"Abusers are gonna see this film too": "It Ends With Us" producer on sending a message to everyone

When it went public that Colleen Hoover's "It Ends With Us," the massively popular best-selling book marketed as a romance novel, was going to hit the silver screen, fans were surprisingly upset.

But it wasn't the fact that the book was getting adapted that left them feeling discontented. It was the casting. 

But why? The leads in the film are attractive and conventionally well-liked. Blake Lively stars as Lily Bloom opposite "Jane the Virgin" star Justin Baldoni, who does double duty as the film's director and love interest Ryle Kincaid, who eventually reveals an abusive side. Producer Christy Hall, who also adapted the novel for the screen, had some answers for us.

During Hall's first sit down with Baldoni and Hoover, as she was "auditioning for the job," she pitched one pivotal idea: "I think we need to age them [the characters] up."

It was a decision that caught fans off guard, and criticism over the casting decisions quickly permeated Hoover's sizable fanbase. Baldoni is 40, Lively is 36, and Brandon Sklenar, who stars at Atlas Corrigan, is 34 – all much older than the characters in Hoover's book, which positions the three leads in their early to mid-20s. But while her fans were riled up by the change, the author herself conceded in a June 2023 interview with TODAY that the film's conceptualization was more realistic.

"Back when I wrote 'It Ends With Us,' the new adult (genre) was very popular," Hoover said. "You were writing college-age characters. That's what I was contracted to do. I made Lily very young. I didn't know that neurosurgeons went to school for 50 years. There's not a 20-something neurosurgeon. . . . As I started making this movie, I'm like, we need to age them out, because I messed up. So that's my fault."

Speaking to Salon, Hall elaborated on the reasons behind the change, "I didn't want anyone to just think that Lily's acting this way because of her age. 'She's young, she doesn't quite know how to draw boundaries yet, she doesn't know how to say no because she's youthful, and she still has to become more fully realized . . .' Then it would be more of a coming-of-age story. I didn't want this to be necessarily a coming-of-age story, the reason being that when you are a grown woman you are fully realized. Lily has just launched her business. She knows who she is. She is fun, she is funny, she is smart, she is deeply confident.

"And she now is contending with a version of herself that she is even baffled by," Hall added, speaking to the domestic violence that is central to the story and is loosely inspired by Hoover's parent's marriage.

"It [the abuse] is not because she is young — it is because she is contending with her childhood trauma that has yet to be resolved," Hall continued. "And I wanted to make that very clear distinction. Especially when you think about films about women by women but for everyone . . . I do think a lot of times female protagonists have been very young and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and very plucky. And their plight is too mature. And I just thought it would be really interesting if Lily is deeply mature and yet these are wounds that still need to heal."

Check out the full conversation with Hall, in which she discusses the difficulty of being judicious when flipping a book to film, the fetishization of violence against women in cinema, and why Taika Waititi couldn't get anyone to play Hitler in "Jojo Rabbit."

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Colleen Hoover's books are hugely popular. Why do you feel like her stories resonate with people?

I feel like the magic of Colleen is that she's not worried about what everyone else is doing. And I think that's the mark of a true artist. I think artists that really break the mold and really break new ground are the ones — they're not looking to the left, they're not looking to the right. They're not trying to imitate anyone else. They are literally just deeply connected with themselves and with that mysterious unknown that artists commune with. And she's just telling the stories that she wants to tell straight from her heart.  And they are so distinctive and specifically hers. And I think that if you are a Colleen Hoover fan, you're really just in love with Colleen's essence and who she is as a person because I think she bleeds on the page. Even though "It Ends With Us" is not autobiographical — it's a fictional story — but I think she's so brave to unapologetically let the entire world know that it was inspired by true events in her life. And I think that's what people are responding to. We live in a world where truth is being attacked, and it's really hard to know what is real anymore.  And I think that we take great comfort in what feels honest. And Colleen Hoover writes extremely honestly.

What drew you to want to adapt "It Ends With Us" into a film, other than its mass appeal? 

So I had not read the book when I got approached to potentially vie for this job. Justin Baldoni acquired the rights to the book under the umbrella of his production company, Wayfarer Studios. And this was actually supposed to be more of a smaller indie movie that Wayfarer was going to completely do independently. So Justin was aware of my work. I think he'd read a spec of mine, "Daddio," the film that I just wrote and directed. We sat down and he said, "Have you read this book?" and I said,"Oh, I actually have not had the pleasure but I have heard of it obviously. I don't live under a rug but I just haven't I have a chance to crack it open just yet."

And he was like, "Give it a read; you're gonna want to take this job. Give it a read, and let's let's have another conversation but I anticipate that you're gonna come back with your hand held high." So that's exactly what happened. I went away, I read the book, I really went on the journey. I suspended my disbelief and I just embraced every word, every page. I laughed, I cried, and I really fell in love with Colleen Hoover for all the reasons that we were talking about. And I felt deeply inspired that a story like this could it could exist in this packaging because the beautiful magic trick as we all know is that you feel like you're just reading a beautiful love story and then slowly but surely you realize around the time Lily starts to realize that she's a frog in boiling water.

So I went back to Justin and I said it would be my absolute honor to be considered for this job because these are the kind of stories that I believe can have cultural impact. I really believe that art saves lives. That's what drives me, that's what gets me up in the morning. I was taught that as a theater kid that our art saves lives so I went back and said I'd love to do it. But we needed Colleen's blessing. And he said, "Let me set up a Zoom because I can't hire you until she gives the thumbs up." So we got on a Zoom and we bonded because I'm from Oklahoma. So yeah these Midwestern gals just started chatting it up. And there was just a built-in trust, a built-in camaraderie and collaboration. I like to be very transparent on those calls. I don't like to try to just tell the author what think they want to hear. I'm extremely transparent. This is the spine of the narrative as I see it because we don't have as much real estate in a film; these are the things I think we can honor; these are the things I think we need to massage; these are new landscapes for exploration in my opinion; and these are the things that I think might need to be cut and that I don't know if we have time to service. I think we a two-hour Zoom and I laid it all out on the table. I was auditioning for the job but I just wanted to be real, because if she didn't agree with me, if she didn't like my instincts then I shouldn't get the job because that means I'm not the right person. 

The film adheres pretty closely to the book. What was your North Star in adapting it into a screenplay?

The North Star number one for me personally was to keep Colleen happy. If it didn't feel right for her then we needed to look at it again. She was deeply activated throughout the process, which I think is just as it should be. She deserves that right. The second [North Star] was keeping the fans happy. There's a lot of expectation around this book — and by the way external pressures of fan expectation but also then internal pressure And then number three was really just not adulterating the spirit of the book. So even if I had to add scenes that don't exist in the book, I wanted them to feel as if they could have been in the book. I definitely pulled some dialogue directly from the book, but then if I ever had to put words in their mouth that were not from Colleen's pen I wanted to feel as if it was something Atlas would say. So a lot of it was just trying to stay deeply tethered to the foundations of tone, character, all of it that.

I like to really immerse myself in the source material, even knowing that things are gonna change. I like to read the book like five times. I like to almost memorize it where — "Oh I'm page 87 when Ryle says this." I feel like my job is to just completely immerse myself to the point that then even if I'm inventing things they still feel deeply tethered to the feeling. For me, my North Star was that when [fans] were watching the movie to have the same feeling that they were gifted when they were reading the book.

I'm curious to learn how involved you were in the casting process.

So I was the first hire. When you're the first hire and you're the first one in and you're building the foundation by way of what's on the page. So writers — screenwriters even television writers in this space — you actually have a lot of pull on casting even long before a casting director is even hiring. And I think that needs to be taken extremely seriously. So for example, not adulterating: I didn't write with any actors in mind. I only wrote with Colleen's characters in mind, and then the task becomes casting people that would best serve the original characters.

And then beyond that, there were a lot of decisions that affected casting that it didn't even occur to me until later. When we were putting a list together, and of course Blake is at the top of the list, and when she said yes we were all doing backflips. But very early on — I actually think it was even in that first conversation with Colleen — one of the things that I wanted to be transparent about was I said, "I think we need to age them."

Blake Lively stars in "It Ends With Us" (Sony Pictures Entertainment/Jojo Whilden)

What about Blake and her performance made you know that she was the right person to play Lily, other than the obvious aging up?

So let's talk about, "Why age up?" Let's start from the kernel of the idea that led to Blake playing this role. The reason I pitched that we should age them up was, number one — and even Colleen has talked about this during press — I actually think that this was the right decision with Ryle being a neurosurgeon. That takes years and years and years of schooling, and while I was reading it I craved for him to be older.  Well, again what's so fun about adaptation into the cinematic landscape is the book will always exist. My job is to ask myself, “What are some interesting untapped opportunities that we can utilize in the film version?”

So for me, I craved Lily in our version to be older. The reason why was because especially people who have not been victims of abuse — I knew that there would be a lot of victims in the audience but there would be a lot of audience members who have never suffered these realities. And I didn't want anyone to just think that Lily's acting this way because of her age.

It is not because she is young — it is because she is contending with her childhood trauma that has yet to be resolved. And I wanted to make that very clear distinction. Especially when you think about films about women by women but for everyone . . . I do think a lot of times female protagonists have been very young and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and very plucky. And their plight is too mature. And I just thought it would be really interesting if Lily is deeply mature and yet these are wounds that still need to heal.

Blake is all of those things and then some: she is funny, she is beautiful, she is wise and thoughtful and witty. And she just she’s got this gravitas to her, like this low center of gravity, like she's lived a lot of life. And you can feel that when the camera is right here, these extreme close-ups. I love that Blake's a mom! 

Which of the main characters do you feel was the most interesting to develop? They all have pretty intense backgrounds.

Ryle was probably the trickiest one in terms of, “OK, how are we going to visualize this, how are we going to accomplish this?” This is the reason Justin really wanted to play Ryle from the beginning — to really gift him a humanity. Even on the page, I wanted him to be very lovable, I wanted us to understand why she falls in love with him, especially because we knew we were gonna have to truncate a lot of their love story in the novel. So knowing that, it's like, “OK, we need him to be so lovable, we need him to feel like you know he needs to be that wish fulfillment on the side. This is everything any straight woman could possibly dream of.” 

The audience’s reactions at my screening in New York confirmed that.

And then how do we tackle the abuse? Because again, when you're reading it, you're just depending on the audience's imagination. But when you're visualizing, it's a completely different thing. I remember at one point I was talking to Justin about this, saying, “You know, a lot of victims of abuse are gonna see this film. But a lot of abusers are gonna see this film too.” And I am not going to tell them that there's no hope for them. I'm not going to do that. Because that's not the truth. And look — hurt people hurt people. And yes: Ryle is a villain of this story, in essence. But he's not really the main villain. If there's any real villain in this story, it's childhood trauma. He's contending with his own inner child, the little boy underneath who is suffering a lot of pain that he has yet to deal with.

So the invitation to this movie is for hope that if victims feel inspired to seek help that is incredible. And I also hope that if anyone watches this movie and they realize that they are a hurt person that hurts people, that they might also seek help. I really wanted to make sure that we had some level of compassion for Ryle and felt like there was still hope for him. Because that's the messaging that I think is extremely important. There's no way forward into a better modern society. How do we evolve as a civilization unless we tell everyone there is help out there if you dare to seek it? I'm not excusing any of his behavior and I do think that if anyone is an unhealthy situation they have every right to leave and probably should leave. But in the aftermath of the person left behind, I hope that they can and would pick up the phone and utilize a lot of the resources that are out there.

What were some of the biggest challenges in tackling subject matter as difficult and as tricky as domestic abuse?

This entire film is in Lily's point of view. We never break from her point of view, and that was a decision that's from the book; we wanted to honor that. And then, for example, the frittata scene. If we decided right then and there to show Ryle actually hit her in that moment in the movie, from that point on — especially people who have never contended with this reality before — I didn't want the entire film to collapse into, “Well, I just saw him hit her. Why aren't you leaving, Lily? It's so clear, and now I hate Ryle.” 

I didn't want people to start judging Lily. It felt really important to stay in her point of view. If Lily is confused, well let's let the audience feel confused. If Lily is being gaslit, let's let the audience feel a little gaslit. And let's even let the audience be like, “No, Ryle wouldn't. There was a weird accident. I don't quite know what happened but he didn't hit her.” It's an invitation to really walk a mile in the shoes of what that can actually feel like. I think Lily has known all along, but it is that moment of catharsis — I mean, look, anyone who has ever been to therapy . . .  we've all had a version of that moment when you finally allow yourself to come face to face with the thing you have always known you just never dared to say out loud because it was too horrible. That's a survival mechanism.

Justin Baldoni stars in "It Ends With Us" (Sony Pictures Entertainment/Nicole Rivelli)

Did you ever consider including any disclaimers or trigger warnings before the movie?

That's a really good question. I actually can't speak to that. I don't know because this obviously has continued to evolve. It was supposed to be a smaller thing with Wayfarer, then Sony got involved, and it's really blossomed. So I can't imagine that that wasn't a conversation at some point.

I specifically was never yeah a part of this conversation. Though I will say, early on Wayfarer partnered with an organization called No More that was deeply involved in reading scripts and making sure that we got it right. And now on the other side they’re putting out a packet of information for anyone who needs help. They're putting together a bit of a lifeline for anyone who sees this movie if they need a safe place to go gather information.

I know you weren't able to be on set because of the strike but I was wondering if you could speak to any of the decisions that were put in place while writing to protect and hold empathy for the actors and the viewers.

Violence against women in cinema has been fetishized in ways throughout the decades that we need to be very aware of. And I do think that stories moving forward,  it's really important to be extremely thoughtful of look, “We want to tell the story but we also don't want to be part of that.” So those were major conversations. There was a lot of care put around the choreography so everyone felt safe, everything was already talked about beforehand, and everything was agreed upon. We wanted to be on the right side of this of course.

There’s one really poignant moment when Lily and her mom are building the baby crib ,and Lily asks her point-blank why she never left her dad. And her mom says, “It would have been harder to leave. And I loved him.” Lily's able to leave Ryle but not without a lot of difficulty. There are a lot of reasons that can prevent people from leaving their abusers: love, children, potential endangerment. If the film had elaborated on one reason in particular for the purposes of the plot, what would it have been?

I had a longer scene that I wrote between Lily and her mother where they talked more about about that. Lily even tells her, “I didn't understand it, I judged you, I thought you were weak. I promised myself I would never become you. And now I understand you better than I ever have and I'm sorry.”

Why didn't that scene make it in?

Well, you know we really had to be thoughtful about timing. This book is so dense. I think our first few attempts at a cut we were nearing like two-and-a-half to three hours long. You really have to be thoughtful of your act structures and that internal clock. So fullness of that scene did have to be compressed down to that little couplet. But I think that couplet is really powerful and it did what we wanted it to do. And then we had to move on. Originally we spent more time when she goes to Atlas' house, we spent more time with them. In the book, they eloped to Las Vegas and we actually wanted to show them in Las Vegas and running around, There were so many things you want to do yeah but when you really start looking at the realities of what it means to put it into a movie and allow it to be a time that people can really sit back and let it wash over them . . .  because the last thing you want anyone to do in a movie like this is to check their watch. I just want fans to know that we've really tried our best, every decision was not made lightly and this is where we landed. And it is a very sincere offering.

We see the abuse by Lily's father and the origins of her relationship with Atlas play out in flashbacks. Can you talk about approaching the abuse between Lily's parents versus in her own relationship and how you wanted to show that?

So with her parents again a lot of times it's sort of at a distance because we're in her point of view. We're literally in her actual eyeballs. It's memory, and it's memory that is still pretty clear because those were big moments in her life but they're still also a little messy. We're jolted by painful memories. We were trying to capture the visualization of what that can feel like. So the parents' stuff is always in her point of view so that's why it is kind of held at a distance. And it’s always a little bit blurry and fragmented.

When she starts to experience it for herself — again the confusion of, “What the hell just happened? There's no way, because I promised myself I would choose better and I would choose differently.”

And when she starts to realize, “Oh this is familiar” . . . they're meant to feel slightly different and of the same. It was very purposeful, especially that night when she caught her father on top of her mother when they're on the couch. That is mirrored when Ryle has her on the couch and she's like, “Wait I've seen this before.” That was very purposeful to let them feel like mirror images of each other.

Justin is obviously very attractive, especially judging by the reaction from the crowd when he showed off his abs. There was a big reaction. What do you feel is important about someone who is so seemingly romantic and attractive embodying Ryle in this story?

I will say the brilliance of Justin having the courage and willingness to play Ryle . . .  For example, very famously in “Jojo Rabbit,” no one wanted to play Hitler. Taika [Waititi] tried to cast other people, and everyone's like, “If I play Hitler, I'm never gonna work again.” And then he was like, “You know what, I guess I'll play it.” And by the way, he's brilliant and you couldn't see it any other way — that's exactly as it was meant to be.

But in that same vein, I don't know if there are a lot of actors out there who could actually pull this off, nor would they maybe have the bravery to raise their hand for it. So I tip my hat to Justin. This is a really hard role to tackle but it's deeply important. Like I was saying earlier we really had to get it right. We had to understand why Lily falls in love with him. There has to be a warmth and depth to him so that we can have compassion for the fact that when he was six years old, a horrible tragedy happened and he has yet to get over it. Again, not excusing his behavior; but acknowledging there's a lot of pain that he that now needs to be healed because now it's starting to strike out in ways that he is not proud of and is ruining his life. It’s robbing him of a lot of joy totally — the woman that he loves, his new daughter, all the things.

Look, there's a lot of wish fulfillment in this film. Everyone is beautiful, they're wearing beautiful garments, they live in beautiful places. I do think it's in the spirit of what you feel when you're reading the book. It just feels like a sweeping love story and then it starts to turn. 

As I've said there were a lot of vocal reactions to the film at the theater that I was in. Like when Ryle tries to get Lily to take him back. Or when Lily finds out she's pregnant someone literally screamed, “No!”

Yeah I love that s**t — like back in Shakespeare's time people would throw oranges. So I love it it.

Yeah, it was so raucous. What are you hoping that audiences will take away from the movie that they maybe could not have gleaned from reading the book?

It’s a very, very interesting question. It's hard because I feel like the book is so successful in what it is attempting to do. I think it actually sticks the landing so beautifully that it's difficult for me to have the audacity to believe that we're doing anything other than what I think Colleen has already done.

I guess I would just say that I hope we're moving into a time where people are getting back to the theater. Where you don't wait to see this on your TV in your pajamas by yourself on the couch. You're talking about these reactions; it's communal, it happens in live theater, at any live event really.  Movies were always meant to be enjoyed together among strangers where you're laughing and you're crying and you're screaming at the screen and you jump and your popcorn goes everywhere. It's a very specific experience, and there have been a lot of questions around, “Is this art form going to continue to be consumed in this way?”

And I'm really excited that people are going back to the theater because if the movie does anything that the book cannot, it's just by nature of the medium. Watching this movie is different than reading a book in that you can sit among other people who loved this book as much as you do. Also, strangers who have never even seen it, and you can engage with their reactions — they don't know what's coming next even though you do. And there's an energy that forms. Audiences create their own personalities and there's something really incredible about it. Consuming art with other people makes you not feel alone.

"It Ends With Us" is currently in theaters.