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Photo Credit: Justin Baldoni/Instagram
The massively successful novel It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover came with its own controversy but it was no match for Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni when they got their greasy mitts ahold of it to turn it into a film. With Lively, the film’s star playing the florist Lily Bloom who gets into a relationship with Ryle Kincaid, a neurosurgeon played by the film’s director Justin Baldoni. It was a coupling that instantly turned toxic both according to the storyline and eventually in real life as the two leading stars who have been said to have strong on screen camera bumped head so much regarding the artistic direction of the film that it caused a fracture in the principal cast who all seem to have taken Lively’s side along with the author, Hoover herself.
There was such high hopes initially simply in the casting of Lively where Baldoni told TheWrap that she was both “beloved” and had “aspirational sweetness. He added “I really wanted Lily to be approachable and liked. I wanted us to root for her, and Blake is someone that you root for in that way.” That’s why it was all the more shocking when press was being done for the film where the two stars did their interviews separately. Opening to a strong $50 million domestic box office weekend, one would think they would be spending time appearing together. Baldoni didn’t appear with the cast at the New York premiere, either.
It all began after an August 8th Hollywood Reporter story August 8th stating two different cuts of the film came out of the post production process which Baldoni simply chalked up to “creative differences.” In Elle UK he called Lively a “powerhouse” and said “You know, you’re acting with somebody who’s a Ferrari of an actor. You move a little bit and then they respond, and it really was incredible just in terms of helping me craft the performance. She touched so many aspects of this production, and everything she touched she made better. She’s so responsive and she’s so reactive.” That’s a far cry from reports of him being dismissive to her creative input as the lead actress.
Baldoni has now hired crisis PR vet Melissa Nathan who has represented Johnny Depp in the trial against Amber Heard, a good move considering his Wayfarer Studios co-financed the $25 million that went into producing the film. Nathan’s work to contain the situation serves as one of her firm’s first projects as she just launched The Agency Group earlier this summer. But she’s no lightweight. She worked under Matthew Hiltzik who Business Insider ranked recently as one of the top people in crisis management working with the likes of Brad Pitt, Eric Schmidt, Katie Couric and Kelly Ripa. So she’s more than capable of handling Baldoni’s current problem. We’ll see if things get any better for him and if they’re able to turn this narrative of negativity with it being Baldoni vs everyone else involved in the film around.
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