Is the ‘It Ends With Us’ Drama Ryan Reynolds’s Fault?

By Emma Chance | Film | August 9, 2024 |

By Emma Chance | Film | August 9, 2024 |

OK, so: yesterday I told you about the drama going on regarding the cast of It Ends With Us. Basically, none of the cast follows Justin Baldoni on Instagram, who directed the movie and starred opposite Blake Lively as her abusive love interest. He is notably absent from most press appearances, red-carpet photos, etc. My theory is that something weird happened regarding the directing of the scenes depicting violence, as Baldoni has been the only person involved with the film to address that plot. He was very open about how challenging filming those scenes was for him as an actor and admitted that he mostly let Lively take the wheel with their direction.

However, we’ve now learned that Lively told a reporter at the premiere that her husband, Ryan Reynolds, secretly wrote a pivotal scene of the film, and even the screenwriter, Christy Hall, wasn’t aware.

“The iconic rooftop scene, my husband actually wrote it. Nobody knows that but you know,” Lively said. She said of her working relationship with her husband, “We help each other. He works on everything I do; I work on everything he does. So his wins, his celebrations are mine and mine are his.” Could you hear my eyes rolling when you read that? How nice for you guys!

The scene in question is when Lively’s Lily meets Baldoni’s Ryle on a rooftop, and they flirt. Hall, who did indeed write a version of the scene, said it was “probably the trickiest one to tackle” because it’s “perfect in the novel.”

Hall handed in her finished script before the writer’s strike last year and then rejoined production to give feedback on the edit. So, she didn’t realize that Reynolds had rewritten the rooftop scene but says she noticed a few things she didn’t remember writing.

“There were a couple of little things that I thought had been improvised. Like when he says, ‘Pretty please with a cherry on top,’ and she talks about the maraschino cherries. When I saw a cut I was like, ‘Oh, that’s cute. That must have been a cute improvised thing.’ So if I’m being that Ryan wrote that, then great, how wonderful.”

…Oh my god. Her actual soul just died. She says she’s still “very proud” of her work and feels “the beats that needed to be honored in that scene are preserved and they’re there,” adding “Colleen did it best,” Colleen being Colleen Hoover, the author of the book the film is based on. “So I recognize the scene and I’m proud of the scene. And if those flourishes came from Ryan, I think that’s wonderful.” Do a shot every time this poor writer calls Ryan Reynolds “wonderful.”

Once she learned about Reynolds’s involvement, she looked back at other small additions she didn’t remember writing and assumed they must have been his doing as well.

“When Atlas is like, ‘What song do you want played at your funeral?’ [and it’s Creed’s ‘With Arms Wide Open’]. I laughed my ass off when I first saw that because I assumed that was improvised—maybe Ryan Reynolds wrote those lines!” She hates him.

This is giving new light to the whole Lively v. Baldoni conflict. Maybe it was really Baldoni v. Reynolds. It isn’t hard to believe that one of the most ever-present couples in Hollywood are annoying control freaks who steamroll all the little people in their quest for entertainment supremacy.