The It Ends With Us drama has dominated the headlines in 2024, with the box office hit surrounded by controversy.
The Colleen Hoover adaptation has been widely criticised for the lack of conversation around domestic abuse – a central theme to the plot. And with reports of a rumoured rift over creative direction between director Justin Baldoni and producer Blake Lively, the 37-year-old actress has particularly come under fire.
Lively has been criticised for her “tone deaf” media approach – not giving enough attention to the topic of domestic violence in her interviews, and launching a haircare brand during the film’s publicity.
However, the criticism against Lively reached its peak when a previously unseen 2016 interview with the actress was released mid It Ends With Us drama.
The now-viral video was released by journalist Kjersti Flaa, with the uncomfortable on-camera exchange captioned, “The Blake Lively interview that made me want to quit my job”. And with the internet resurfacing past controversial interviews by the actress in the weeks since, Lively’s character has come under fire.
The actress has kept a low profile amid the online backlash, pausing her social media activity and turning off her comments.
And while Lively herself has not addressed the drama, she has been publicly supported by a host of friends and family members who have spoken out in her favour.
This weekend, Lively returned to Instagram, uploading her first post on the platform since the drama unfolded.
The upload of choice was a series of photographs of Lively advertising her new All-In-wONEder potion, for her haircare brand, Blake Brown Beauty.
“Our @blakebrownbeauty All-In-wONEder potion does it all… except provide you a shirt… or a hairbrush…,” Lively captioned the post. “I don’t know what those are.”
The post has proven popular, raking in over one million likes, with husband Ryan Reynolds being among the first few to support the post.
“Ryan is deeply invested in helping Blake navigate this situation,” sources recently explained to Life and Style Magazine earlier this month. “With his keen eye for branding and his ability to turn any situation into a winning moment, Ryan is working closely with Blake’s team to reframe her public image in light of these troubling allegations.”
We will continue to update this story.
