Directing one of the year’s most popular movies has to be rewarding, but what a journey to get there! Between the Blake Lively drama and all the media attention around it, It Ends With Us actor and director Justin Baldoni had his hands full. Now, we’re learning just how full, as the actor and director has just revealed making the movie nearly broke him.
On Dec. 4, Baldoni, 40, appeared on the How to Fail with Elizabeth Day podcast and delved into just what it took to put all of himself into the difficult role of Ryle Kincaid, the abusive husband to Lively’s Lily Bloom. Putting himself in the mindset of an abuser was difficult, he said, but it was compounded by the fact that he also had what amounted to “a very lonely job” as director.
“I’ll just be very candid, because you are kind of at the top of this totem pole. In your moments of quiet, everybody has a thousand questions for you and also nobody wants to disturb you,” he said. “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.”
What really threw him was directing the movie while “trying to play a character who does the things that Ryle does,” he said. At certain points during filming he said he just had to leave the set and “go shake it out. I’ve done a lot of somatic therapy so there were times when I was actually just shaking.”
For example, there’s a spot in the film where Ryle finds Lily’s phone and he doesn’t like what he sees. He has to get “very jealous and he’s heartbroken and he’s angry.” In that moment, even though he doesn’t physically harm her it’s clear in his eyes just “how dangerous he is.” That scene, Baldoni said, caused him to have a “ner breakdown.” What does that look like in the moment? “I had to leave and just cry and shake because there was so much pain.”
Part of acting is putting yourself into the mindset of another person, for better or for worse. Because Ryle was so violent, Baldoni said, letting go of those emotions was tough. He said he had to hold on to Ryle’s trauma to understand why it made him a violent man.
“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,” he said. “And creating that insecurity and the pain and the feeling that you shouldn’t actually be alive.”
Baldoni said it took him more than four months to finally let go of Ryle. For months, he had dreams about the character. Now, “for the most part,” Ryle is gone. It Ends With Us will make its Netflix debut on Dec. 9. It grossed $349.7 million during its theatrical run.
Published: Dec 5, 2024 09:38 am