‘We are incredibly grateful’: Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively join Taylor Swift in donating eye-watering sum to Hurricane Milton relief fund

It’s been a while since we’ve heard any positive news from the Blake Lively camp. The It Ends with Us actress has had a rough few months, including accusations of ignoring the topic of domestic abuse when promoting the movie as well as a disastrous past interview where she mean-girled a journalist during the press tour for 2016’s Cafe Society. Fortunately for her, the latest news is much kinder.

This comes in the wake of the disastrous Hurricane Milton and superstar Taylor Swift’s mega donation of $5 million to the rebuilding efforts. Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds have donated $1 million to the hurricane relief efforts. The disaster relief and food bank organization Feeding America announced the couple’s altruism in a lengthy post from the organization’s CEO.

The CEO has thanked Lively and Reynolds for the donation and mentioned that it’s not only for Hurricane Milton but for Helene as well. Apparently, the duo have been supporting Feeding America for a long time now and the donation is going to be used to help those displaced and in need of basic necessities.

Milton was the second-most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico, second to only 2005’s Hurricane Rita. It was the first hurricane to directly hit the Tampa Bay area in Florida since 1921. Hurricane Helene, which hit just a week or so earlier, hit the state’s Big Bend area. It was the deadliest hurricane to hit the United States since Katrina in 2005. Millions of people are still without power after Milton battered Florida, a storm that also spawned a number of tornadoes.

While Swift’s donation was notably bigger, she was recently named the richest female musician in the world, with a reported net worth of around $1.6 billion.

This positive Lively news could be (and probably is) an attempt by the actress to rehabilitate her image following the whole It Ends with Us fiasco, where she was accused of trying to take over the whole project and feuded with her co-star Justin Baldoni.

According to a source close to Lively cited by Life & Style, the actress is going to do everything she can to make people forget all the vitriol she’s been getting and turn over a brand new leaf.

“Blake has now had the biggest direct hit of her career with It Ends With Us but she’s not going to let herself be permanently painted as the villain every project she does going forward. In fact, she is pushing back against that strongly and making sure her real allies know just how much they are valued.”

Her big chance for redemption will come next year when she’ll be promoting A Simple Favor 2 with fellow Anna Kendrick. The two famously clashed on the set of the first movie, with Kendrick going so far as to publicly state: “She seemed nice – little did I know.”

While many in the press thought it would be “impossible” for the stars to work together again, perhaps now that Lively has been thoroughly humbled by the public reaction to her terrible demeanor, she’s more than willing to play nice. Regardless, donating $1 million to disaster relief is a step in the right direction.