Blake Lively appeared to reference her ongoing legal battle against her It Ends with Us costar Justin Baldoni during a recent speech.
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To quickly recap: Blake filed a lawsuit against Justin last December, accusing him of sexual harassment and attempting to “destroy” her image with a targeted smear campaign. Justin vehemently denied the allegations and filed his own lawsuit against her, which you can read about in more detail here.
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Blake was recently named one of Time magazine’s most influential people of the year — and this week, she delivered a speech at the 2025 Time100 Gala.
Noting that it’s “a significant responsibility” to be described as “influential” by Time, Blake said during her speech: “How we use that matters. Who and what we stand up for, and what we stay silent about, what we monetize versus what we actually live, matters.”
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“I have so much to say about the last two years of my life, but tonight is not the forum,” she said, seemingly referencing her legal battle. “What I will speak to separately is the feeling of being a woman who has a voice today.”
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“And since I could speak, because of the pain, caution, and fight of the many women who have paved the way, and the men who stood beside them,” she said as she turned towards her husband, Ryan Reynolds.
“My life was influenced most by my mother, who is sitting here tonight — Willie Elaine McAlpin,” Blake said. Noting that her mother was a “survivor of the worst crime someone can commit against a woman,” Blake continued, “I’ve watched her conceal her raw and undeserved shame my entire life, so as her daughter, being asked to share this today is monumental…If we name it, we change it. Just as our fellow Time100 honoree, the incredible Gisèle Pelicot, put it to every woman who understood: It’s not for us to have shame. It’s for them.”
Blake later added, “We don’t let our daughters know, but one day we break their hearts by letting them in on the secret that we kept from them as they pranced around in princess dresses that they are not and will likely never be safe at work, at home, in a parking lot in a medical office, online — in any space they inhabit physically, emotionally, professionally.”
“Never underestimate a woman’s ability to endure pain,” she added, describing the “superpower of female triumph” as a “basic human right.”
You can find a clip from Blake’s speech here.
