Blake Lively pushed a journalist to drink her husband Ryan Reynolds’ gin on camera in a toe-curling interview that has resurfaced amid her legal showdown with Justin Baldoni.
Magnus Sundholm, an LA-based writer for Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, told DailyMail.com the incident was ‘sneaky, cheap and disrespectful’ of Lively.
He sat down with the actress at 10am in August 2018 for a short interview about her movie, A Simple Favor, which was being released the following month.
But he was left shocked and uncomfortable when Lively whipped out a bottle of Aviation Gin, made by Reynolds’ liquor company, and urged him to drink it during a 10am interview in 2018.
The deeply awkward exchange, which Sundholm reposted on YouTube last year, is just one of several videos of Lively that have made her followers ‘cringe’ in recent months.
These include ‘tone deaf’ name-drops of her own liquor company during promotions of her movie about domestic violence, and snapping at another reporter, Kjersti Flaa, when she congratulated Lively on her pregnancy.
Blake Lively tried to force a journalist to drink her husband Ryan Reynolds ‘ Aviation Gin on-camera in a toe-curling interview with a Swedish journalist from 2018
Magnus Sundholm, an LA-based writer for Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, told DailyMail.com the incident was ‘sneaky, cheap and disrespectful’ of Lively
Sundholm’s interview with Lively was for the movie A Simple Favor, which she starred in alongside Anna Kendrick. It was a 10am interview limited to only four minutes
Sundholm told DailyMail.com that Lively ‘hijacked’ their four minutes together, under the thin pretext of mistaking his request for a camera ‘shot’ instead referring to alcohol.
‘Magnus, when I saw you earlier you said “let me get a shot”, and I thought you meant of alcohol, but you meant a photograph,’ Lively said in the video, while flashing a bottle of Aviation Gin, Reynolds’ brand, to the camera.
‘So guess what? Time to put up.
‘Uh oh,’ said Magnus. ‘What are we drinking?
‘Aviation American Gin, who’s owned by a very, very sexy man, who also happens to be my husband.’
Sundholm, with an uncomfortable grimace, replied: ‘So, we’re starting early.’
Lively told the reporter while on-camera they would be drinking ‘Aviation American Gin, who’s owned by a very, very sexy man, who also happens to be my husband’
Sundholm said he was shocked when Lively whipped out her husband’s gin brand and urged him to drink it. When he didn’t finish it, she tried to pressure him to empty his glass
Sundholm told DailyMail.com that Lively ‘hijacked’ their four minutes together in order to product place her husband’s alcohol company
‘We are starting early,’ Lively said, looking at him dead on. ‘What better time to start.’
He took a sip and told her it was ‘good’. But she complained that his ‘voice went higher an octave’, then cajoled him: ‘just shoot it, just shoot it.’
He tried to politely refuse, saying ‘I’ll be singing if I finish this.’
Unrelenting, Lively said: ‘It’ll be so much more interesting.’
Sundholm told DailyMail.com that the interview in New York felt ‘like an ambush—a carefully planned PR ambush.’
‘She used my short interview time for blatant product placement. I found it sneaky, cheap and disrespectful.’
Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds out on a double date with bestie Taylor Swift, who was recently swept up in the Justin Baldoni legal drama, and Travis Kelce in New York on October 11
Magnus’ girlfriend, Norwegian journalist Kjersti Flaa, posted a video on YouTube where she asked him about the uncomfortable interview
He stated he didn’t want to drink that early in the morning but was ambushed by Lively. He said he could’ve objected, but ‘played along’ because it’s his good to keep the talent happy
On September 12 last year, Magnus’ girlfriend, Norwegian journalist Kjersti Flaa, posted a video on YouTube where she asked him about ‘his cringe interview with Blake Lively’.
‘You looked very uncomfortable there. You looked like you were suffering a little bit, and didn’t know what to do,’ she said.
‘It was early in the morning. It was kind of surreal in a way,’ Sundholm told her. ‘I was there to interview her. They’d built a set. And I was completely ambushed by her promoting her husband’s gin.
‘Most countries in the world, you can’t show that. You can’t have a booze commercial, basically, in what’s supposed to be regular content.
‘She hijacked the interview, in a sense. She took almost half of that interview to talk about product placement, basically.
‘I drank gin at 10am. I kind of felt like I had to.
Blake Lively speaking on stage with a bottle of Aviation gin alongside co-stars Paul Feig (left) and Anna Kendrick (right) as they promote the film A Simple Favor
Sundholm told DailyMail.com that the incident was all the more awkward given Lively is teetotal, or abstains from drinking alcohol
‘You come up there after having had your cereal and milk, and then all of a sudden you get gin served on the rocks. I’m not saying I’m a victim. I could have said no. But the whole setup was weird.
‘It was a blatant promotional thing. I played along. I could, of course, have objected. But my job is to make the talent play along. I want to be friendly, I want her to open up.’
This month, Sundholm told DailyMail.com that the incident was all the more awkward given Lively is teetotal, or abstains from drinking alcohol.
‘I thought the whole thing was strange. I still wonder why someone who doesn’t drink would push alcohol on someone else.’
Sundholm agreed with Flaa that he felt ‘used’, noting that half of the four minutes Lively’s handlers gave them together was taken up by the gin discussion.
‘You walk out of there thinking, what the – just happened,’ he said.
Sundholm agreed with Flaa that he felt ‘used’, noting that half of the four minutes Lively’s handlers gave them together was taken up by the gin discussion
Flaa had a run-in with Lively in another interview video that went viral and left her with a dim view of the movie star
The Aftonbladet correspondent added that Lively played the same trick on the other entertainment journalists lined up to interview her during the Simple Favor movie promotion.
‘Everyone came out after me and said “she wanted me to drink, she was pushing the gin”,’ he said.
Flaa said she believed it was ‘unethical’ to push alcohol on someone without knowing their history with booze – especially as Lively is sober herself.
‘I think it’s really unethical to do that. Maybe you had alcohol issues,’ she said.
Flaa had a run-in with Lively in another interview video that went viral and left her with a dim view of the movie star.
The Norwegian entertainment reporter sat down with Lively and co-star Parker Posey during the promotion of Woody Allen movie Café Society in 2016.
Flaa sat down with Lively and co-star Parker Posey during the promotion of Woody Allen movie Cafe Society in 2016
Flaa opened by congratulating Lively on her pregnancy, and was immediately hit with a snarky retort – the Norwegian journalist later posted the uncomfortable interview on her YouTube which got 6.7 million views
Flaa opened by congratulating Lively on her pregnancy, and was immediately hit with a snarky retort.
‘First of all, congrats on your little bump,’ she said. Lively looked annoyed and shot back: ‘Congrats on your little bump.’ Flaa was not pregnant.
The journalist posted the video on YouTube in August with the title ‘The Blake Lively interview that made me want to quit my job.’ It now has 6.7 million views.
‘If she had such a huge problem with me congratulating her on her pregnancy, and she doesn’t have an issue with you drinking at 10am when you’re at work?’ Flaa said in the video with her boyfriend.
She also pointed out that Lively had been happy to talk about her pregnancy in other on-camera interviews, adding: ‘It’s definitely personal. Blake doesn’t like me.’
In an interview with DailyMail.com at the time, Flaa said: ‘It’s time that people behaving badly in Hollywood, or anywhere else for that matter, get called out for it.’
Lively has accused Justin Baldoni, her co-star and director of her latest movie, It Ends With Us, of orchestrating a social media smear campaign against her
Blake’s companies Betty Booze and Betty Buzz provided drinks for the It Ends With Us premiere afterparty which got backlash since the film focuses on domestic violence
In a controversial move, Lively also curated an It Ends With Us-themed menu for the party with special drinks named after each of the characters
Lively has accused Justin Baldoni, her co-star and director of her latest movie, It Ends With Us, of orchestrating a social media smear campaign against her that included allegedly promoting videos showing her in a negative light.
Baldoni denies the claims.
A December New York Times story about the alleged smear campaign mentions Flaa’s interview with Lively, while describing alleged ‘negative publicity’ that was ‘seeded’ or ‘amplified’ by Baldoni’s publicists.
‘It was so shocking to read that in the newspaper, with this very strong insinuation that I was involved in this alleged smear campaign,’ Flaa told the Hollywood Reporter last month.
‘Of course, my video didn’t put her in a good light,’ she said. ‘But at no point did anyone contact me from his team or from her team.
‘The thing is, she smeared herself in that video, and people reacted to it online. [The reason] for her becoming unpopular is because of her own behavior.’
Speaking to DailyMail.com, Sundholm agreed.
‘I have no idea what the PR machinery did behind the scenes, but I know for sure that Kjersti’s video went viral organically,’ he said.
