- - Blake Lively Addresses Backlash over Her and Ryan Reynolds' Plantation Wedding Venue During Justin Baldoni Deposition

Benjamin VanHooseJanuary 22, 2026 at 3:32 AM

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Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds on April 27, 2025 -

Blake Lively was asked in her deposition about "negative press" she received about her and Ryan Reynolds' wedding venue

The actors married on Sept. 9, 2012, at Boone Hall, a former slave plantation in South Carolina

Lively told Justin Baldoni's lawyer that she takes "full accountability for that decision, as does my husband"

Blake Lively addressed previous backlash to her and Ryan Reynolds' wedding venue when asked about it by Justin Baldoni's lawyer in a deposition.

The actress, 38, was deposed in New York City on July 30, 2025, where she was grilled about her allegations that her It Ends With Us costar-director Baldoni, 41, launched a retaliatory smear campaign against her after reporting sexual harassment, claims he denies.

At one point, Bryan Freedman, an attorney for Baldoni and the Wayfarer Studios defendants, asked Lively if negative publicity bothers her.

"I'm used to it after this many years in the industry, but it's not something I've had to deal with often," replied Lively, according to the transcript viewed by PEOPLE.

Freedman then said, "It's true that you dealt with negative press with respect to being married on a plantation during, kind of, the height of Black Lives Matter; is that right?"

Responded Lively, "...I feel like that negative press was deserved. It's a mistake we have publicly acknowledged and done a lot of work to reconcile for ourselves and others."

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Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds; Justin Baldoni

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Lively married Reynolds on Sept. 9, 2012, at Boone Hall, a former slave plantation in South Carolina. In August 2020, the couple, who now share four kids, apologized for the wedding venue choice after online backlash and announced a $200,000 donation to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

"We’re ashamed that in the past we’ve allowed ourselves to be uninformed about how deeply rooted systemic racism is," they said at the time, in part, adding, "We want to use our privilege and platform to be an ally."

Lively told Baldoni's lawyer in her deposition that she is unsure if the public backlash about her wedding venue was "dredged up" and resurfaced during Baldoni's alleged smear campaign, attacking her reputation around the 2024 release of It Ends With Us.

She said, per the transcript, "I take full accountability for that decision, as does my husband, but I don't know what weaponization of the past has been a part of the campaign."

Tibrina Hobson/Getty

Blake Lively on March 7, 2025

Baldoni's lawyers have maintained that any online negativity surrounding Lively happened without their intervention, as they wrote in his now-dismissed countersuit from January 2025: "Her actions naturally triggered organic public criticism and unleashed a cycle of negative coverage, including, as is common in the digital age, the resurfacing of old, unflattering content."

Reynolds, 49, who was not deposed in the legal battle, spoke out in 2020 about his regret over their wedding venue, saying, "It’s something we’ll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for."

The Deadpool actor added to Fast Company at the time, "It’s impossible to reconcile. What we saw at the time was a wedding venue on Pinterest. What we saw after was a place built upon devastating tragedy. Years ago we got married again at home — but shame works in weird ways. A giant f---ing mistake like that can either cause you to shut down or it can reframe things and move you into action. It doesn’t mean you won’t f--- up again. But re-patterning and challenging lifelong social conditioning is a job that doesn’t end."

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”