Actress Blake Lively, star of the blockbuster film “It Ends With Us,” took to Instagram Tuesday morning to discuss the film's domestic violence storyline.
In a short post accompanied by a video of the BBC red carpet interview, Lively wrote: “Thank you to everyone who came out to show that people want to see films about women, and to the audiences we embrace. It Ends With Us is a story about the female experience. All the highs, all the lows. And we are so proud of that. We celebrated this film and getting a very important message out to audiences.”
In a later post, Lively shared a link to the National Domestic Violence Hotline resource page, adding that “one in four women ages 18 and older in the United States alone has been a victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in her lifetime. Intimate partner violence affects all genders, including more than 12 million people each year in the United States. Everyone deserves relationships free of domestic violence.”
The post comes after a handful of online critics expressed concerns about the film's “gather your friends and wear your flowers” marketing. During the press tour for “It Ends With Us,” Lively and other members of the production encouraged fans to “wear your flowers” while watching the film, a reference to her character Bloom, a florist. Social media critics criticized the campaign, saying the focus on a fun and light floral theme was completely inappropriate for a film about domestic violence.
“It Ends With Us” is based on Colleen Hoover’s 2016 best-selling book of the same name. The story follows Lily Bloom (Lively) who falls in love with and marries Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni). Over time, their relationship develops into something more violent, and Ryle eventually assaults her. Hoover wrote the book based on her own experiences growing up and witnessing the challenges her mother faced in her relationship with her father.
The online conversation around “It Ends With Us” has been fueled by earlier whispers of a rift between the cast and the film’s director, Justin Baldoni, which began to circulate when internet sleuths noted that several cast members had unfollowed Baldoni’s social media channels, including Lively, Jenny Slate, Brandon Sklenar, and the book’s author, Hoover.
Rumors spread when Baldoni attended the film's premiere with his wife Emily Baldoni, who appears in the film. While the director posted photos of himself in a pink suit by himself, Lively posted photos with her high school crushes Sklenar, Slate, and Hoover.
Regardless of the conversations surrounding the film, “It Ends With Us” was an unexpected box office success, opening with $50 million in what is typically a slow late-summer release window.
Additionally, there were many positive reviews about the film, including: Varieties Owen Gleiberman praised Lively's performance, saying, “She fills the screen with her sharp, slightly trembling, conscious radiance.”
