It’s hard to imagine a scenario where Blake Lively doesn’t look amazing, but the actress’ natural beauty has actually put her into something of an awkward position in regards to the upcoming movie release of It Ends with Us. Fans confused one of her looks from the film — where she plays Lily Bloom, a woman in an abusive relationship — with a makeup-free pic, despite her having spent an hour in the makeup chair. Lively addressed the feedback she got and explained why she was conflicted about how to respond.
Ahead of It Ends with Us’ release on August 9, Blake Lively made an appearance on The Tonight Show, where host Jimmy Fallon asked about the social media mixup. Lively had posted two images of her character in the film, one of which showed Lily looking a little “rough,” in the actress’ words. However, some fans misunderstood what the pics were, thinking she was showing her own transformation. Lively explained:
[The makeup artist] did this really rough look, because my family’s experienced a lot of tragedy, but when I posted it, people were saying, ‘Wow, Blake bravely shows what she looks like before and after makeup.’
It’s easy to see why Blake Lively had to take a second in order to find the correct way to correct the misconception.
In addition to the sensitive subject matter and wanting to defend the makeup artist’s work, the actress said her feminism came into play. So, too, did her ego, and she broke it down for Jimmy Fallon, saying:
This is a partisan issue here. There are two sides. Some people think that’s what I look like without makeup, which I find very offensive, because that takes an hour for her to make me look like that. This also takes an hour for her to make me look this good. So I’m sort of, like, vacillating between, like you know, my vanity — which is wanting to be like, ‘I don’t actually look like that’ — and then also, like, being a feminist and being like, ‘Why do we expect women to wake up looking like this?’ like ‘This isn’t realistic that you wake up this beautiful.’ But, like, I would like people to believe that I wake up that beautiful.
As always Blake Lively injected her signature humor into the situation, but she makes several good points here. One is that she wants her makeup artist to get credit where it’s due (and the fact that people thought it was a makeup-free pic kind of speaks to just how well they did). Secondly there’s certainly something to be said about unrealistic beauty standards and expecting women to always be camera-ready. It’s so relatable, though, that her vanity played into her reaction as well, not wanting to break the facade that she’s just that gorgeous all the time.
It Ends with Us is a book-to-screen adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestseller of the same name, and critics are praising Blake Lively’s emotional performance. You can see the film in theaters starting August 9.
