Justin Baldoni faced quite the challenge while working on It Ends With Us, where he wasn’t just starring alongside Blake Lively but also taking on the demanding role of director for this adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s BookTok sensation. The 40-year-old star found himself pushed to his limits during the production, dealing with pressures from both sides of the camera.
“Directing is a very lonely job, I’ll just be very candid, because you are kind of at the top of this totem pole,” Justin said on the How to Fail with Elizabeth Day podcast Dec. 4. “In your moments of quiet, everybody has a thousand questions for you and also nobody wants to disturb you. 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.”
The weight of portraying Ryle Kincaid—the abusive spouse to Blake’s character Lily Bloom—while directing added another layer of complexity that nearly pushed Justin to his breaking point during filming.
“It’s a very strange place to be, let alone directing while trying to play a character who does the things that Ryle does in the movie,” the Jane The Virgin alum shared. “There were moments in the filming of this where I would just have to leave. I’d have to remove myself and go shake it out. I mean, I’ve done a lot of somatic therapy so there were times when I was actually just shaking.”
“There’s a moment in the movie where Ryle finds Lily’s phone,” he continued, “and he finds a phone number and he’s very jealous and he’s heartbroken and he’s angry. And he doesn’t harm her, but you can see in his eyes how dangerous he is. After that scene, I had a near breakdown.”
The intensity became so overwhelming that Justin needed to step away. He added, “And I had to leave and just cry and shake because there was so much pain.”
The actor-director opened up about the difficulties of shedding such an emotionally charged role, revealing how he carried Ryle’s trauma within himself. He worked to understand how his character’s past experiences transformed into violent tendencies.
“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 shared. “And creating that insecurity and the pain and the feeling that you shouldn’t actually be alive.”
The impact of the role lingered long after filming wrapped, taking Justin four months post-release to fully disconnect from the character. As he revealed, “I had dreams as him for a while,” he revealed, “and it lived in my body but I think for the most part, he’s out.”
Behind the scenes, It Ends With Us sparked its own real-life drama as rumors of tension between Justin and Blake—who served as both star and producer—began circulating. The speculation intensified when the duo notably avoided sharing the spotlight in cast photos and skipped joint press appearances.
While both Justin and Blake remained silent about the alleged friction, the director openly praised Blake’s creative input and leadership as executive producer.
“She was extremely involved, and she really made the film better,” Justin told Access Hollywood on Aug. 7. “There were many instances where I honestly just tried to get out of the way and let her take the lead.”
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