Colleen Hoover Addresses Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni Lawsuit

It Ends with Us author Colleen Hoover broke her silence on the ‘unfortunate’ and ‘disappointing’ legal war between Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively.

Lively launched a bombshell lawsuit against Baldoni, 41, his production company Wayfarer Studios, and others last December, alleging sexual harassment, retaliatory conduct, and intentional infliction of emotional stress during filming of the movie based on the Colleen Hoover novel.

Hoover admitted in the wake of the legal drama, she now feels ‘almost embarrassed’ to have written the novel.

‘It feels like a circus,’ the 45-year-old writer told ELLE on Thursday.

‘When there are real people involved, with real feelings and emotions. This actually truly has impacted some of the actors’ careers in huge ways. And I just find it all around sad.’

Hoover added: ‘I feel like it’s so big at this point that there’s nothing anyone can say to change whatever opinion people have of it, even though no one has the actual truth. Not even me.’

The married mother-of-three was the first one to receive backlash over her 2016 bestseller for ‘romanticizing’ the real-life domestic violence her mother Vannoy Fite suffered at the hands of her father Eddie Fennell.

‘I respect that people have passionate opinions about it, but I would not change a thing because that was my mother’s experience,’ Hoover admitted.

I learned a lot from the criticism, but it doesn’t change the fact that this was one woman’s story. I’m not trying to say, all abusers are this way, or all victims are this way.’

She added: ‘The book was inspired by [my mother’s] story, and now it gives us PTSD to think about it. I feel awful because I almost feel like she’s gone through more with the aftermath of this film, more pain than she went through with my dad, just seeing the ugliness of it.’

In hindsight, the self-described Diet Pepsi addict wouldn’t write It Ends with Us because she would ‘be too worried about the scrutiny.’

‘I can’t even recommend it anymore. I feel like [the lawsuit] has overshadowed it,’ Hoover stated.

‘I’m almost embarrassed to say I wrote it. When people ask what I do, I’m just like, “I’m a writer. Please don’t ask me what I wrote.’

Baldoni’s production company Wayfarer Studios purchased the rights to the former CPS staffer’s book in 2019, and they faced more backlash in January 2023 when the announced the casting of Lively as the protagonist Lily Bloom.

The florist was supposed to be 23 and the Gossip Girl alum was a 35-year-old mother-of-four at the time, and Hoover’s Facebook group CoHorts expressed their outrage.

That same month, the blonde Texan announced she was publishing a tone deaf It Ends with Us coloring book, which was canceled the very next day due to online backlash.

Hoover told ELLE she was ‘completely unaware that anything was happening’ between Baldoni and Lively – who’s accused him of sexual harassment and a hostile workplace – as she only spent four days on set, including her cameo in a party scene.

However, Lively revealed Hoover was in the editing room with her as she cut her own version of It Ends with Us after leveraging control of the Sony Pictures flick by threatening to pull out of promoting the movie.

‘[Colleen] is such a great filmmaker you know she was really able to separate herself as the author and sit in that edit room and go, like, “Okay I know that I wrote this in the book but, like, what if? What if it happened this way instead?”‘ the Another Simple Plan star told Access Hollywood last year.

‘Because for the film, its its own piece of art and we’re still capturing everything that’s in the book, but it’s just tweaking this or that. So she really is just an incredible storyteller. So to be able to have been on this journey with you has been really, really great.’

The pair then donned matching denim to illegally screen their rough cut of It Ends With Us during her Book Bonanza convention in Texas.

‘It is an early, early cut,’ Hoover warned the crowd.

It was at this time, in the summer of 2024 when Hoover and much of the cast stopped following Baldoni on Instagram and shunned him from the publicity tour and premiere where he was notoriously banished to the basement of the AMC Lincoln Square Theater in Manhattan.

The community college grad was under the mistaken impression that she would be able to get back the rights to her 2022-penned sequel, It Starts with Us, and make the movie with Lively.

‘I mean if Colleen has the rights, I’ll go anywhere. I’ll follow this woman anywhere,’ the Betty Booze founder told CNN Brasil last year.

‘Y’all heard her!’ Hoover replied.

She now understands ‘that’s 100 percent completely my fault’ telling ELLE: ‘But after that, I decided not to sell anymore.’

Lively and Baldoni are scheduled to face off in Manhattan US District Court for a sexual harassment and defamation trial beginning March 2026, but the general public have already sided with him.

Last June, Judge Lewis Liman made the controversial decision to dismiss both of Baldoni’s $400M and $250M libel lawsuits against Lively, Reynolds, publicist Leslie Sloane and the New York Times.

In an unsealed August 2024 text message, Hoover accused Baldoni o ‘blaming Blake’ for getting Lily Bloom’s heart tattoo wrong ‘and reiterating that she didn’t read the book’ as well as making her donate one percent of the film’s proceeds to DV charity herself due to legal reasons.

Hoover also claimed she was ‘not being allowed to read the script until I was sat with readers,’ but she previously said the script was ‘so good’ in July 2022 via Facebook.

Lively faced substantial outrage over her treatment of journalists, sarcastically answering questions about DV in her movie, and floral-filled Barbie-style promotion directly tied to her haircare and booze brands.

The domestic violence drama’s marketing was all masterminded by the LA-born mother-of-four’s husband Ryan Reynolds through his company, Maximum Effort.

As more evidence is revealed, Lively – who requires ‘authorship’ on all her films – appears to have masterminded a takeover of the It Ends with Us script, wardrobe, score, and editing departments by threatening to pull out of promoting it.

Last month, Josh Boone’s big-screen adaptation of Hoover’s 2019 book Regretting You was savaged by critics yet still became a commercial success grossing $82.8 million from a $30 million budget.

The Heartbones Entertainment founder has big-screen adaptations in the works for Reminders of Him due out next March and Verity due out next October.

Hoover’s next book Woman Down – her darkest tale yet – drops January 13 and she has two more books in the works called One Good Reason and One Bad Reason centering on brothers.

‘I absolutely agree [that I’m overrated]. I feel like I’ve gotten into this career so accidentally,’ Hoover told ELLE.

‘And as big as it’s gotten, I’ve never made an effort to get here. Because I just am very much confused by it. I don’t get it, because I’ve read my books. I’m not some highbrow literary writer. I write just fun books that are easy reads. And so sometimes I’m like, “What is happening?”‘

Hoover – who was raised poor in a trailer park – has sold 50 million books and penned 24 novels in 10 years.