Coinciding with the premiere of It Ends With Us, Blake Lively posted a statement about domestic abuse statistics to her Instagram Stories.
Domestic abuse is central to the plot of It Ends With Us. Blake’s character, Lily Bloom, has her world turned upside down when her boyfriend Ryle (Justin Baldoni), begins abusing her. Blake has drawn criticism for some of her red-carpet responses to the question of real-life domestic abuse victims, which is why her message here is especially important for fans to see.
Blake Lively / Instagram
“1 in 4 women aged 18 and older in the US alone have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime,” Blake writes in her Story. Her statement continues, “Intimate partner violence affects all genders, including more than 12 million people every year in the United States.”
Blake Lively ended her message with a link to resources for victims. “Everyone deserves a relationship free from domestic violence,” she wrote. “The National Domestic Violence Hotline provides confidential support 24/7/365.”
Because domestic violence is such a delicate, and often painful, subject, it can be extremely difficult to talk about. Baldoni, who directed as well as starred in It Ends With Us, responded to criticisms that the film glorifies DV.
“Look, we live in a culture where, unfortunately, too many things are glorified. And we are fighting for attention, we’re in an attention economy…and so it makes perfect sense that people would feel that way,” he told the Associated Press.
“Also, if anybody has had that real-life [domestic violence] experience, I can imagine how hard it would be to imagine their experience being in a romance novel. To them, I would just offer that we were very intentional in the making of this movie.”
This article was originally published on GLAMOUR US.
For more information about emotional abuse and domestic abuse, you can call The Freephone National Domestic Abuse Helpline, run by Refuge on 0808 2000 247.