Blake Lively (left) and husband Ryan Reynolds (right) attend the Deadpool & Wolverine premiere in New York City. Lively has been under scrutiny for previous behaviour. Photo / Getty Images
Blake Lively (left) and husband Ryan Reynolds (right) attend the Deadpool & Wolverine premiere in New York City. Lively has been under scrutiny for previous behaviour. Photo / Getty Images
The star is facing backlash amid a rumoured feud with her It Ends With Us co-star.
Blake Lively is once again at the centre of public backlash after online sleuths uncovered several interviews in which she repeatedly used the slur “tranny” during the earlier years of her career.
The Gossip Girl alum, 36, has faced intense scrutiny in recent weeks due to criticisms over her “insensitive” and “tone-deaf” promotion of her latest film, It Ends With Us; an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s popular 2016 romance novel that centres on a woman’s experience of surviving domestic abuse.
Many commentators have claimed that Lively has failed to adequately acknowledge the sensitive nature of the storyline, instead promoting the film as a summer blockbuster. Others have taken issue with Lively seemingly using the film to help generate buzz around her newly launched haircare brand, Blake Brown.
Now that Blake Lively is getting canceled here is my summary of her complete downfall including before everything started coming out with Justin Baldoni and It Ends with Us
It’s long been known that she is difficult to work with, was married on a plantation, gave a positive… pic.twitter.com/owgwozDzlw
Headlines have also focused on Lively’s rumoured feud with co-star and director Justin Baldoni, with allegations of on-set tension arising after the pair failed to pose together at the film’s New York premiere on August 6.
Amid the furore, internet detectives have been busy resurfacing old interviews in which they claim Lively behaved “rudely” towards reporters or in several instances, even used a transphobic slur.
In an extract of one unearthed interview with Elle Magazine in 2012, Lively admitted she wanted to have daughters - or “trannies” - so she could hand down her shoe and handbag collections.
In the chat with Elle, Lively is quoted as saying: “I hope to have a few girls one day. If not girls, they’d better be trannies. Because I have some amazing shoes and bags and stories that need to be appreciated.”
The viral quote has prompted others to uncover other occasions where Lively used the slur in the noughties or early 2010s, including a 2009 interview with Allure in which she said she often feels “like a tranny” due to her stature.
“I feel like a tranny a lot of the time. I don’t know, I’m... large? They put me in six-inch heels and I tower over every man. I’ve got this long hair and lots of clothes and makeup on... I just feel really big a lot of the time, and I’m surrounded by a lot of tiny people. I feel like a man sometimes,” Lively is quoted as saying.
She also used the slur during an on-screen interview with former Gossip Girl co-star Leighton Meester, telling the interviewer at the time: “If you read the gossip magazines, everybody is dating everyone, everybody hates everyone, everybody has had like tons of plastic surgery and they’re actually men and trannies. It’s just like: you don’t listen to the rumours.”
A recent Reddit thread also accused Lively of using a “transphobic slur” in a since-deleted video clip, leading one commenter to brand her as “awful”.
At the time of writing, neither Elle nor Allure have appeared to acknowledge the viral “tranny” excerpts.
“you’re not margot promoting barbie”
“you and ryan better start writing up an apology since yall wanna do everything together”
While prominent LGBTQIA+ organisations have yet to comment on the resurfaced extracts, in 2012 one author penned an op-ed for The Trans Advocate which slammed Lively for her use of “tranny” in both the Elle and Allure interviews.
“If you consider yourself a trans ally, it is not cool, hip or edgy to use that word in referring to my community,” they wrote.
“When a marginalised group tells you that a word is offensive to them, don’t fracking use it, okay?”
However, many have since rushed to defend Lively, claiming the word was widely used in the 2000s as it was yet to have damaging and hurtful connotations. In one post to X, a user noted the slur was “thrown around a lot back in the day”, while another pointed out that it was “a different time”.
In another resurfaced interview from 2016 - branded by reporter Kjersti Flaa as “The Blake Lively interview that made me want to quit my job” - a then-pregnant Lively appeared to body-shame Flaa after she congratulated her on her “little bump”, hitting back: “Congrats on your little bump.”
It comes as an insider alleged to the Daily Mail that while the mum-of-four wasn’t “mean” on the set of It Ends With Us, she was still “effortlessly rude”.
It Ends With Us is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
