With Blake Lively making her first talk show appearance since last summer on Late Night with Seth Meyers Thursday night, many wondered: Would she or wouldn’t she?
That is, would she or wouldn’t she discuss her very public legal battle with Justin Baldoni?
The answer: While it didn’t go entirely unmentioned, Lively only addressed what she termed “an intense year” in very general terms, and Seth Meyers—in what appeared to be a carefully orchestrated back and forth—did not press her for more.
Though Lively’s booking was arguably late-night TV’s biggest “get” in some time, Meyers and the show had played it cool since it was first revealed that Lively would be appearing on the show last week, treating her appearance like it was no different from any other.
In fact, it wasn’t until four minutes into the interview that either Lively or Meyers addressed what was clearly the elephant in the room.
Lively was the one to bring it up, telling Meyers of her children, “It’s no surprise I’ve had a pretty intense year. And they’re just my lifeline.”
Meyers responded by confessing to being “maybe not as totally informed about it as other people,” before offering Lively a hypothetical: “Were I to ask you about it, I imagine you’re in a situation where you can’t say much.”
“Yeah,” Lively responded. “I mean, what I can say without going too into it is that this year has been full of the highest highs and the lowest lows of my life.”
“I see so many women around afraid to speak, especially right now, afraid to show their experiences,” she continued. “And fear is by design. It’s what keeps us silent. But I also acknowledge that many people don’t have the opportunity to speak. So, I do feel fortunate that I’d been able to and it’s the women who have the ability to use their voice that’s kept me strong and helped me in my belief, in my fight for the world to be safer for women and girls.”
“It’s a pretty simple thing,” Lively added, to applause from the audience.
And with that, Meyers moved on—but not before acknowledging that they might have left some viewers unsatisfied.
“I’m certainly going to respect that you’re in a position where you can’t talk about it more,” he told Lively. “And obviously I think a lot of people hoped we would talk about it more.”
Lively and Meyers go way back, having first worked together when she hosted Saturday Night Live in 2009 (he was the show’s head writer and “Weekend Update” anchor at the time). Thursday night marked her third visit to Late Night with Seth Meyers.
Lively was promoting her new film Another Simple Favor, which premiered Thursday on Prime Video.
please stop Blake. she is the one who started everything and can’t handle the heat. now she wants to talk about women, why doesn’t she share about her own experience? because she doesn’t have one. Do you really believe that if something really happened to her she wouldn’t have spoken out right then and reported it. She has been around Hollywood to know exactly what to do since she did it back on her Gossip girl days. Ryan and Blake have taken down a reporter back in Canada when Ryan was filming a movie and Blake was doing the movie. it’s all over YouTube