What exactly is Blake Lively supposed to say about the last year of her life? Not a lot, it turns out, as the Another Simple Favor star makes the rounds on the eve of her new film’s release. With Justin Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, watching her every move and the smallest eye twitch from a co-star read as a sign of distaste, the actor has played it safe and quiet over the past few months. She appeared on a talk show for the first time since promoting It Ends With Us this past summer, and as she sat and gabbed with Seth Meyers on May 1, the star discussed crushed ice, her kids, astrology, Frozen, pizza, and other nonentities with an almost manic enthusiasm, as if she emerged from a silent retreat only hours prior. She laughs a little too loud, she interrupts Meyers, and she stumbles over jokes, not giving the audience much time to respond one way or another when she turns to them. There’s a charming awkwardness to it, as though she was promoting a movie for the first time.
Smack-dab in the middle of their idle late-night chitchat, Lively made brief mention of her past year alluding to but not directly citing her ongoing legal dispute with It Ends With Us co-star and director Baldoni. “This year has been full of the highest highs and the lowest lows of my life,” she told Meyers. “I see so many women around afraid to speak, especially right now, afraid to share their experiences. Fear is by design; it’s what keeps us silent. But I also acknowledge that many people don’t have the opportunity to speak, so I do feel fortunate that I’ve been able to. It’s the women who have had the ability to use their voice that’s kept me strong and helped me in my belief and my fight for the world to be safe for women and girls. It’s a pretty simple thing.”
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It’s a fine line for Lively to walk: universalizing her alleged experience on It Ends With Us as symptomatic of larger, ongoing issues between men, women, and positions of power while also acknowledging the privilege she has as one of the industry’s more formidable figures. What’s even more compelling is that all of her longer talking points sound like they’re right out of, well, It Ends With Us, a movie about ending the cycle of abuse.
Her statement on Meyers was met with respectful and enthusiastic applause, not unlike Lively’s brief speech at the Time100 Gala in late April where she dedicated her win to her mother. “What I will speak to separately, is the feeling of being a woman who has a voice today, and since I could speak, because of the pain, cautions, and fight of the many women who have paved the way, and the men who stood beside them. Millions I will never know the name of. Because every life, every act, big or small, affects another,” Lively said that night, later detailing her mother’s abuse and subsequent optimism in the face of violence.
As she doubles down on her last film’s thesis, Lively both affirms her stance and Baldoni’s artistic intention with the film in order to shed light on the dark irony of the whole situation. All of this feels like a far cry from this past summer when Lively was criticized by fans for supposedly using her press opportunities for the film to promote one of her own products and being too lighthearted about the nature of the film. Another Simple is about as tonally opposite a movie can be from It Ends With Us, but Lively’s taking it all much more seriously.
