Blake Lively, Anne Hathaway And The Constant Danger Of Mistaking Online Controversies For Real-World Opinion

The seemingly fabricated 'It Ends with Us' mudslinging was allegedly astroturfed, and once again Internet nonsense had little impact on a film or show's commercial success.

What was so weird about the “controversies” around It Ends with Us last summer was the extent to which there was no “there” there. It was seemingly created out of thin air via TikTok rants, YouTube videos and social media complaints alongside social media-driven speculation about on-set melodrama related to who was or wasn’t following who on social media and how Blake Lively should or shouldn’t promote the domestic abuse melodrama (including husband Ryan Reynolds participating in viral comedic junket interviews). It was almost entirely about folks online speculating that there might be actual discontent or conflict between director Justin Baldoni and his leading lady, with folks passing judgment on Lively either because they took issue with her bread-and-circuses promotional appearances or because they didn’t like her for “reasons.” This was followed by more conventional media jumping in to “explain” the controversy, giving it the illusion of legitimacy.

And yet, says The New York Times in a stunning bit of deep-dive reporting, Baldoni apparently hired a crisis PR team before the film’s release. Thus, much of the online chatter about Lively allegedly being difficult to work with and problematic for promoting the film via conventional movie star pageantry (while the director spoke out against domestic violence related to the film’s narrative) while using her and her husband’s power to trample the film’s director, including having Reynolds rewrite a key rooftop flirtation sequence, was about as genuine as a Russian troll farm. Without rehashing the details, the gist is that Baldoni had allegedly sexually harassed and otherwise mistreated Ms. Lively while making the film. The hired PR folks created and/or planted the seeds for the “Lively is an uppity bitch” narrative as preemptive damage control should the actress ever speak out or the allegations otherwise come to light.

If there is another takeaway beyond the occasional accuracy of Occam’s Razor applying to a guy who casts himself as an impossibly dashing romantic lead who turns out to be a domestic abuser, it’s that the Internet is not the real world. The entire It Ends with Us “scandal” existed in an online echo chamber. If anyone took an offscreen issue with Lively, who may indeed kick puppies, burn down orphanages and prefer Scream 4 to Scream 2 in her spare time, it didn’t affect Sony’s Colleen Hoover adaptation in its theatrical release. It Ends with Us earned $150 million domestically from a $50 million debut and $350 million worldwide on a $25 million budget. In related news, few folks in the real world hated Anne Hathaway any more than they thought First Man had too few American flags, Pixar’s Turning Red was pedophilia propaganda or Sydney Sweeney was an uggo.