Before we were all 'holding space' for the bizarre but brilliant Wicked press tour, we couldn’t get enough of the tensions surrounding the mega-awkward It Ends With Us promo trail – which supposedly saw a number of the cast members falling out with leading man Justin Baldoni.
And while they’ve all stayed tight-lipped on exactly what went down between Justin and Blake Lively, the 40-year-old Jane the Virgin actor has now got candid when speaking about issues he had during filming.
In the movie – based on the Colleen Hoover novel of the same name – Justin plays Ryle Kincaid, a controlling husband who turns violent when he finds the number of Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar) in Lily Bloom’s (Blake Lively) phone.
But speaking on the How to Fail With Elizabeth Day podcast, Justin has now opened up on how filming that scene in particular gave him a ‘near breakdown’.
Justin said, ‘He’s very jealous, and he’s heartbroken, and he’s angry, and he doesn’t harm her, but you can see in his eyes how dangerous he is. After that scene, I had a near breakdown.
‘I had to leave and just cry and shake because there was so much pain,’ he continued.
Justin went on to say that during, and even following filming, he was so in character as Ryle that he would even dream that he was his character's deceased brother Emerson, who he believes should have lived instead of Ryle.
‘That was very hard and that took a few months,’ he admitted. ‘I had dreams as him for a while, and it lived in my body, but I think for the most part, he’s out.’
Justin also served as director on It Ends With Us and admitted to novelist Elizabeth that he felt ‘lonely’ during the process.
He said, ‘Directing is a very lonely job. You are kind of at the top of this totem pole.
‘In your moments of quiet, everybody has a thousand questions for you and also nobody wants to disturb you and you don’t really have many people to talk to and you can’t necessarily share your anxiety or your nervousness about something because you’re also the leader.’