She continued, “But the way that Colleen wrote Ryle, I think, is just so—I think that’s why the story resonates with so many, is [because] you get why Lily stays. You get why Lily chooses to believe a different reality because you’re watching her in real time. You, too, are going like, ‘I know what I just saw, but I don’t want to…maybe I didn’t just see that.’ That is the the magic of this film is, is how she how she made these characters so, so winning.”
Multiple viewers in the comments described Lively’s answer as “wild,” given that she did not mention Baldoni in her answer at all.
How did Ryan Reynolds play into this?
Lively (who is a co-executive producer on the project) recently revealed that Reynolds wrote a pivotal scene of the film. “The iconic rooftop scene, my husband actually wrote it,” Lively told E! News. “Nobody knows that but you now.” She continued, “He works on everything I do. I work on everything he does. So his wins, his celebrations, are mine and mine are his.” (Did his work constitute a scab? Allegedly, no.)
This has led to a lot of fan speculation that Reynolds and Lively may have seized creative control of the film, to Baldoni’s dismay.
“You literally can’t convince me that Ryan Reynolds isn’t the reason for all this Justin Baldoni/It Ends With Us drama, and I feel like Justin doesn’t want anything to do with the drama, and for that reason, has chosen a step back from the PR events leading up to the movie,” pop culture TikToker Arianna Lillie said in one video. “And I’m not saying that Blake Lively has specifically been problematic, but I knew something was up the second I heard that Ryan Reynolds was coming in and rewriting scenes of a movie that Justin Baldoni is not only starring in, but also directing, and is the whole reason this project is happening.”
The TikTok user noted that Reynolds interviewed Lively’s other love interest from the film and claimed he is trying to make Deadpool and It Ends with Us “the next Barbenheimer,” adding, “It seems like Justin is getting pushed out of this whole situation, which is honestly kind of sad because he was most excited about this whole thing from the start.”
Lively and Baldoni’s power struggle
In an interview with People back in April, Baldoni said there “wasn’t a part of this production that [Lively] didn’t touch and have influence on,” adding, “everything that she put her hands on and her mind to, she made better.”
