Justin Baldoni is thanking fans for the success of It Ends With Us amid speculation of a feud with star Blake Lively.
“I just want to say thank you to all the fans. To everybody. Thank you for seeing this movie, for supporting it, for supporting survivors, and for helping us make sure the message didn’t get lost. I’m just so grateful,” Baldoni, the film’s director and lead actor, told TMZ in an article published on Tuesday, December 10.
Based on Colleen Hoover’s best-selling novel of the same name, It Ends With Us tells the story of domestic abuse survivor Lily Bloom (Lively), who is in a volatile relationship with neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni). Things become even more complex when her old flame, Atlas Corrigan (played by Brandon Sklenar), re-enters the picture.
Though the movie was a huge success over the summer, rumors of tension between Baldoni, 40, and Lively, 37, overshadowed its August release after fans noticed that Baldoni didn’t pose on the red carpet with the rest of the cast at the film’s New York City premiere.
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Ahead of the film’s August 9 release, social media sleuths also discovered that Lively, Hoover and the movie’s main cast did not follow Baldoni on Instagram. Despite his heavy involvement with the film, Baldoni was noticeably absent from the majority of the film’s press, opting for solo interviews rather than appearing alongside his castmates.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lively, a producer on the film, commissioned her own cut of the movie from Deadpool & Wolverine editor Shane Reid before its release, however, it’s unclear if any of it was used in the final film.
At the movie’s NYC premiere in August, Baldoni pitched Lively to direct a potential sequel based on Hoover’s follow-up book, It Starts With Us.
“I think there are better people for that one,” he said. “I think Blake Lively is ready to direct. That’s what I think.”
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Baldoni recently revealed that he had a “near breakdown” while shooting It Ends With Us.
“It’s a very strange place to be, let alone directing while trying to play a character who does the things that Ryle does in the movie so there were moments in the filming of this where I would just have to leave,” Baldoni said on the December 4 episode of Elizabeth Day’s “How to Fail” podcast. “I’d have to remove myself and go shake it out.”
“I’ve done a lot of somatic therapy so there were times when I was actually just shaking. There’s a moment in the movie where Ryle finds Lily’s phone and he finds a phone number and he’s very jealous and he’s heartbroken,” he recalled. “And he’s angry and he doesn’t harm her but you can see in his eyes how dangerous he is. After that scene, I had a near breakdown.”
