“You really don’t have a lot of people to talk to”: Justin Baldoni Admits He Had a Tough Time on It Ends With Us Sets After Blake Lively Drama
- Justin Baldoni played the role of an abusive partner of Blake Lively's character in 'It Ends With Us'.
- Baldoni revealed that portraying an abusive character left him emotionally drained and required months to recover.
- Baldoni shared his personal experience with a toxic college relationship, which influenced his career.
Sometimes it becomes difficult for actors to differentiate between a plot in a movie and their real-life stories. Instead of playing a role, sometimes the role plays the actor. Justin Baldoni’s experience with It Ends With Us seems like an example of this complex scenario.
Baldoni is known for his acting and directing chops, and his recent statements highlight what sort of mental toll an actor has to take while portraying a complex, troubled character that explores an abusive relationship. This gets worse when the actor himself has faced something similar in his own life.
Justin Baldoni’s Challenging Performance in It Ends With Us
In It Ends With Us, Justin Baldoni plays the role of Ryle Kincaid while directing the project. His character is an abusive partner to Blake Lively’s character, Lily. Although the movie was not welcomed by the critics, it became a box office success, grossing over $350 million worldwide (as per Box Office Mojo).
Moreover, the film dealt with some drama during its promotional tour as Lively and Baldoni were not seen together. According to People, it left the actress “pretty surprised at the backlash and drama” and she “felt very vulnerable and upset.”
On the other hand, in a recent episode of the How to Fail podcast, Baldoni opened up about the mental pressure of his work. He said,
Directing is a very lonely job, I’ll just be very candid. Because you are kind of at the top of this totem pole. In your moments of quiet, everybody has a thousand questions for you and also nobody wants to disturb you and you don’t really have many people to talk to and you can’t necessarily share your anxiety or your nervousness about something because you’re also the leader.
Baldoni later revealed a scene that almost caused him to break down.
There’s a moment in the movie where Ryle finds Lily’s phone, and he finds a phone number and he’s very jealous and he’s heartbroken and he’s angry and he doesn’t harm her, but you can see in his eyes how dangerous he is. After that scene, I had a near breakdown.
Baldoni confessed that to feel and understand the internal pain, insecurity, and unresolved trauma of his character was the most challenging part for him. “I had to leave and just cry and shake because there was so much pain. What’s hard about a character like that isn’t necessarily what he does,” he revealed.
Even after shooting the character, Baldoni felt that he still had the character on him all the time. To get out of the character, it took him months of therapeutic work and self-introspection, which again shows the level of emotional engagement.
Justin Baldoni’s Past Experiences of a Challenging Relationship
In the same episode of the podcast, Baldoni shared his own experiences of a challenging relationship that sort of influenced him for the movie. He shared his story of “sexual trauma” from a college relationship. The actor explained how he was manipulated and how toxic relationships affect the sense of self.
I had strong values and opinions and beliefs going in, and those were very easily manipulated and reshaped… I completely lost any sense of self that I had left. And it got very emotionally abusive.
His situation was more challenging to process because societal norms stopped him from understanding that he was a victim of a traumatic event.
In my head, a man can’t experience sexual trauma at the hands of a woman. It’s also the way that society has kind of made me feel.
The moment that broke through his mental struggle was when his therapist asked him the question, “Justin, you do a lot of work in this space: If a woman told you that story, what would you call it?”
Looking at the challenging relationship, Baldoni admitted to finding a silver lining, as he said, “It was actually thanks to that relationship ending that I ended up becoming an actor.” In a way, his experiences helped him to tell the story of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel on the big screen.
It Ends With Us is available to stream on Prime Video.
