Blake Lively has a new movie – promoting it is a minefield
The actress has done minimal publicity for ‘Another Simple Favour,’ when experts say any wrong move could be used against her by Justin Baldoni and his attorneys
When Blake Lively was promoting her 2018 film “A Simple Favour,” she wore power suits to match her character, a dapper PR executive who disappears mysteriously. She was on TV around the clock, appearing on “Good Morning America” and “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon.” She palled around with her co-star Anna Kendrick in joint interviews and promoted her husband, Ryan Reynolds’s, gin company, which appears several times in the martini-laden film.
Her promotion of the movie’s coming sequel, “Another Simple Favour,” has been quiet by comparison. If this is the first time you’re hearing about the film, you’d be forgiven.
The 37-year-old actress is embroiled in a legal battle with Justin Baldoni, her co-star and director from her last film, “It Ends With Us,” which has blown up into the biggest Hollywood scandal of the year. In the midst of duelling lawsuits, Lively has a new movie to promote — a risky endeavour when any wrong move could be used against her, legal and public relations experts say.
“They will be combing through every single action, interaction and comment regarding the press around this movie,” Dina Doll, an attorney and legal analyst, said of Baldoni’s attorneys, “because the press around ‘It Ends With Us’ is a very key part of that initial litigation.”
Through a representative, Lively declined to comment. Baldoni and his lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.
Lively walked the red carpet at South by Southwest, where “Another Simple Favour” premiered, and posed for photos at a screening in London on April 15. But she has not done a print or TV interview about the film so far, and her public appearances — attending the “Saturday Night Live” 50th anniversary show, visiting a Connecticut doughnut shop — have been minimal.
Movie press tours have become a kind of performance art. See: Timothée Chalamet’s full-fledged embodiment of his character Bob Dylan during his press run for “A Complete Unknown,” Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell’s amped-up flirtations while promoting their rom-com “Anyone But You,” and Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo’s stream of perfectly co-ordinated fashion moments in the run-up to “Wicked: Part One.” These days, studios hope their stars do more than just a couple red carpets and morning-show interviews to promote a film. The goal is to capture the zeitgeist.
How do you embark on a press tour for a movie while locked in litigation that prominently involves the press tour for your last one? In the coming weeks, Lively plans to participate in more promotional events for the film, including its New York premiere on April 27, according to a person familiar with the matter. But her last movie and its ensuing controversy have overshadowed the project.
In late December, Lively filed a complaint against Baldoni with the California Civil Rights Department, accusing the actor-director of sexually harassing her on set and then orchestrating a retaliatory PR campaign against her during the film’s press tour. Baldoni responded by suing Lively and Reynolds for defamation and civil extortion. (He has also filed a libel suit against the New York Times, which first reported on Lively’s complaint. “The allegations against the New York Times are meritless,” Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokeswoman for the Times, said in an email. “The suit should never have been filed against The Times, and we will vigorously defend against it.”) The parties have so far declined to settle and are lurching toward a 2026 trial.
From a public-relations standpoint, Lively’s challenge in promoting her new film is “enormous,” said Evan Nierman, CEO of crisis PR firm Red Banyan. “Casting a long shadow over her positive press for the new movie is all the negative coverage of her prior movie. It is a very large, very dark shadow, and I think it’s going to be very difficult for her to step out of that and into the light.”
Lively is also taking legal risks every time she interacts with the press or shows up to a public event, said Doll, the attorney and legal analyst, who has been following the case. Baldoni’s legal team “will be paying very close attention to this press tour for this movie,” Doll said. Bryan Freedman, Baldoni’s lead attorney, has already loudly criticised Lively and Reynolds’s appearance at the “SNL” anniversary show on February 15, during which Reynolds made one slight joke about the couple’s PR and legal crises.
“If they see any interactions between the co-stars that they see as maybe not friendly, it’s possible that they may try to subpoena them and bring them into the civil trial to show some sort of a pattern of her behaviour on set,” Doll said. Social media users have pored over every frame of Lively’s appearance at South by Southwest, looking for clues about her relationships with the sequel’s cast members, especially Kendrick.
For her part, Kendrick has gamely tried to avoid controversy: When a Variety reporter asked her on the red carpet, “How does it feel like the movie is being impacted kind of by everything happening, going on in the world?” she joked, “Why, what happened? I did ayahuasca and the last year of my life is just gone, but I’ve heard the movie’s amazing.”
A successful press tour is built on several small moments that show relatability, authenticity and a sense of humour — a tough job for an actor even when the public isn’t scrutinising her every move.
Take Lively’s March 30 appearance at her friend’s doughnut shop in Wilton, Connecticut: Lively mixed up a batch of bourbon rhubarb cream cheese doughnuts, passed them out to some unsuspecting customers, and then shouted out the store on Instagram. In another timeline, this could have been one of those small moments that raises a star’s Q score. Lively’s publicist probably encouraged the outing “to make her relatable and give her an easy win,” Nierman said.
But, he added, “even the easy wins are hard to come by when you’re in a state of crisis and controversy.” Critics seized on Lively’s long hair, which was not held back in a hairnet while she worked in the kitchen.
After Lively shared images from the visit, social media users spammed the shop’s Yelp page with negative reviews, triggering an “unusual activity” alert. One person even made an anonymous complaint to the Wilton Health Department, which investigated the shop and cleared it of any wrongdoing. TMZ covered the whole affair in breathless fashion.
On Thursday night, Lively stepped out again for the Time 100 gala in New York. Not a hair was out of place. The star, who was honoured by the magazine this year for her contributions to the NAACP Legal Defence Fund, brought both Reynolds and her mother, Elaine Lively, with her onto the red carpet. She made a short speech during the gala, telling the audience about a traumatic experience her mother (whom she referred to by her given name, Willie Elain McAlpin) endured and how she inspires her today.
Lively also acknowledged the delicate highwire act she is walking. “I have so much to say about the last two years of my life,” she said, “but tonight is not the forum.”
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