She stands accused of banishing Justin Baldoni from the premiere of his own movie, leaving him languishing in a basement as she soaked up the spotlight.
Now, having spent months at the centre of a highly publicized legal battle with her It Ends With Us co-star, Blake Lively’s desire for that spotlight seems to have waned.
A source tells the Daily Mail that the actress, 37, is terrified ahead of the premiere of her new film, Another Simple Favor, which will open the 2025 SXSW Film and TV Festival in Austin, Texas, on Friday evening.
Her representatives have now confirmed that she will walk the red carpet. But, our source says, her apprehension will no doubt be exacerbated by her growing ‘friction’ with co-star Anna Kendrick, 39.
The Gossip Girl alum has been feeling the heat ever since she filed a bombshell lawsuit in December against Baldoni, 41, accusing him of sexual harassment.
Baldoni, who directed as well as acted in It Ends With Us, retaliated with a $400 million countersuit against Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds in January, accusing the Hollywood power couple of defamation. All parties have vehemently denied the allegations against them.
A source tells the Daily Mail that Blake Lively is terrified ahead of the premiere of her new film, Another Simple Favor. (Pictured: A Simple Favor co-stars Anna Kendrick and Lively together in 2018).
The Gossip Girl alum has been feeling the heat ever since she filed a bombshell lawsuit in December against Justin Baldoni, accusing him of sexual harassment. (Pictured: On the set of It Ends With Us).
Lively made a brief, and arguably misjudged, appearance with Reynolds and other famous guests at the 50th anniversary celebrations for Saturday Night Live last month. But Friday’s premiere will mark her first interaction with the press in months.
Another Simple Favor director Paul Feig, 62, reportedly asked Lively to show up for the ‘sake of the cast’ as he desperately scrambles to save his film – the sequel to 2018’s A Simple Favor – from being engulfed by the media circus surrounding It Ends With Us.
‘Paul told her it’s very important she attends for the sake of the cast,’ our source said.
The premiere comes at a particularly unfortunate time for Feig whose sequel has been nearly three years in the making.
He successfully reunited Lively and Kendrick and even threw out a green-lit script in an attempt to produce the perfect follow-up.
A Simple Favor was a booming success, earning $98 million globally on a $20 million budget. And as filming wrapped on the sequel in May 2024, Feig delighted in telling his cast that the original had become the number one most watched movie on Netflix.
But his glee is said to have soon soured as Lively’s legal rollercoaster threatened to disrupt early promotion for the sequel.
In January, Feig was forced to shut down rumours that his film had been shelved amid Lively’s messy brawl with Baldoni.
‘This is total BS. Sorry. The movie is finished and coming out soon,’ Feig said.
Then last month, reports emerged that Kendrick was privately fuming at Lively’s failure to address how her ongoing battle with Baldoni was negatively impacting their upcoming movie.
‘There is a gigantic pink elephant in the room that no one is acknowledging,’ a source close to Kendrick told the Daily Mail at the time. ‘The backlash to initial promo has been brutal. There are people protesting and refusing to see it.’
Lively made a brief, and arguably misjudged, appearance with Reynolds and other famous guests at the 50th anniversary celebrations for Saturday Night Live last month (pictured). But Friday’s premiere will mark her first interaction with the press in months.
Sources now say that ‘friction’ has been brewing between the actresses, who have already allegedly fought over who would get top billing.
‘[Blake] fought, through her reps to get top billing over Anna, who refused to bow to Blake’s demands,’ a source said.
But all that must now be put aside, with the leads said to have been told to plaster over the cracks with ‘happy faces’ at Friday’s premiere.
‘Lively doesn’t want to let Paul down, and she fully supports the movie,’ our insider said. ‘But it will be her first public outing since the It Ends With Us scandal broke, aside from SNL50 where she had Ryan as a safety net.
‘This time she won’t have him. She’ll have Anna instead and they will need to look like a team. Paul told Blake they’re both great actresses and he has total confidence they’ll be able to pull it off.
‘There has been friction between the two, so they’ll both need to put on their happy faces.’
A Simple Favor co-star Henry Golding previously denied suggestions that the two women had refused to speak to each other on the set of the original movie, insisting: ‘Definitely no friction that I noticed.’
But now a separate insider has claimed to the Daily Mail that Kendrick had issues with Lively long before the Baldoni legal spat threatened this new film.
‘[Anna] made up her mind on Blake based on her own experience working with her,’ the insider said, adding that Kendrick will display a veneer of professionalism at Friday’s premiere. ‘Anna will walk the line with her, and she will answer questions about the film. But she will not be involved in any questions about Justin [Baldoni]. She will not entertain this. Behind the scenes, everyone feels extremely upset at how this has panned out. Anna does not want to do another film with Blake.’
For his part, Feig has continued to publicly defend Lively throughout the fallout, describing her recently as ‘nothing but supportive and a dream to work with’.
