Justin Baldoni’s It Ends With Us got rave reviews from his former Jane the Virgin costars.
“Our genius friend @justinbaldoni made a phenomenal film. I cried an embarrassing amount and tried to hide it but probably failed,” Yael Grobglas, who played Baldoni’s TV wife on Jane the Virgin, wrote via Instagram on Friday, August 23. “I am so proud of you and I love you friend !!!!”
She continued, “Oh this is [Brett Dier] and I at the theater after the film finished. Not just like, ‘Here is an unrelated pic of me and Brett at some restaurant or something.’”
Grobglas, 40, and Dier, who played Michael Cordero on Jane the Virgin, snapped a post-sobbing selfie from their seats at the cinema.
The praise touched Baldoni, 40, who replied via Instagram comment, writing, “This makes my heart burst. I love you both so much ❤️❤️❤️.”
Baldoni, Grobglas, and Dier, 34, costarred on The CW’s Jane the Virgin, which aired between 2014 and 2019. The show, starring Gina Rodriguez as the titular character, followed an aspiring writer after she was accidentally artificially inseminated before ever having sex. Since the show wrapped, the cast remained close.
“Justin is super busy, but Justin is also one of my closest friends and we talk all the time. I could get him to come on the show,” Rodriguez, 40, exclusively told Us Weekly earlier this month, noting she would “love” if Baldoni made a cameo on her new game show, Lucky 13. “I would love Justin to come. Justin would definitely come.”
Recently, Baldoni has been busy filming and promoting It Ends With Us, a film adapted from Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel of the same name. Baldoni, who directed the movie, starred as Ryle Kincaid opposite Blake Lively’s Lily Bloom. The movie chronicles Ryle and Lily’s abusive relationship, as inspired by Hoover’s family history, at a time when Lily’s ex Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar) reappears in her life.
The film’s heavy subject matter especially weighed on Baldoni during the shoot.
“There were a lot of times where I would have to go privately into a room and just cry or shake it out and try to get him out of me and that energy out of me,” he told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this month. “Because it’s too real. There are too many people that are the real-life Lily Blooms of the world that have to deal with that every single day, and I wanted it to be as real as possible and yet it was very hard to shoot those scenes.”
It Ends With Us also made headlines for reportedly being the source of a feud between Baldoni and Lively, 36, who have not publicly addressed the situation.
“There were two camps on the film — team Blake and team Justin,” an insider told Us earlier in August. “This creative struggle set the tone for the negative experience behind the scenes and grew into them not speaking anymore.”
According to the source, Baldoni was “hurt and sidelined” that Lively allegedly changed moments in the script and her wardrobe without consultation. A second source, however, told Us that Lively’s changes were made to “create the best film possible and honor the book.”
It Ends With Us is currently in theaters.
If you or someone you know are experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for confidential support.
