The drama between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni has taken many sharp twists and turns over the last few months. If at all you’ve been living under a rock, here’s the back story of what’s been unfolding since the release of the movie ‘It Ends With Us’ - which seems to have attracted controversy since the very beginning of its promotion.
Phase 1: The tart of the tensions for ‘It Ends With Us’
Looks like the movie was jinxed from the start. The news of creative differences between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni started brewing pretty early on. Lively had concerns about the film’s tone and Justin’s creative direction.
Phase 2: The backlash for the Promotions
As if the differences within the team weren’t enough, the promotions for the movie had quite a few ‘foot-in-the-mouth’ moments for various reasons. Blake’s statements like “wear your florals, grab your girlfriends and watch the movie” were received as tone-deaf by many. Adding fuel to the fire, Lively also promoted her alcohol brand during the movie's premiere, which critics felt was in poor taste.
Phase 3: The Alleged Smear Campaign
Shortly after filing a civil rights complaint, claiming that Baldoni sexually harassed her, Lively escalated it by filing a lawsuit against Baldoni. She alleged that Baldoni and his crisis team created a whole smear campaign, carefully designed with detail to destroy her reputation.
Phase 4:
Justin Baldoni retaliated by initially filing a lawsuit against the New York Times for $250 million for running Lively’s smear campaign story which he alleged only depicts her side of the story and lacks context. In addition to that, he has recently sued Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds for defamation - alleging that they wanted to destroy him and his career, after taking over his film, “It Ends With Us.”
Lively’s team has responded that the suit by Baldoni is a classic example of blaming the victim and turning tables to put the victim on the spot. They were referring to the fact that usually, most sexual offenders tend to shift the blame on the victims as it’s easier to shift the narrative that way.
But, if you see it from Baldoni’s point of view, it looks like two A-listers from Hollywood are deploying all their resources to fight against a director and a production house.
The public is still divided over this topic and rightly so. The movie has been in the news for all the wrong reasons since the beginning. Firstly, to market it as a light-hearted rom-com was such a disastrous move. On top of that, associating it with florals and romance was again an error in the judgement of the marketing/promotions team. It was a heavy and sensitive topic - the movie should have been advertised accordingly.
And if all that wasn’t enough, it’s ironic that Baldoni being a huge advocate of feminism has been accused of sexual harassment of all things, literally making people question his identity that has been centred around re-defining masculinity.
Also, there’s another side to it, where people are contemplating the likely possibility of Lively being ‘the mean girl’ and using her fame and resources to overshadow her misjudgments during the movie.
Until the legal dispute settles, we can’t know anything for sure. But it takes a lot for a woman to come forward with her grievances when it comes to something as difficult a topic as sexual harassment.
Famous or not, loaded with resources or not - history has been a witness to the fact that women across all strata can be victims of sexual harassment.
So, despite the fact that only time will tell if Lively is a mean girl or a victim, we want to put it forward that Ziddi admires every woman who stands up for herself and is not afraid to fight her fight with all her might.
We’ve witness too many #metoo stories over the past few years to push this under the rug in the name of a famous celebrity trying to overpower a director or a production house. The least we can do is, take this matter seriously and not reduce it to a mere Hollywood drama.
If you were offended by the tone-deaf marketing of ‘It Ends With Us’, it’s your chance now to show some grace to the parties involved in the issue and not make harsh judgments without understanding and fully knowing the extent of the conflict.
As this legal battle pans out, we hope that justice is served and more awareness is created towards how to handle such tricky situations in a creative industry.
