What's behind that Blake Lively backlash (and why I know who is going to be next)

Once again, we've got a woman running the show just the way she wants it - and people aren't happy. But let's just remember the alternative would be deeply dull...

There’s a Blake Lively “backlash” going on. TikTok called it, as ever, and now it’s spilled out into industry bible the Hollywood Reporter and beyond. Much is in the eye of the beholder, but people are pointing variously to possible clashes with her It Ends With Us co-star and director, a potential read-between-the-lines tussle over who wrote a key scene in the movie of which she is producer and star, and how its rom com-esque floral marketing (including her press tour wardrobe) seems not quite to match its serious message about domestic violence.

All of which has been nicely entertaining, if not reaching the heights of Florence Pugh sashaying around Venice with a cocktail as the rumours swirled around the Don’t Worry Darling press tour, including the bizarre did-he-didn’t-he discussion as to whether Harry Styles spat on a co-star. Good times.

But then I noticed that it was all starting feel a bit familiar. The Jenniferication of Blake Lively, someone called it in the comments: a repeat of the sour reception to JLo on the press tour for her last film (correctly, album, film and documentary, I discover now). Which reminded me, in turn of the terrible press that director Olivia Wilde was the focus of, on said Don’t Worry Darling press tour … and so on.

Are we all seeing the same pattern? Whenever a woman in the public eye is seen as getting a bit full of herself - talking herself up, loving the limelight (hello: this lot of theatre school kids all love it, however much some slope about in shades and baseball caps to show that they don’t), and, as with all three of these women, also running the show - they often get promptly pushed back down. “I just did it all,” Lively has said, not getting the memo that she should also play it all down.

“I Just Did It All”: From Variety

Note the military precision of the Margot Robbie press tour as she helmed the billion-dollar Barbie behemoth, even as it blew every rival film out of the water: not once did you get the impression that she was patting herself on the back. But would it have been so bad if she had, as its star and producer? And what exactly is the offence in this case? Being a bit tone-deaf (it wouldn’t be the first time a film has been marketed as something it’s not; remember how the new Mean Girls failed to mention it was a musical)? A bit OTT… a bit too much all round?

I am not saying any of these women are perfect colleagues, let alone perfect people. We know in our heads, if not our more easily swayed hearts, that all the sugary Hollywood chat about how wonderful everyone is to work with is obviously PR. And of course, people can be called out when they’re seen to be out of line. Still, am I alone in getting a whiff of double standards? I can’t think of a male filmmaker or lead getting quite the same treatment for, say, talking over his co-stars, let alone some of the stuff that reportedly happens on their sets.

Meanwhile, George Clooney is busy telling off Quentin Tarantino for saying he’s not a movie star in the pages of GQ, between suited swimming pool dips with Brad Pitt, with nary a shout about either of their attitudes. (Every men’s magazine’s favourite styling trope, hilariously.) It that were Julia Roberts saying the same of Sofia Coppola, I wonder if it would get the same fairly muted reaction.

gq

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This is no call for peace! Long may George continue to tell Quentin what’s what! This sort of small-scale, low-stakes drama is exactly what the stars owe us, imo. In fact, I’d like more of it - have had quite enough of beige-dressed actors talking about how hard it is to juggle their movies with their kids’ mumps, or how they’ve put themselves on – the horror - an allowance. After a long-ago stint where I had to grab awkward interviews with celebs on red carpets, I have nothing but respect for those who know how to turn on the razzle-dazzle like a flashlight, rather than skulking about like teenagers who didn’t want to be at their parents’ party. Which sometimes, yes, tips into excess. All hail King Elton, laughing at himself in his memoir Me (I love it) about how he once tried to get his record company to turn off the weather.

Which is why I hope more stars follow Blake in styling not just themselves but their juniors into mini-me florals and bangles (“This is all her doing”) on the red carpet! Confidently confiding in interviewers that they’re “shy”! Launching a hair care line (stars don’t use conditioner, it revealed) in the midst of a Bruce-and-Demi style publicity blitz with their Hollywood husband on a PR push for his superhero flick! It’s the very least they can do. While we’re at it: just think of how JLo has boosted morale over the years, from the dress that launched Google Images to putting Ben Affleck in her music videos (let no one tell me that A-list multi-hyphenate did not want to be there, or did anything he did not want to do).

But I don’t need women trying to be humble and relatable, when frankly - that’s not what got them where they are, and not who they are now. (And may not be who they need to play on screen either. Just see Blake Lively’s excellently campy, threatening tour de force as a villain in A Simple Favour.) As it is, she will probably weather this just fine - crucially, her film has beat expectations to open with $50 million in the American box office (seems she knew her audience after all, with those calls to “wear your florals”) - and Hollywood loves a winner.

Meanwhile, the rest of us can just sit back and wait for the next person to be put in the ring. As for the promise of the headline, who’s going to be next? I don’t know exactly who, I admit - but I do know one thing: it will probably be a woman.

p.s. It’s not “very mindful, very demure”, I know. Please enjoy the hilarious TikTok series from creator Jools Lebron, if you haven’t already, having great fun enforcing (and undermining) good girl behaviour rules. Surely set to dislodge Brat summer as the inspo for Kamala HQ’s next social push.

What do you think - do you too love the drama, Mick, or think celebrities should pack it in and tone it all down? As always, please let’s chat in the comments.