Former teen starlet Blake Lively (yes, that’s really her original name) has done better than most negotiating the transition from Hollywood ingenue to mature actress, but as she approaches the perilous territory of 40 (she’s 36) the social media mob is trying to “cancel” her for what has been called “insensitive” responses to questions by Hollywood reporter and podcaster Jake Hamilton.
Lively is making the rounds to promote her latest project, the film It Ends With Us alongside her costar, Brandon Sklenar (who appears to be a stereotypical dim bulb actor, like Joey in “Friends.”) The movie, adapted from Colleen Hoover’s novel of the same name, is the tale of a woman who is in an abusive relationship—domestic abuse, an ugly topic that Hollywood has visited relatively rarely. (I’m squeamish about watching dramatic portrayals of it myself, and most violence on-screen doesn’t faze me.)
Hamilton asked Lively at one point,
“For people who see this movie and relate to the topics of this movie on a deeply personal level, they’re really going to want to talk to you. This movie is going to affect people and they’re going to want to tell you about their life. So if someone understands the themes of this movie and comes across you in public and they want to really talk to you, what’s the best way for them to be able to talk to you about this? How would you recommend they go about it?”
As I will elaborate on shortly, this is an inexcusably stupid and irresponsible question, but actresses promoting movies are not supposed to respond “What an idiotic question! Are you kidding?” Lively didn’t quite go that far, but she came close. With an expression of mock seriousness, she replied, “Ask for my address or my phone number! Or I could just share my location with you and then we could…,’ and she trailed off, laughing.
The social media posse was outraged. The clip of Lively’s response “went viral,” with commenters on Twitter/”X” excoriating her “insensitivity.” “Finally seeing who Blake Lively is [as] an individual and it’s ugly,” fumed one. “Appalled at how she turned a deep, personal, serious question into a joke,” another wrote. “The question was kind of serious, and she decided to make it about herself,” another social media critic said. “She shouldn’t have signed up for this movie. She holds no compassion for victims/survivors,” said another idiot.
Hamilton is almost completely at fault for Lively’s career crisis. His question essentially placed her in ethics zugswang, requiring the actress to either endorse and perpetuate a particularly ignorant fantasy the movie-going public has always embraced to its own detriment, or to tell the truth and potentially harm the movie’s box office prospects as well as wound “the Dream Factory’s” sustaining myth. Lively’s fatal flaw is that she’s smarter than most actresses, and obviously doesn’t suffer fools gladly.
Thus she mocked the idea of people genuinely concerned about domestic abuse seeking direct contact with her, because she knows she’s only an actress, and playing the part of someone enduring domestic abuse in a movie confers no special insight or qualifications for counseling whatsoever. It is truly an idiotic notion. It would be like someone grilling Tom Hanks on the street about what going into space is like because he played an astronaut in “Apollo 13.”
Far from intending to sound insensitive, Lively’s snap response was supposed to send the message that people needing to talk about their domestic abuse problems should seek out genuine help, not actors. The edge to her response, however arose from her objection to Hamilton’s effort to sic members of the public on her when she is trying to live a private life. In principle, I salute her. Unfortunately, a reaction in a filmed interview that tells fans, “I have no interest in talking to you or interacting with you when I am on my own time” is not going to go over well, and it didn’t.
As you can see in the video, Lively later defaulted to boilerplate actor-speak about “if anyone ever comes up to you and says that your work meant something to them outside of just having that collective experience in a theater where you laugh and cry and feel together, what a blessing…The fact that we get to do this and it gets to mean something is significant.” Ramalama-ding-dong. In “Singing in the Rain,” Dunning-Kruger suffering silent film actress Lena Lamont (Jean Hagen) tells an opening night audience, “If we bring a little joy into your humdrum lives, it makes us feel as though our hard work ain’t been in vain for nothin’. Bless you all!” Same thing.
Lively’s initial response was the genuine one. I said Hamilton was almost completely at fault for the incident; the other culprit is Hollywood management. Once, film studios insisted that movie stars have publicists who trained and scripted performers so that they wouldn’t shatter public illusions by a momentary lapse of diplomacy or tact. They would carefully review what questions would be asked in an interview like the one Hamilton inflicted on Lively, and if necessary, declare a topic off-limits. They would also coach their clients on how to give the most positive responses. If Lively hadn’t been blind-sided by Hamilton’s silly question and had a chance to compose a response, she might have been able to safely navigate the diplomatic tight-rope between “You have to remember, we’re just actors. We don’t become experts in the problems our characters deal with by just memorizing a script” and “It’s always gratifying when people respond emotionally to a film I’m in, but when I’m off the set, I have a private life like anyone else. People need to respect my privacy like I respect theirs.”
Films and studios don’t do this any more, and few actors have the sense to hire competent publicists on their own. (There was another example of the problem this week, when the star of Disney’s ill-started live action re-make of “Snow White” started advocating for terrorism on social media.)
It was wrong for Hamilton to place Lively in a position where anything she said would be damaging to someone, including her. Do they give out Emmys now for being an asshole?
I guess they do.
________________
Pointer: Other Bill
Ethics Alarms 
William Shatner talks about this on the album “Has Been” in the song “Real”
I have saved the world in the movies
So naturally there’s folks who think I must know what to know
But just because you’ve seen me on your TV
Doesn’t mean I’m any more enlightened than you
I can’t post a link to it on youtube for some reason, but it is worth a listen.
Jerk that he apparently is from all reports, Shatner is a very intelligent and perceptive man, also from all reports.
B.S, Before “Star Trek,” he was a Shakespearean actor of some repute. In the fall of 1969, I saw a poster for the Oneida County Fair (upstate New York) on the bulletin board at my college’s mail room. Who was then making money appearing at county fairs? No one other than William Shatner, the then former and somewhat obscure Captain Kirk his own self. But he made a comeback, obviously. Just a professional actor. I love his Priceline Negotiator character.
Despite looking like a bowling ball with arms-n-legs (ill-fitting shorts and tube socks in Tubac type weather), he was goofily amusing in Senior Moment
PWS
Never had a problem with him. I think he may just be one of those mercurial people you never know who you will get: classically-trained William Shatner or good ole Bill.
He’s at the convention I’m attending in Chicago this weekend. We’ll see who he is today.
Oh, I never had a problem with him. People who worked with him have had problems. Which is not my problem at all.
Yeah, some of them have. George Takei is a sweet enough to his fans, but he should praise up that decades-old grudge.
Some fans claim he was unpleasant to them. Maybe that’s true. Fan stories, though, are oft one-sided.
I watched an interview with Walter Koenig about Shatner and Takei. It was funny to watch Koenig as he came to the realization that the problem he had early on with Shatner was really a problem with Takei.
The Daily Mail has been running articles about Blake Lively nearly every day for the last two weeks. It’s very strange. At first it seemed as if her publicist was running some sort of PR campaign, maybe because of the movie that’s in theaters. But the coverage has become very negative. It’s ironic tour golfers seem to have better management than actors and actresses these days. Tiger Woods was, in my opinion, the first tour golfer to have been coached to talk without ever saying anything. He took it a little too far sometimes. He’d deliver his platitudes with a sneer.
I wonder how long it will be before the mob starts calling her Blake Deadly. I’m pretty sure she’s British acting royalty, which explains the Daily Mail’s obsession with her. She is extremely photogenic, and she can evidently act. And she’s a Brit in Hollywood.
“She is extremely photogenic“
Noted; with absence of malice and at the risk of suffering the slings-n-arrows of outrageous sexism, she’s (IMO) a Mega-Babe
PWS
An extremely classically beautiful face. Golden age of Hollywood looks. Thousand-watt smile. She may have the looks and ability to have work as long as she wants it. A Maggie Smith type career. Also seems pretty levelheaded and happy to be a wife and mother. Quite remarkable.
Great analysis and great headline. When I first read the article, I thought, “Emmy Award Winning Reporter?” What? As if his Emmy was more important than, and outweighed any awards she may have amassed? Weird. Just the paper showing its bias.
This is a conundrum for artists of all types, ¿no? We, as consumers of artistic content, though, bear most of the fault for this. We have given actors, musicians, and other performers outsized influence over the culture. We assume that a song writer truly believes the words written when they might just be song lyrics. I don’t deny that some lyricists are truly gifted wordsmiths (I include Dolly Parton [no country fan am I], Juan Luís Guerra, Juan Gabriel, John Lennon/Paul McCartney, George Harrison, etc., in that group). For performers, it has got to be alienating when the message isn’t exactly what the performer believes.
We weep when John Lennon sings “Imagine” even though that song is quite silly and sophomoric in its messaging, especially coming from a multimillionaire living in a luxurious estate in New York (mind you, I don’t begrudge his success and apparent wealth – in fact, I honor it: he earned it). Yet, he and others have been treated like prophets, sowing seeds of utopia far and wide, which brings to mind Roger Watters from Pink Floyd whose pontifications about Middle East politics make me crazy.. More recently, I saw a video of Lady Gaga stumping for Kamala Harris and thought, “well, that’s cool, but her opinion is about worthy as the oil change guys’ at 5 Minute Oil.”
jvb
John, I have to confess that for years I thought Elvis’s singing “You Were Always on My Mind” was something he’d written and meant. At some point I found out it was written by a songwriter and Elvis was just covering it.
I think the Baby Boom generation got snookered by people like Niel Young and Bob Dylan who were geniuses at giving us what we wanted to hear before we even knew we did. To Dylan, or Mr. Zimmerman, it was just business.
Bing, Ol’ Blue Eyes, Elvis—the greatest of the now dwindling group of balladeers who could make other people’s words and music soar without ever delving into songwriting themselves. Now the singer-sogwriter is the rule. There were certainly those in Bing’s/Frank’s/Elvis’s days: Bobby Darin, Al Jolson, Burt Williams, Jimmy Durante, Gene Pitney, Hank Williams of course, Johnny Cash and many others wrote songs for themselves and others. But the pure cover-artist is a dying breed.
I am not sure I agree. A lot of popular songs are written by hired guns. I suspect Taylor Swift doesn’t write much of her own lyrics. In her heyday, Céline Dion crooned others’ words. Meatloaf sang Jim Steinman’s words.
jvb
I wonder if some of the pushback is due to how popular her husband is. Ryan Reynolds won’t be remembered as the greatest actor, but he markets his companies shamelessly and with wicked humor. The Deadpool Father’s Day cocktail is a an excellent example. For some reason some look to bring down the spouses of very popular people.
I didn’t know he was her husband. She has to be pretty sharp and not a Hollywood airhead to have him as her life partner. One of the more grounded and self-effacing celebrities.
That they have chosen to have multiple children (4 at last count) after they married probably adds to the animus. They even gave them “regular” names. James. Betty.
I looked it up after Reynolds’ jokes about being too stupid to get a vasectomy. I was thinking, oh, what two? No….