Reply to Lively/Baldoni Lawsuit Part 2

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Can someone summarize the key debates in the previous thread?

I’m calling it now. Blake’s new castaway movie will do “surprisingly” well.

She’s still a gorgeous woman (looks better thick too) and people crave mindless romcoms.  [/quote]

Blake is looking too old to star in romcoms.

Playing the “hot blonde” doesn’t work when you’re in your 40’s and look it. [/quote]

I actually think this movie sounds like a good fit for her age and personality. Rom coms are targeted at women, not men. The point is not to cast the most stunningly beautiful young actress you can find. Rom com actresses have to be relatable. That's why women in rom coms are always falling down, putting their foot in their mouth, or making boneheaded mistakes at work -- it helps the women those films/tv shows are targeted at feel like they can relate to someone who otherwise would be out of their league. So Blake actually suits a rom com concept more in her late 30s or 40s than she would have at 28, because her age and status as a mom (and maybe even her experience with this lawsuit) humanizes her and makes her feel like an attainable avatar for regular women watching her on screen. Thus, when she gets the guy and lands the big job, the audience will root for her instead of resenting her.[/quote]

The problem with that viewpoint is that romcoms are usually about women in their 20’s or 30’s. I agree that there’s a market for actresses that have an interesting look and it’s not just about casting the most beautiful model.

But it has to make sense…

An actress who looks 40+ playing a 20 something takes me out of the story. That’s part of the reason Blake fell flat in IEWU. It’s bad casting. Like the 1980’s movies with “high school” students who were in their 30’s or white actors in blackface.[/quote]

She wasn't cast as a 20-something though. She was cast to play her age (which is currently 37, not 40+). Baldoni specifically rejected suggestions of younger actresses because he was playing Ryle and he thought they'd look way too young with him (he actually is in his 40s). He was really enthusiastic about Lively's interest in the role. So she was hired to play a woman in her 30s.

Colleen Hoover has also talked about why the characters were aged up for the movie, and how she wrote the novel when she was younger and less experienced and she now realizes the ages of the characters in the book don't really make sense. An established neurosurgeon in his late 20s? An entrepreneur starting and running a successful retail business in her early 20s? It doesn't make sense. Justin's and Blake's actual ages make much more sense for these characters, plus having older actors/characters works better with the subject matter because then it's less about the impulsive behaviors of younger people with limited relationship experience. It allows the characters to all be held more accountable for their actions in a way that wouldn't necessarily be true for younger characters.

Also arguing that an actor playing down in age is similar to blackface is deranged. Time for a level set there. No one thinks Gabrielle Carteris should be canceled for playing a high school student when she was in her 30s -- they just think it was funny.[/quote]

Holy strawman, Batman!

I never said that middle aged actresses should be canceled for playing high school. I literally said [b]it takes me out of the story. [/b]

And it does.

It’s harder to immerse yourself in a movie when the actress looks 2 decades older than her character.

This is controversial now? [/quote]

You are ignoring the fact that Lively was not playing younger than she is in IEWU. She was cast to play a woman in her early-to-mid 30s, specifically because Baldoni had already cast himself as Ryle. Several younger actresses were floated for the part and he told Steve Sarowitz that those women were too young to play opposite him.

If your argument is that you were mad they aged up the characters from the books, take that up with Hoover, Baldoni, and Wayfarer, because they are the ones who made that choice.

I also assume her role in this upcoming rom com is for a woman in her 30s. Most rom coms these days feature actresses in their 30s or 40s. Dakota Johnson just made Materialists and she is 35, and was playing a woman in her 30s.[/quote]

Some actors look extremely young for their age … and others don’t.

Dakota Johnson looks like an attractive woman in her 30’s. Leo DiCaprio could convincingly play much younger characters until he was well into his 30’s. Same with Sutton Foster. Blake Lively is not one of those actors. She’s in her late 30’s and she looks like she’s in her 40’s.

Blake looks older than Justin Baldoni and that visual takes me out of the story. In the book, a big part of the dynamic between the characters was that Blake’s character was significantly younger and less financially secure than her abusive husband. [/quote]

I disagree Blake looks older than Baldoni. I think she looks her age, which is 37. He looks his age, which is 41. That's such a small age gap anyway, it just doesn't seem important. And Baldoni was happy with their pairing when they cast her -- he sounds really enthusiastic about her taking the role and wanted someone who would look age appropriate for him. [/quote]

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