Yahoo Lifestyle Justin Baldoni Says “It Ends With Us” Is for ‘That One Person’ Who ‘Doesn’t Go Back Home’ to an Abusive Partner (Exclusive)
Director-star Justin Baldoni’s new movie tells the story of a woman facing domestic abuse and choosing to break its cycle
Nicole Rivelli
Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively in 'It Ends With Us'Director-star Justin Baldoni is hoping his new movie serves a higher purpose.
Book-to-screen adaptation It Ends With Us, in theaters Aug. 9, tells the story of Blake Lively’s Lily Bloom, a woman facing domestic abuse and choosing to break its cycle. Baldoni, 40, wants commercial success for the film, of course. But his bigger priority is making it resonate for anyone “who goes to see this movie with her friends and doesn't go back home.”
“It's that metric that oftentimes goes unnoticed,” Baldoni tells PEOPLE exclusively. “If it's just a big commercial success, that's on one side of it. The other side of it, for both [production company] Wayfarer Studios and myself is… it's about that one person who's in a similar situation to Lily.”
If that audience member, facing domestic violence themselves and being inspired by Lily’s actions, “makes a different choice for themself,” Baldoni’s mission will be considered accomplished, he says.
Nicole Rivelli
Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni in 'It Ends With Us'That mission is “a double bottom line,” he adds; after co-creating digital documentary series My Last Days, the filmmaker launched Wayfarer Studios to make “very commercial movies, but also films that could touch people's lives.”
Baldoni recalls reading the It Ends With Us novel, which catapulted author Colleen Hoover to word-of-mouth success in 2016, and feeling certain it could make a difference in movie audiences’ lives. His daughter Maiya Grace, who he shares with Emily, his wife since 2013, “was maybe four at the time, and I just remember being so moved and so touched and so inspired by Lily's choice.”
A big-screen adaptation, he remembers thinking, “could be such an empowering film” especially if designed as a rallying cry for women. Male audiences have “big, tentpole action films, and there really aren't that many event films for women. But we saw what happened with Barbie.”
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Other future audience members who inspired Baldoni? His children. While filming, he says, “I was thinking about [Maiya Grace] all the time. But I was also thinking about my son [Maxwell Roland-Samuel]. I don't think this is a movie that's just for women, I think this is a movie for everybody.”
Spoiler alert: It’s when Lily is newly a mother at the end of It Ends With Us when she resolves to leave her abusive husband. “She makes the choice when she meets her child,” Baldoni points out.
Similarly, “when my daughter was born and I held her for the first time, it felt like my birth,” he says. “And then my son was born, and it feels like every day I'm presented a mirror. To have that mirror held up to my face every day is the biggest challenge and the biggest blessing of my life.”
It Ends With Us, which was adapted by Christy Hall and costars Baldoni, Isabela Ferrer, Brandon Sklenar, Alex Neustaedter, Jenny Slate and Hasan Minhaj, is now in theaters.
If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
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