An intimacy coordinator believes Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively had “genuine affection” for one another before their legal war!
As Perezcious readers know, the It Ends With Us co-stars have been battling it out in court ever since Blake accused Justin, who also directed the movie, of sexual harassment and orchestrating a smear campaign against her. While trying to hit back at this, Justin claimed Blake “refused” to meet with their intimacy coordinator before filming and even released 10 minutes of on-set footage showing them filming a slow dance scene. He believed it proved he did nothing wrong, but she argued it only backed up her claims. Now, an intimacy coordinator is speaking out — and siding with Blake!
Related: TikToker Claims She Was Bullied By Blake & Her Team After SXSW!
In the new TV documentary He Said, She Said: Blake Lively vs Justin Baldoni, which aired on Channel 5 in the UK on Monday, Mia Schachter — an intimacy coordinator who had no involvement in the Colleen Hoover film — opened up about her take on this ongoing saga.
After reading screenshots of text messages between the on-screen lovers, which were shared in their various lawsuits, she determined:
“From reading their text messages, I do get the sense that, at one point, there was genuine affection between them and what felt like a friendship.”
Because of this, she’s not actually that surprised the Gossip Girl star didn’t want to meet with an intimacy coordinator before production began, adding:
“In my experience, when an actor says, ‘I don’t need to meet the intimacy coordinator until we’re shooting,’ as much as it hinders my process, it does typically indicate that they trust their scene partner. And those texts made me think that at one point, she did feel a lot of trust with him.”
But, of course, we know that trust vanished quickly!
Reflecting on the slow dance scene footage (seen above), Mia disagreed with Justin’s team, who claimed Blake was trying to take over the direction of the scene, was “consistently unable to take direction,” and “continued to break character” while shooting. Instead, Mia thinks she was being really professional and considerate given the circumstances. She dished:
“His team seemed to be accusing Blake of trying to direct that scene and undermine his creative vision. I don’t see that. I see an actress trying not to kiss her coworker and instead of saying, ‘I don’t want to do that,’ she’s making other suggestions, which is actually pretty considerate because I think it could be humiliating for everyone there to see Blake Lively tell Justin Baldoni, ‘Stop trying to kiss me.’”
Yeah, we can’t imagine that would’ve gone down well!
Mia previously told the Hollywood Reporter that the Jane the Virgin alum’s actions in the footage were “pretty damning, both as an actor and a director.” Doesn’t seem like she’s changed her mind now that she’s read more from the case!
By the way, a US version of this documentary will be available to watch on Max and Discovery+ on March 31. Thoughts?? What do you think changed their dynamic? Tell us (below)!
[Image via Sony Pictures Entertainment/Netflix]
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