A Complete Guide to the It Ends With Us Drama and Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni Feud Rumors

Justin Baldoni will never forget the first time he read Colleen Hoover’s novel It Ends With Us.

“By the end of the book,” he told CBS Mornings, “I couldn’t even read the text on the page ‘cause I was crying so much.”

Released in 2016, It Ends With Us tells the story of Lily Bloom. Growing up, she witnessed her father abusing her mother. As an adult, Lily moves from her home state of Maine to Boston to pursue her dream of opening a flower shop. There, she meets neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid and they fall in love. However, he begins abusing her. Ultimately, Lily—whose childhood love Atlas Corrigan also re-enters her life—must make a choice about her future.

Baldoni wrote a letter to Hoover—who’s spoken about how she drew from how her father abused her mother—expressing how much he loved the book and seeing if he could turn it into a movie.

“I just thought if this could affect me in this way, then I can only imagine what it could do for women and people who are in this situation all over the world,” he continued. “‘Cause all of us have a situation or a pattern that we need to end the pattern of.”

Baldoni optioned the book in 2019 with the sole intent to direct. But as he and Hoover formed what he described to The Hollywood Reporter as a “pen pal”-like correspondence via email, she asked him if he’d considered pulling double duty by also playing Ryle.

“I think I had that part of me that wanted to play Ryle, but I just didn’t have the confidence or didn’t know if anyone would believe that I could,” he continued. “But when Colleen sent me that email, it kind of gave me permission to believe that I could ‘cause her belief in me kind of inspired my belief in myself. So we ended up developing it together. We brought on Christy Hall to write and then two years from that email is when I decided that I was gonna play Ryle.”

Now, they just needed to find their Lily, and they found her in Blake Lively, who also served as an executive producer on the film.

“I had a three-hour meeting with Blake the first time we ever met,” Baldoni recalled on Good Morning America. “And shortly after that meeting, I texted her and I just said, 'You are Lily Bloom.'"

As news and photos about the movie started to emerge, fans had their opinions about everything from Lily’s costumes to Baldoni and Lively being older than their characters in the book. But with a best-selling novel that took over BookTok and a star-studded cast—which also included Jenny Slate, Brandon Sklenar and Hasan Minhaj—it still seemed liked It Ends With Us had all the seeds needed to grow into a major box office success.

And it did—earning $100 million globally in its first week alone, per THR’s figures. But as these numbers have continued to bloom, so have rumors of an ongoing feud between Lively and Baldoni.

Over the past few weeks, internet users have dissected recent and old interviews, debated over how the topic of domestic violence was handled in the film and on the press tour and shared their theories about causes of the alleged rift—with the chatter only heightening when Baldoni hired a crisis PR manager.

So how did the film get to this point? Here's a breakdown of the speculation.

How did the It Ends With Us feud rumors start?

Social media sleuths couldn’t help but notice Baldoni and Lively didn’t pose for pictures together at the world premiere of It Ends With Us in New York on Aug 6. In fact, the director wasn’t photographed with any of the film’s cast members while the actress and her costars gathered together for several snaps. And while Hoover and Lively took the stage during the event to speak about the movie, Baldoni wasn’t up there with them.

In the following days, Lively attended premieres in London and Copenhagen. However, Baldoni continued to do press interviews in New York (though aside from Isabela Ferrer, who played teenage Lily opposite Alex Neustaedter’s teenage Atlas, the majority of the cast didn’t go either).

Still, it wasn't just the premieres that garnered notice. Internet sleuths were quick to highlight the fact that Lively follows Slate, Sklenar, Ferrer, Minhaj and Neustaedter but not Baldoni while Baldoni follows the whole cast. As for Hoover, she follows Lively but not Baldoni on Instagram—even though they used to post pictures together and were promoting the film arm-in-arm back in May. As for the rest of the cast, most of the aforementioned names follow Lively but not Baldoni—except for Minaj who follows both.

Fans also observed that Baldoni did most of his interviews for the movie solo while the rest of the cast did interviews with each other. And while watching these group interviews, followers paid attention to how the stars answered questions about Baldoni, with some social media users expressing how Slate and Lively seemed to take the conversation in different directions when asked about him.

What have It Ends With Us stars said about working on the film?

Though neither Lively nor Baldoni have directly commented on the feud rumors, the stars have shed some light on their experiences with making the movie. For instance, Baldoni spoke about the challenges he faced while juggling directing and acting.

“Every movie is a miracle,” he told Today in an Aug. 9 piece. “And then, of course, you’re navigating complex personalities and trying to get everybody on the same page with the same vision. And mistakes are always made, and then you figure out how to move past them.”

When it comes to his approach to directing, Baldoni suggested he leans into collaboration.

“I’m a ‘best idea wins’ person, and I always have been, to a fault,” he continued. “Sometimes to a point where, at times, I think I’ve had people wonder if I know what I’m doing or if I have a point of view, because I’m so willing to have my vision changed. I don’t believe that inspiration or creativity comes through one person.”

And though Baldoni said, “You don’t have to listen to everybody and that didn’t happen all the time,” he noted “there were just moments where I would get out of the way too much.”

Many ideas for the film, he added, came from Lively.

“She was extremely involved, and she really made the film better,” Baldoni told Access Hollywood Aug. 7. “There were many instances where I honestly just tried to get out of the way and let her take the lead.”

Still, co-workers don’t always agree. And Lively noted there were sometimes creative differences in the movie-making process, including when it came to the decision to keep Lana Del Rey’s song “Cherry” in the film.

“They begged me to take that song out of the movie,” the Gossip Girl alum said in a recent interview with Hits Radio UK without naming names. “I’m not supposed to be talking about this, but because they felt like it was too charged and heavy and things were still good with Ryle at that point so you don’t want to feel that charge.”

As Lively saw it, “The moment Atlas enters, things are charged and heavy,” she continued. “There’s conflict, there’s pain, there’s turmoil, there’s tension. Because you’re like, ‘Oh my god. My soulmate, the one that got away, this person who’s haunting me in everything I do and everywhere I go is here now and we still had that connection.’ And you can be deeply in love with this person, but this person comes in and your insides are going to be a mess.”

Meanwhile, Sklenar, praised both colleagues’ talents. When it came to Baldoni, he told People, “He was great. I mean, he did a really good job balancing being both a lead actor in the film and then being a director and a producer. And honestly, the entire crew that he assembled was just so incredible. I mean, everybody in this film was just on the top of their game. It was a really pleasant environment to work in.”

As for Lively, Sklenar raved about her ability to “seamlessly wear all these hats.”

“I can’t say enough about her honestly,” he added. “She just to this day continues to blow me away with how much of a powerhouse woman she is.”

Was Ryan Reynolds involved in making It Ends With Us?

Apparently, yes. Lively—who shares four children with her husband of 12 years—recently revealed how he influenced It Ends With Us.

"The iconic rooftop scene, my husband actually wrote it," Blake told E! at the world premiere in New York. "Nobody knows that, but you now. But he wrote it. He works on everything I do, I work on everything he does. So his wins, his celebrations are mine and mine are his. I mean, he’s all over this film.”

Baldoni also told Today Reynolds was “so generous” and a “creative genius.”

“His gift is levity,” the Jane the Virgin alum added, “and her gift is levity.”

What has been said about how the topic of domestic violence was handled in It Ends With Us?

During an interview, Baldoni shared his response to those who accused the movie of romanticizing domestic violence.

"I think that they are absolutely entitled to that opinion, and it makes perfect sense as to why they would feel that way," he told the Associated Press in an Aug. 9. “I mean, look, we live in a culture where, unfortunately, too many things are glorified. We are fighting for attention. We’re in an attention economy. We’re in a clickbait world where everybody is trying to figure out how to gather attention. Look at the news cycle. It’s everywhere around us. So it makes perfect sense that people would feel that way.”

“Also, if anybody has had that real-life experience, I can imagine how hard it would be to imagine their experience being in a romance novel,” he continued, later adding, “To them, I would just offer that we were very intentional in the making of this movie.”

Both Baldoni and Lively have talked about domestic violence in interviews and shared resources on social media. However, some followers have drawn comparisons between how they've discussed it, when they've discussed it and how often they’ve discussed it versus other subjects on the press tour. And when Lively received criticism for some of her responses or social media users said Baldoni spoke about the topic more, Sony Pictures Entertainment defended Lively.

“Blake, Colleen and so many women put so much effort into this remarkable movie, working selflessly from the start to ensure that such an important subject matter was handled with care,” the studio's Chair-CEO Tony Vinciquerra told The Hollywood Reporter Aug. 14. “Audiences love the movie. Blake’s passion and commitment to advancing the conversation around domestic violence is commendable. We love working with Blake, and we want to do 12 more movies with her.”

What does Hoover think of the film adaptation of her book?

Ultimately, Hoover has expressed that she likes how the film turned out.

“It’s very surreal,” she told The Hollywood Reporter Aug. 14. “I think it’s all of the emotions. I’m able to separate it in the sense that I see the book and the film as two completely separate things. But at the same time, I think they did such a good job condensing this book into a film that I’m very happy with this adaptation and I’m so excited for readers to be able to see it.”