I wish the “It Ends with Us” drama tour would just end already.
Is the movie good? I don’t know, because I worked late on the night of a screening and missed it. Now I’d rather sit through a full Corey Feldman concert than spend the two hours watching this flick, which is based on a Colleen Hoover novel.
Whatever box-office mojo the movie had has been completely eclipsed by petty mudslinging around stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, who also directed it.
An eyeroll-inducing, old-fashioned pissing match playing out in the press and on TikTok and X.
In one corner is Lively, the pretty blonde movie star who regularly trades witty barbs on social media with her adorable husband, Ryan Reynolds. She has hair care and booze lines. She’s a mom, an entrepreneur.
In the other is Baldoni, star of “Jane the Virgin” and a proud male feminist. In 2017, amidst the #MeToo maelstrom — opportunistic? Maybe — he gave a TED Talk which sought to “redefine masculinity.” In it, he came to terms with his own vulnerability, sensitivity and his desire to also empower women.
After careful consideration of the available facts, I’ve come away with the following conclusion: They both stink.
(I also believe Lively should have been criminally prosecuted in 2010 for herlackluster acting and even worse Boston accent in “The Town.”)
To be fair, the two have not said a peep publicly about the drama surrounding their movie.
Yet somehow, a film about a woman wrapped up in a physically abusive relationship has become an offscreen story about two glittering Hollywood stars, their apparent dislike of each other, and the public’s growing disdain.
Tinseltown is, after all, about ego first, with money at a close second and art and virtue last. Though its inhabitants would have you believe the opposite.
Suspicions of a rift emerged when Baldoni, who has billed this project as the definitive work on domestic violence, was photographed separately from his cast at a premiere. Several members of the cast, along with Hoover, reportedlyunfollowed him on social media.
Stories started to leak from behind the scenes. Lively was, like her character, a victim. And a victim of Baldoni, no less. Life imitates art! Having just given birth to her fourth child before filming, she was reportedly “fat-shamed” by Baldoni and he allegedly lingered too long in a kissing scene.
A male feminist could never. Not a guy who said in his TED Talk, “I don’t just want to be a good man. I want to be a good human. And I believe the only way that can happen is if men learn to not only embrace the qualities that we were told are feminine in ourselves but to be willing to stand up, to champion and learn from the women who embody them.”
So sensitive, so evolved, so in tune with himself.
On the other hand, Lively, whose character is a florist, was criticized for not fully embracing the seriousness of the story’s domestic violence. In an instagram video, she said, “So grab your friends, wear your florals, head out to see it.”
Hey, it’s not fluffy “Sex and the City,” you know. It’s Ike and Tina.
The Instagram account for her Betty Buzz drink brand posted a Reel with a voiceover from “The Princess Diaries” and disembodied hands holding a can of sparkling tequila and Hoover’s book: “Take this and this and give you” — cut away to a pop-up flower shop promoting the movie — “a princess.”
We’re moving all the merch from Lively Inc. here.
The online coffee klatches hit TikTok to take the actress down with compilations of all her promotional misdeeds. Fans were pissed off about her “garbage,” flippant answer to a question about domestic violence in one interview.
Asked how people might talk to her about the heavy theme, Lively replied derisively, “Maybe asking for, like, my address, or my phone number. Or, like, location share?! I could just location-share you and then we could…”
Particularly damning was a video shared by Norwegian journalist Kjersti Flaa who, in 2016, interviewed Lively and Parker Posey to promote their flick “Cafe Society.” Flaa starts off by congratulating pregnant Lively on her “little bump.”
A sarcastic Lively shoots back, “Congrats on your little bump” to Flaa, who looks like she’s left her body. (Turns out, she is infertile.)
Posey and Lively mock Flaa’s question about wardrobe in a period drama, saying she would never ask a man that. They go on to have a sarcastic and meandering conversation amongst themselves about clothing, as if Flaa isn’t there.
Simply to make her feel like the smallest person in the universe — an insignificant cluster of cells in the corner.
It’s as revolting as it is revealing.
They could have saved some scratch on that “Mean Girls” remake and just released this footage.
For all the “be kind” messages burped out from celebrities, many simply are not.
But maybe Lively had a bad day with Flaa. A momentary lapse of goodness.
And Baldoni’s just a terrible fake feminist #MeToo carpetbagger who likes to fat-shame postpartum women, and it alienated his entire cast.
Or maybe the rest of this cast knows where their bread is buttered: At the Hollywood cool kids’ table run by Lively and her powerful, charming husband.
