Those who have read Colleen Hoover‘s hit novel It Ends With Us know that it not only tells the story of a romance between Lily Bloom (played by Blake Lively) and Ryle (Justin Baldoni), but also focuses on the darker parts of their relationship.
Baldoni served as both director on the project and an actor playing an abusive character, telling The Hollywood Reporter at the film’s New York premiere on Tuesday that “all of the scenes showcasing gender-based violence, that was very hard for me.”
“There were a lot of times where I would have to go privately into a room and just cry or shake it out and try to get him out of me and that energy out of me, because it’s too real. There are too many people that are the real-life Lily Blooms of the world that have to deal with that every single day, and I wanted it to be as real as possible and yet it was very hard to shoot those scenes,” Baldoni said, noting that even thinking about it now is hard for him.
“The only way it was possible was I had an incredible intimacy coordinator, an incredible stunt coordinator — both of them were women — and then there was Blake, and honestly between those three women, they really were the ones choreographing and navigating all of those scenes because I needed to play Ryle,” he continued. “In those moments, to be perfectly frank, I really wasn’t the director, it was those women who were in charge. From the beginning I wanted all the intimate scenes to be from a female gaze and I never wanted my bias to potentially interject and go into the film. So I kind of stepped back and felt all the things and allowed myself to do the work and shook it off as best I could.”
Baldoni also explained his journey to playing Ryle in the first place, when he had initially just planned on being in the director’s chair, admitting, “I think that deep down I always wanted to try but I was afraid and I didn’t let myself dream or think that I could do it, and I would never want to harm the movie or harm this book.”
He then received an email from Hoover who asked if ever thought about acting in the film, suggesting she could see him as Ryle. “I think that that email and her believing in me gave me permission to believe in myself,” Baldoni added. “And then I thought long and hard about it, I had conversations with my wife, and two years later in the development process is when I decided OK, I’m gonna do it.”
Hoover, who based the story off of her parents’ relationship, was also at the premiere, and revealed she watched the movie for the first time while sitting next to her mother. “She cried the whole way through it and we hugged for a long time afterward, it was just a very full circle moment,” the author said.
It Ends With Us is in theaters on Friday.
Neha Joy contributed to this report.