of abuse for his new movie, It Ends With Us.
“There were a lot of times where I would have to go privately into a room and just cry or shake it out and try to get him out of me and that energy out of me,” Baldoni, 40, told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published on Wednesday, August 7. “Because it’s too real.”
Baldoni, who starred in and directed the project, was emotionally affected by the scenes “showcasing gender-based” violence.
“That was very hard for me,” he noted. “There are too many people that are the real-life Lily Blooms of the world that have to deal with that every single day, and I wanted it to be as real as possible and yet it was very hard to shoot those scenes.”
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It Ends With Us is based on Colleen Hoover‘s bestselling 2016 novel of the same name. The book follows Lily (Blake Lively), a recent college graduate who falls for a doctor named Ryle (Baldoni) while navigating the death of her father. Her romance with Ryle ultimately takes a dangerous turn when Lily’s first love, Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), comes back into her life.
Hoover has candidly discussed how the major themes of abuse in the book were based on the relationship between her parents. Baldoni, however, didn’t always find it easy bringing such a complicated character to life.
“The only way it was possible was I had an incredible intimacy coordinator, an incredible stunt coordinator — both of them were women — and then there was Blake,” he continued on Wednesday. “And honestly between those three women, they really were the ones choreographing and navigating all of those scenes because I needed to play Ryle.”
Baldoni had to find a way to distinguish his roles on and off camera, adding, “In those moments, to be perfectly frank, I really wasn’t the director, it was those women who were in charge.”
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He continued: “From the beginning, I wanted all the intimate scenes to be from a female gaze and I never wanted my bias to potentially interject and go into the film. So I kind of stepped back and felt all the things and allowed myself to do the work and shook it off as best I could.”
Despite his worries about playing Ryle, Baldoni gushed about getting the opportunity to direct the highly anticipated movie.
“I think that deep down I always wanted to try, but I was afraid and I didn’t let myself dream or think that I could do it, and I would never want to harm the movie or harm this book,” he recalled. “[Colleen] believing in me gave me permission to believe in myself.”
It Ends With Us is set to hit theaters Friday, August 9.
