The film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us has led to a controversial, continual co-star clash.

It Ends With Us raked in hundreds of millions of dollars following its release on August 9th, 2024, but it also caused a major, ongoing, and very public battle between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. The feud began simply with differing takes on their promotion of the movie but has grown as more serious lawsuits and allegations have come out.

Colleen Hoover’s novel It Ends With Us, published in 2016, tells the story of Lily Bloom, who starts a relationship with a charming, rich surgeon, Ryle. Their relationship turns less fairy-tale like as Lily discovers the other side of Ryle with time—the abusive, manipulative side. In the movie, Lively portrays Lily and Baldoni: Ryle, but in reality, Lively often dodged discussion of the theme of domestic violence in interviews during the movie’s promotion, while Baldoni focused on and emphasized it.

Lively’s avoidance of the subject of domestic violence resulted in dramatic flashback from fans and the greater public, in contrast to the high praise Baldoni received.

Data from Business Insider shows that negative social media sentiment towards Lively before she even filed her complaints about Baldoni on Dec. 21, 2024 were already 32%, and after her complaints, increased to 61%. Likewise, the positive feelings towards Lively on social media dropped from 18% before her complaints to 3% after.

Another source from the Business Insider, however, reveals that Lively claims that Baldoni’s demonstrated sensitivity towards domestic violence was not always his original, honest intent.

“Lively says in the complaint that another issue arose between her and Baldoni after filming due to differing marketing strategies,” the source said in a Jan. 10, 2025 article. “Lively adhered to a ‘marketing plan’ that focused on her character’s ‘strength and resilience as opposed to describing the film as a story about domestic violence.’ Baldoni however, ‘abruptly’ switched marketing strategies and focused on the domestic violence aspect, according to the complaint.”

Additionally, the Los Angeles Times says that the complaints from Lively involved “a long list of precautions, including that an ‘intimacy coordinator’ be present for their scenes and that Baldoni refrain from ‘biting and sucking of lip’ without her consent.”

Fans were therefore surprised and confused by Lively’s filing of sexual harassment against Baldoni on Dec. 31, 2024, considering her recent indifferent behavior surrounding sexual violence in It Ends With Us.

Maya Mallet, a junior, sided with Lively after the sexual harassment lawsuit, but is not a fan due to her behavior during the It Ends With Us promotion.

“At first, I believed Lively because I think that she has nothing to gain from this lawsuit, she is not trying to gain popularity or make this a publicity stunt,” she said. “I actually don’t have a lot of biases towards Lively because she isn’t actually my favorite actress based off the issues with her misleading the movie when she was advertising it as a joyful movie to watch, like when she said, ‘Bring your florals and candy,’ and stuff like that.”

Sadie Dripps, another junior and a fan of Lively’s former, well-known show Gossip Girl, also supported Lively less because of her take on the movie marketing.

“Originally I was on her side, but after seeing what happened [interviews during the promotion] and then seeing the lawsuits after that, it was a little like, okay, that seems kind of suspicious that you’re doing that, because the movie was so much about sexual abuse and I think that her not wanting to mention that and to make it into more of a light airy movie was just kind of a little weird,” she said.

These takes on the polarity of Lively’s marketing conduct in contrast to the lawsuit she filed seem to be the majority opinion from social media and the public – but this doesn’t necessarily make them correct. A New York Times article was published on December 26th, 2024, just five days after Lively’s sexual harassment suit, and its title speaks for itself: “I’ve Seen Celebrity PR Tactics At Work. Blake Lively Is Not Alone.” The writer’s judgment contrasted the majority of the public’s, but ultimately was much closer to the truth.

“Now that so much reputation management happens on social media platforms and elsewhere on the internet, the sources of information — and ultimately, the truth and the manufactured lies about a celebrity — are harder to sort through. This was something Mr. Baldoni’s P.R. firm is accused of exploiting on his behalf via coordinated posts on various platforms,” journalist Elizabeth Spiers wrote.

“…they used social media accounts to create the impression that Ms. Lively was difficult to work with and betraying feminism in some way while playing up Mr. Baldoni’s credentials as a self-proclaimed feminist who cared about preventing domestic violence. And his P.R. firm was largely successful until Ms. Lively’s legal complaint laid out the alleged smear campaign.”

As it turns out, Spiers was right; the rise in public approval for Baldoni at the same time critic increased towards Lively was no coincidence. Several pieces of evidence have been released proving that Baldoni attempted to — and succeeded in running a smear campaign against his co-star during the release of It Ends With Us.

As reported by Megan Twohey and Mike McIntire in another NYT article Justin Baldoni’s Ex-Publicist Sues Over Alleged Smear Campaign, published on  Baldoni conspired with the PR experts of his film studio, Wayfarer and “hired gun” Jed Wallace to destroy Blake Lively’s reputation in fear of information about his on-set misbehavior being leaked.

Baldoni’s last week of 2024 seems to have been filled with lawsuits; his former publicist, Stephanie Jones, also filed a lawsuit against him on Tuesday, Dec. 24, 2024 for breach of contact and included a complaint about forcing her out of representing Wayfarer and Baldoni because of her raised concerns about the smear campaign against Lively.

“There are references in emails to “social manipulation” and “proactive fan posting,” and text messages cite efforts to “boost” and “amplify” online content that was favorable to Mr. Baldoni or critical of Ms. Lively,” Twohey and McIntire wrote.

The fact that the truth about Baldoni might have never been uncovered if Lively had not filed her complaints despite the flashback she was already facing is chilling. In another NYT article also written by Twohey and McIntre, ‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine, some of the communication between Baldoni and his hired PR experts of Wayfarer was revealed.

“‘He wants to feel like she [Blake Lively] can be buried,’ a publicist working with the studio and Mr. Baldoni wrote in an Aug. 2 message to the crisis management expert, Melissa Nathan.”

“You know we can bury anyone,” Ms. Nathan wrote.