Yahoo Lifestyle Justin Baldoni says he had a 'near breakdown' after filming scary “It Ends With Us ”scene with Blake Lively: 'So much pain'
The director and star of the film said that he had dreams where he was still playing his character Ryle Kincaid for months after filming wrapped.
Justin Baldoni is speaking out about the emotional turmoil that he felt while starring in and directing the romantic drama It Ends With Us, revealing that he had a “near breakdown” on set once after shooting a particularly scary scene with costar Blake Lively.
The star explained on a recent episode of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day that his dual roles in the film meant he had to project authority as a director while simultaneously wrestling internally with his character Ryle Kincaid’s actions throughout production. Based on Colleen Hoover's novel of the same name, It Ends With Us follows Lily (Lively) as she falls in love with Ryle, who begins to abuse her.
“Directing is a very lonely job, I'll just be very candid. Because you are kind of at the top of this totem pole,” Baldoni said. “In your moments of quiet, everybody has a thousand questions for you, and also nobody wants to disturb you. And you don't really have many people to talk to, and you can't necessarily share your anxiety or your nervousness about something, because you're also the leader.”
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Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni in 'It Ends With Us'It was even harder to cope after “trying to play a character who does the things that Ryle does in the movie,” he added.
“So there were moments in the filming of this where I would just have to leave,” Baldoni explained. “I’d have to remove myself and go shake it out. I mean, I've done a lot of somatic therapy, so there were times when I was actually just shaking.”
He spotlighted one moment in the film in which Ryle is sent into a rage after discovering that the phone number of Lily’s high school sweetheart Atlas (Brandon Sklenar) has been programmed into her phone.
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“He's very jealous and he's heartbroken and he's angry and he doesn't harm her, but you can see in his eyes how dangerous he is,” Baldoni recalled. “After that scene, I had a near breakdown. And I had to leave and just cry and shake, because there was so much pain.”
He noted that Ryle’s “trauma” continued to stay with him even months after filming wrapped, so much so that he even found himself playing the character in his dreams.
Related: Justin Baldoni explains why he made that massive change to It Ends With Us
“What's hard about a character like that isn't necessarily what he does. What he does is a result of what he has kept in, and so what's hard about having that in your body is having the trauma live in your body of what he's experienced, or creating that trauma in your body and creating that insecurity and the pain and the feeling that you shouldn't actually be alive. Your brother should be. It's all your fault. Nobody really loves you,” he said. “That was very hard and that took a few months. I had dreams as him for a while and it lived in my body, but I think for the most part, he's out.”
Baldoni previously told Entertainment Weekly that he never planned on playing Ryle, but an email from Hoover convinced him to take on the role in addition to his director duties.
"It really got me thinking because she knew the character better than anybody," he said. "At the time, I was on Jane the Virgin, so acting was really all I was doing. I think it was a combination of the people around me and that email from her where I was like, 'Maybe I should really consider this and try to bring something to Ryle that maybe the readers of the book hadn't pictured in their mind.'"
It Ends With Us is available to rent now. Listen to Baldoni's interview in the podcast above.
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