'It Ends With Us' Producer Weighs in on Justin Baldoni & the Challenges of Adapting Colleen Hoover’s Book

Just this past week, talk about the cast of It Ends With Us, specifically Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, has been at an all-time high. Amid all the chatter about Baldoni’s work as a director and star of the movie, Lively’s vibrant press tour and Ryan Reynolds’ involvement in the movie, we sat down with the movie’s screenwriter and co-producer Christy Hall to talk all things Baldoni and the challenges of bringing Colleen Hoover’s best-selling novel to the big screen.

On the topic of Baldoni, Hall sang his praises. “I feel like he really cares,” Hall says, adding that his production company, Wayfarer Studios, was the one who first connected to the story, reached out since the beginning, and got the rights for the adaptation.

“I feel like he loved this story from the beginning, and just regardless of what hat he’s wearing just was doing everything that he could to to get it right,” she adds. “I think he made Colleen a promise that he wouldn’t let her down, and he intended to keep that promise.”

Baldoni’s commitment to the story, of course, included taking the role of Ryle, the story’s love interest and antagonist. For those still unaware of the plot, It Ends With Us follows the story of flower shop owner Lily Bloom (Lively) as she falls for Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni) before he becomes abusive and violent.

“I think there are a lot of actors who couldn’t really necessarily pull that off, nor would they want to,” Hall says of the part. “Very famously when Jojo Rabbit was being made, [director Taika Waititi] had a hard time casting Hitler. So Taika had to play Hitler. By the way, he did a great job, it was meant to be, but I feel like this could have been similar,” Hall says. “I think a lot of actors would have been like, ‘Are you kidding me? No way, I’m not playing Ryle.”

Baldoni, on the other hand, accepted the challenge. “For Justin to step into that role, I think it’s really important because Ryle needs to have a warmth and a charm about him because that’s the version of him that Lily is fighting for,” Hall explains. “But then, on the other side, we have to also believe that he could be capable of those other things as well.”

But, despite having a passionate producer like Baldoni on the project, adapting the novel onscreen was no easy feat. One of the first few scenes in the movie, for example, in which Lively’s character Lily meets Baldoni’s Ryle, proved to be quite a challenge.

“The reason I found it to be difficult is because Colleen wrote it perfectly,” Hall admits. “That was my favorite scene in the book because it lingers. You feel like you’re there. It’s in real-time. None of it’s truncated like that’s the conversation.”

In the scene, Ryle and Lily go from perfect strangers who’ve had terrible days to sharing their “naked truths” with one another and almost getting intimate. For Hall, it was a lot to summarize in one single moment. “My first attempt at the scene, I think was like 10 pages long, which is really impossible to hold when you’re trying to make a movie,” Halls says.

Soon enough, she edited the scene, made some necessary cuts and handed in a final cut she was “deeply, deeply proud of.” Then, she couldn’t attend the actual set due to the WGA strikes at the time.

Fast-forward a few months, Lively credited her husband Ryan Reynolds for writing the scene. “The iconic rooftop scene, my husband actually wrote it,” Blake told E! News at the premiere in New York City on Aug. 6. “Nobody knows that, but you now.”

Safe to say the news took even Hall by surprise. She told us that she learned about Reynolds’ input for the first time shortly before our interview. Hall, who is a proud member of the Writer’s Guild of America, was not able to be on set because of the WGA strikes that coincided with filming.

“When I watched the movie I recognized the scene, like all of those moments are hit perfectly, right? And then there were some things I didn’t recognize,” she reveals. “Like, when he says, ‘Pretty please with a cherry on top’ and then she talks about Maraschino cherries. I did not write that, and I knew that I did not write that, but I thought it was potentially improvised on the day.”

“How wonderful,” she says of the news that Reynolds had a hand in the scene. “No one makes a movie by themselves so it takes hundreds of people to create a village to surround this thing and everyone gives it what they can.”

“We all give our offerings, and we all do it with care, especially for something like this and so I love learning that some of those little improvised lines or what I assumed for improvised actually, potentially came from Ryan,” she adds. “I celebrate that.” Surprises aside, it looks like Hall has nothing but praise.

If you or someone you know has been the victim of emotional or physical violence, you can get help. To speak with someone who is trained to help with these situations, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800.799.SAFE (7233) or chat online at www.thehotline.org/

Before you go, click to see books similar to Colleen Hoover’s best-selling novels.