The Conversation We Should Be Having Around It Ends With Us
At the premiere of It Ends With Us earlier this month, a reporter asked star Blake Lively what message she hoped to send to survivors of domestic violence who might see themselves reflected in the character she plays in the film, Lily Bloom. “You are so much more than just a survivor or just a victim,” she said. “What you have done and are doing and will do is so much bigger than anything that anyone else can do to you.” Lively added that she felt that sentiment and the film itself were very empowering. But to author Ella Dawson, whose novel But How Are You, Really? was inspired by her own recovery from an abusive relationship, Lively’s comments were ignorant.
“You never put it behind you,” she said of domestic abuse. “You just heal in whatever way you are able to, but it is incorporated in who you are. Trauma lives in your body.” Dawson feels that telling survivors to see themselves as “bigger” than their experience of abuse ignores this truth.
Over the past few weeks, Lively has come under fire for minimizing the seriousness of domestic abuse while promoting It Ends With Us. In addition to the comment that irritated Dawson, when asked what she would say to a survivor who approached her wanting to talk about their experiences, Lively played it off as a joke. “Maybe asking for, like, my address, or my phone number. Or, like, location share? I could just location share you,” she said, trailing off into laughter. Lively has also described her character as someone who was “not seeing something that she should see given her past,” appearing to suggest that the abuse Lily experiences is at least partly her fault. And she has used the film’s promotion to plug her new hair care brand, as well as her alcohol brand, showing an apparent lack of awareness of the ties between substance use and domestic abuse.
Lively did eventually post a message about domestic violence resources to her Instagram story, but some have dismissed the move as too little, too late. “You’re sitting across from journalists every single day promoting this film,” Dawson said. “You’re on red carpets. You have microphones in your hand. Do the work!”
In contrast, Lively’s co-star Justin Baldoni, who also directed It Ends With Us, has used the press tour to talk about the film’s partnership with the No More Foundation, an anti-abuse organization that offers a global resource directory and app geared towards connecting survivors to help. Against the backdrop of a rumored feud between Baldoni and Lively, onlookers have treated these distinct approaches to the film’s publicity as one more reason to pick sides between the actors. When Evie Magazine posted a side-by-side comparison of Baldoni and Lively’s remarks on X, a number of commenters responded that Baldoni was the only one who was taking domestic abuse seriously.
But for many abuse survivors, there’s no clear hero or villain in this situation. None of the six survivors I spoke with about the drama that’s unfolded in the wake of the movie’s release were eager to declare their loyalties. “The way both Blake and Justin talk about DV survivors is infantilizing,” said Dawson. Instead, survivors told me they were frustrated that a petty Hollywood squabble sidelined what could have been a fruitful conversation about domestic violence, and that they were angry that, once again, survivors were being talked about rather than listened to.
BuzzFeed senior staff writer Natasha Jokic was the only survivor I spoke with who’d actually seen It Ends With Us, and only because she was writing about it for work. As Jokic noted in her review, the film is “not a masterpiece,” and yet she was surprised to find that parts of it resonated with her. As the credits rolled, she says, “I couldn’t help but think of all the times it made me go, ‘That reminds me of when that happened,’ or ‘I’ve felt like that, too.’” And yet the film’s trailers and social media promotion have largely shied away from the topic of relationship abuse, presenting it instead as a fun rom-com and an opportunity for women to “grab your girls, wear your florals” and go to the movies for a night out.
“I think it’s a little strange that we have a book that’s such a huge bestseller,” and now that it’s been adapted into a movie, “we’re getting promotional material that doesn’t actually talk about what the movie is about,” Jokic told me. As someone with PTSD, it troubles her that the film’s marketing seemed to treat abuse as a plot twist, setting some viewers up for retraumatization.
Other survivors were uncomfortable with the praise that some have lavished on Baldoni. Wagatwe Wanjuki, an award-winning anti-rape activist and abuse educator, described Baldoni’s comments about the film inspiring survivors to leave abusive relationships or recognizing that abuse is complex as “the bare minimum.” A 33-year-old survivor based in Montreal who I’ll call Ava also felt his comments were “generic.” “He’s like, ‘If a woman recognizes herself and leaves, that would be great,’” Ava noted. “Yeah, we all hope that. It doesn’t work this way.”
Rather than platitudes about survivors being inspired to leave abusive partners, Ava found herself craving insights on why so many victims struggle to recognize their experiences as abuse in the first place. “My ex used to punch the wall and scare me. I didn’t know that was violence. These are things we don’t talk about,” she said, adding that verbal, financial, and legal abuse, which are more subtle than physical violence, are often left out of the conversation as well.
Baldoni’s recent decision to hire Melissa Nathan, the crisis PR rep hired by Johnny Depp for his defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard, to manage the fallout from his rumored feud with Lively also troubled Wanjuki. “Can we really trust someone around survivors if he’s using someone who has… essentially made it less safe for all survivors?” she asked, pointing to the way that Depp’s PR team victim-blamed Heard in the press. And as the criticisms of Lively’s comments have swelled into a full-on dog pile, with one journalist’s nearly decade-old experience interviewing an allegedly “rude” Lively on an entirely different topic suddenly in the news, Wanjuki sees the same dynamic that underpins heterosexual abuse encroaching on genuine critique of the actress. “One of the things that’s foundational to the abuse of women by men is misogyny, so it’s ironic to see misogyny-driven pile ons” from people claiming to be anti-abuse, she explained. Jokic wondered what the hordes of people criticizing Lively online are doing in their own lives to combat relationship abuse or support survivors online. “If you’re just tweeting about Blake, it feels like misogyny,” she said.
Sonya Passi, the founder and CEO of the survivor-led support organization Freefrom, wondered if all the drama could have been avoided if there were people with experience with domestic violence involved in the production and marketing of It Ends With Us. “There’s no shortage of survivors in Hollywood,” Passi noted. Later this year, her organization will be debuting Survivor Made, a documentary about life after domestic violence whose entire cast and crew is made up of survivors. “I want to see storytelling that represents the full diversity of survivor experiences,” she says. “Who experiences harm, who’s causing harm, what type of harm that is — to move past the idea of, ‘There needs to be physical abuse for this to be abuse.’”