These Viral ‘Mean Girl’ Videos Of Blake Lively Don’t Prove The Point You Think They Do

A viral TikTok, liked by more than 560k people, has stitched together three minutes of uncontextualised video snippets of Lively from over the years. The video is captioned ‘sorry but Blake Lively has always given me mean girl vibes…’ and is set to sinister music. The clips show Lively making sarcastic and dry-humoured jokes with interviewers, cast members and often poking fun at herself.

Another viral TikTok that appears to be rallying people against Lively even suggests that she was the one controlling the sex scenes with Baldoni, despite claiming to feel uncomfortable in her lawsuit, by featuring a clip where she talks about the intimacy coordination on set. ‘That shouldn’t be happening by the way,’ she replied when asked about her role in choreographing those scenes. ‘You should not be the intimacy coordinator; you should definitely hire an intimacy coordinator... which we did have.’

How has that transpired into somehow meaning Lively is at fault? It's unclear - in context, it appears as though Lively is suggesting that when you have an intimacy coordinator usually, a cast member wouldn't have to step in to choreograph sex scenes - which can be understandably be uncomfortable to film.

Missed the back story? Let us catch you up. It went sort of like this: Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively co-starred in the film adaptation of Coleen Hoover’s best-selling novel, It Ends With Us, but by the time the film came out in August 2024 they wouldn’t do any press together. Following the scent of a cast feud, the internet quickly decided that Lively must be the one in the wrong. She failed to address the film’s darker themes of domestic violence during interviews, launched a new haircare line and an alcohol brand in tandem with the film and she reportedly undermined the director, Baldoni himself, on set.

While all of this was playing out on social media, a series of anecdotes and interview clips from Lively’s past resurfaced to corroborate her character assassination. One of which was from the Café Society press junket in 2016 when the journalist Kjersti Flaa, who was not pregnant, said to Lively, who was, ‘congrats on your little bump’. Lively then appears to mock her by replying, ‘congrats on your little bump’.

In December, Lively filed a lawsuit against Baldoni claiming sexual harassment and an alleged retaliatory public smear campaign to ‘destroy’ her reputation. Details of the lawsuit were published by The New York Times and allege nefarious tactics by Baldoni’s experienced PR team. In a series of alleged text messages between Baldoni, his publicist Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan, a crisis management expert, Baldoni wrote that he wants to ‘feel like [Lively] can be buried’. He also allegedly shared a twitter thread about ‘Hailey Bieber’s history of bullying’ and said ‘this is what we would need’ in a text to his publicist. The PR team is also said to have worked with Flaa, the Cafe Society journalist who said her interview with Lively nearly derailed her career, in the past.

After all of this came out, Baldoni was dropped by his talent agency and had his award from a women’s rights charity rescinded. For a brief moment, people on social media embarked on a moment of reflection. Did everyone accidentally jump on a cross-platform, pre-meditated hate train? Is it possible that there is more to the story and that Lively is owed an apology? Shouldn't we automatically be believing women who claim they have been harassed in the workplace, knowing all too well how common and mishandled these cases can be?

The hate train quickly resumed. Even if sinister and calculated tactics were at play, Lively is still having her name dragged through the mud on a daily basis. It’s clear that the situation is far more complicated than anyone realised, the whole saga highlights how important it is to question what you are being fed on social media. A place where division, hate and misogyny are rifer than ever. Whatever you think of Lively, try to bear that in mind.

Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, working across pop culture, TV and news. She has also written for the i, i-D and the New Statesman Media Group and covers all things TV for Grazia (treating high and lowbrow shows with equal respect).