Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds made a rare public appearance on Thursday night amid their ongoing legal battle with It Ends With Us director and co-star Justin Baldoni. The couple stepped out in New York for the annual Time100 Gala, during which Lively was honored as one of the magazine’s “Most Influential People of 2025.” After a month or so of privacy, she’s been in public more promoting Another Simple Favor and, now, showing face with her husband at a gala attended by the likes of Demi Moore, Gayle King, and Serena Williams. And while Lively rarely speaks publicly about the sexual-harassment complaint she filed against Baldoni, the 37-year-old seemed to briefly allude to the dueling lawsuits during her speech at the gala.
“I have so much to say about the last two years of my life, but tonight is not the forum,” she began, per a video from the event. “What I will speak to, separately, is the feeling of being a woman who has a voice today.”
Lively told the crowd how “deeply significant” it felt to be an honoree “in a time where the most valuable currency seems to be anger.” She thanked Reynolds and her mother, Elaine McAlpin, both of whom were in attendance, before sharing a story of her mother being assaulted before she was born.
While she didn’t share the details of what happened, she said McAlpin had been able to survive the trauma because she heard a woman tell a similar story of survival on a radio show one day. “The woman painfully and graphically shared how she escaped,” Lively said. “And because of hearing that woman speak about her experience instead of shutting down in fear and unfair shame, my mom is alive today.” She added, “Never underestimate a woman’s ability to endure pain.”
Elsewhere in her speech, Lively quoted her fellow Time100 honoree Gisèle Pelicot, the Frenchwoman whose husband was convicted of repeatedly drugging and raping her throughout nine years of their marriage. Lively quoted Pelicot’s statement about her choice to testify against her husband during his trial: “It’s not for us to have shame … it’s for them.” She also spoke about coming to the realization that young women “are not and will likely never be safe at work, at home, in a parking lot in a medical office, online — in any space they inhabit physically, emotionally, professionally.”
Lively also thanked “every man” (including her “sweet husband”) who is “kind and good when no one is watching.”
