Colleen Hoover Breaks Her Silence On The Lively-Baldoni Legal Battle
"I have my own story I could tell..."
Colleen Hoover’s movie adaptation of It Ends with Us came out over a year ago, but the conversation around the production hasn’t stopped. Now, Hoover is giving her insight into the incendiary legal battle that’s still raging between the two stars of her project. And sadly, she admits that the public fallout has made her “almost embarrassed” to have written her most personal novel.
Shortly after It Ends with Us premiered at the end of 2024, leads Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni filed bombshell lawsuits against one another — Lively accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment on the movie’s set, and Baldoni firing back with a defamation claim. The matter won’t be settled until its March 9, 2026 court date. Hoover revealed she will be giving a deposition for the case in a Nov. 20 Elle profile.
Though Hoover was an executive producer on It Ends with Us and visited the set for a quick cameo, she told Elle she was “completely unaware that anything was happening.” She described the ongoing media firestorm around her litigious stars as “unfortunate” and “disappointing.”
“It feels like a circus,” Hoover said. “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.”
The author hinted that she has purposefully not added her perspective to the narrative because of the ramifications that might have. “I’m just trying to stay removed from the negativity. I have my own story I could tell … but I don’t want to bring attention to it, and I don’t want to have to put someone else down to lift myself up,” Hoover said. “So I’d rather just ignore it and let people think and say what they’re going to say.”
She doesn’t think telling her story would do much to sway people who’ve already made up their minds about the case anyway. “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,” Hoover said.
For the author, an unexpectedly sad layer is that she no longer feels proud of what should have been a huge personal accomplishment. “I can’t even recommend it anymore. I feel like [the lawsuit] has overshadowed it,” Hoover said. “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.’ ... It is sad, because I was very proud of that book. And I’m still proud of it, but less publicly so. Maybe I need therapy, I don’t know.”
