Even before Justin Baldoni finished reading Colleen Hoover‘s book It Ends With Us, he knew it was an important story that needed to be adapted for the big screen.
Baldoni says he was instantly “moved by Lily’s bravery and what she had to overcome,” and that he wanted to team up with Hoover to development the novel as a movie via his Wayfarer Studios shingle. And once he learned the wide-spread impact the story had among women, as well as the book becoming a TikTok sensation, it only confirmed Baldoni’s instincts.
“So often in our industry, we’re told we’re not curing cancer, we’re not saving lives, just making art, just making movies. To that I say, well, I wonder if we’re making the right movies then,” The director and star tells The Hollywood Reporter. “And that’s what we want to do differently at Wayfair. And I thought, well, this is one that could actually make a real difference, this could save life.”
It Ends With Us follows Lily (played by Blake Lively) as she overcomes a traumatic childhood to embark on a new life. But after getting romantically involved with neurosurgeon Ryle (Baldoni), she sees sides of him that remind her of her parents’ abusive relationship. And when someone from her past, Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), reenters her life, it complicates things even more and Lily must learn to rely on her own strength to move forward.
Baldoni also says it was Hoover who convinced him to take on the difficult role of Ryle as he was nervous and “didn’t know if anyone would believe” that he could portray that character. However, he says the author’s “belief in me kind of inspired my belief in myself.”
Below, Baldoni chats with THR about the pressure to treat the story surrounding domestic violence with care, how he prepared to play a heavy and complex character like Ryle and what scene he’s most excited for audiences to see.
How did this book first come across your desk, and what about it interested you to want to adapt it for the big screen?
It was 2019 and I was shooting Jane the Virgin and getting ready to release my first film Five Feet Apart. I was just starting Wayfair Studios and we were looking for really commercial films that also had a deep message that could speak to the human experience that, as we say at Wayfair, could reach in and ignite a spark in somebody’s heart to maybe make it a new choice in their life, maybe choose a different path, maybe see things differently. And I was also starting to write [Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity]. It was a very busy time and my book agent at the time sent me It Ends With Us and it had been out for a few years. I think it had sold around a million copies. It was a huge book on Goodreads. She didn’t tell me what it was about. She just said, “Read it, trust me. I think you’re gonna love it.” So shout out to Johanna Castillo, my dear friend. So I read it and by the end of the book, I couldn’t even read the text. I was wiping tears away, there’s snot coming down my nose. My wife sitting next to me is just wondering, what the hell is going on. I just was so moved by Lily’s bravery and what she had to overcome. And I just had this cathartic experience also as a new father to a daughter. My daughter was three at the time. Now, here we are five years later, just blown away by the fact that the book then became this global phenomenon two years later.
At the time, I also remember feeling like this could be an event film for women and it hadn’t sold that many copies [at that point]. But at Wayfair, we always lead with the idea that if the intention and the impact is front and center and you could affect people and you could make people feel something, then the rest of it will come. And then the book took on a life of its own, which none of us could have expected.
Knowing how beloved the book is by Hoover fans, did you feel any pressure when it came to developing it?
I think I felt the pressure before. One of the reasons why I optioned the book in the first place, was what Colleen writes at the end of the book, which is how this was really in honor of her mother and the experience that her mother had. But then hearing about all of the women and people who had read the book, who had then chosen to end the cycle of violence in their life and chosen a new path and how many lives the book saved. Look, we can speak in industry terms here. So often in our industry, we’re told we’re not curing cancer, we’re not saving lives, just making art, just making movies. To that I say, well, I wonder if we’re making the right movies then. And that’s what we want to do differently at Wayfair. And I thought, well, this is one that could actually make a real difference, this could save life. And at that point, isn’t it worth it?
The unquantifiable, emotional, mystical energy aspect of what we do is like the butterfly effect of what can happen if something is made with the right intention and this right person sees it at the right time, and that for us at Wayfair is as important as anything else. Of course we want to make money, but we think the money will come if the impact is there. So I felt a deep, deep responsibility before it became a TikTok sensation because of these real people that saw themselves in Lily’s story and made a change for themselves like Lily makes at the end of the movie.
After signing on to direct initially, how did you fall into the role of Ryle?
Originally I had optioned this to direct. And Colleen and I struck up a friendship via email. And by the way, I highly suggest finding a pen pal that’s a romance novelist. The emails are just exquisite and you can frame them. But just before we finished our option agreement, she wrote me a very short email that simply said, “Have you ever considered acting in the movie, playing Ryle perhaps? I could see it, period.” I think there was a part of me that wanted to play Ryle, but I think we all have those things that come and go in our lives that are distant dreams: “Oh, I wonder if I could do that and then that part of our brain shuts us up like, no, no, no, you couldn’t do that. You’re not good enough.” And I think I had that part of me that wanted to play Ryle, but I just didn’t have the confidence or didn’t know if anyone would believe that I could. But when Colleen sent me that email, it kind of gave me permission to believe that I could ‘cause her belief in me kind of inspired my belief in myself. So we ended up developing it together. We brought on Christy Hall to write and then two years from that email is when I decided that I was gonna play Ryle. But it was a big choice and a challenge and an undertaking because it’s a very complex character and I wanted to get it right.
Knowing it was a difficult character to play, how did you prepare to take on a role like that?
I had the blessing of being the filmmaker, so I was able to see the project from a bird’s eye view and understand what I needed from Ryle as a character throughout the course of the film. But as an actor, it was a serious undertaking because I was scared. But again, sometimes the art that scares us is the art that we should pursue. So I worked with a few different acting coaches.
I did some really interesting dream work and worked on the subconscious. I did some Alexander Technique to try to get into his body. And then I also worked with our partners at [the organization] NO MORE because I was really trying to understand the psychology of an abuser and I only know what I don’t know. And I needed to understand why and how he could do these things from a truthful place. I wanted to feel it because if I couldn’t feel it, I couldn’t play it.
Luckily our partner ended up introducing me to an organization that works with rehabilitating perpetrators into society. And I got a chance to be a part of some closed-door meetings with perpetrators who were court-mandated to listen and hear them talking about why they’re there, their stories, hearing them hold each other accountable, hearing them victim blame, hearing all kinds of things that I would have never had the opportunity to hear. And then talk to the person who was actually facilitating to try to understand what the psychology would be of somebody like Ryle, and that was deeply eye-opening. It really helped me frame who Ryle is and build out the character. The final thing that I did that I think was so helpful for me was from my acting coach. I started to keep a journal as if I was Ryle and I wrote down in detail the things that happened to him that he never healed. I had to believe that it was as real for me as it was for him, and trying to feel so much of the pain that Ryle felt in order to figure out how I could portray what he does, which is unjustifiable and inexcusable in the film.
How did you balance all that came with portraying Ryle and the sensitive subject of domestic violence while also being in the director’s chair?
First and foremost, I as a man know what I don’t know. And the first of that is that I have no idea what it’s like to be a woman and have the experience of a woman. So in order for me to even take on this project, I needed a lot of support and I needed to surround myself with women. I need to surround myself with an organization like NO MORE to even understand how to make this movie and not have my own advice as a man injected into it. … So in some ways, I stepped back and I said, “OK, how can we make this as truthful and honest as possible?” Because the reality is in different hands and without that care of someone like a NO MORE, the movie could do more harm than good. While this is not a movie about domestic violence, this is a movie about love and hope and making different choices, we needed to honor the reality of what this was about and not run from it, and make sure we didn’t romanticize it.
They (NO MORE) were integral in that, in addition to bringing on an intimacy coordinator, early, early, early on in pre-production, finding a female stunt coordinator – Lauren Shaw who’s a good friend of mine and a veteran in the industry – and making sure that from that perspective, everything was safe. And to be very candid, in many of the situations I would give my vision and then I would step back and let the women actually run the set and the show. Blake [Lively] was very involved as well and had a lot of ideas of how this should work. There were many times where I didn’t even say a word, where I was just watching and I was like, yes, that sounds great. And I was actually able to then go into Ryle because in those moments, it was the most complex for Ryle and the hardest for me as an actor. So they took a lot of weight off my shoulders, and also ensured that each of those scenes were handled with care and also did not have a male gaze but at a female gaze because that was one of my early concerns when I was questioning if I could even direct this movie. I wanted to ensure that it kept and maintained the message of the book through a female perspective.
Is there a specific scene or moment in the film that you’re most excited for audiences to see?
I think that for the fans who read the book, the most satisfying scene in the movie is going to be towards the end in the hospital. Because I think that’s the most emotional scene in the book and I believe it’s the most emotional scene of the film. … But I think for the true fans, I hope they’re gonna really love the ending scene in the hospital because we really tried to make it exactly like the book.
Also, have there been any talks about adapting Hoover’s 2022 sequel, It Starts With Us, into a movie?
Not that I’m aware of. I don’t have a story for it. But, I guess let’s see what happens.
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It Ends With Us is currently playing in theaters.
