Blake Lively was honored at the Time 100 Gala on Thursday, where she alluded to her ongoing legal battle with Justin Baldoni and paid tribute to her mother.
“I have so much to say about the last two years of my life, but tonight is not the forum,” the It Ends With Us star and producer, who was featured among the magazine’s “Most Influential People of 2025,” began her remarks at the event in New York City’s Lincoln Center.
“What I will speak to, separately, is the feeling of being a woman who has a voice today,” Lively continued.
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She then introduced her mother, Willie Elain McAlpin, and said with her “urging and unwavering bravery” that her mother had encouraged her to share that McAlpin is a survivor of “the worst crime someone can commit against a woman.”
“My mum never got justice from her work acquaintance who attempted to take her life when she was the mother of three young kids years before I was born,” Lively said.
It was another survivor’s courage to share her account on the radio, Lively explained, who helped her mother.
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TIME lists the world’s most influential celebrities in 2025
“The woman painfully and graphically shared how she escaped and because of hearing that woman speak to her experience instead of shutting down in fear and unfair shame, my mum is alive today,” Lively said. “She was saved by a woman whose name she’ll never know.”
“I am alive and standing here with you all today, being honored, because of a woman whose name I’ll never know. I am here and my mum is here because that woman not only survived, but she told others how.”
“We don’t let our daughters know, but one day we break their hearts by letting them in on the secret that we kept from them as they pranced around in princess dresses – that they 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 said. “But why does that torch have to be our burden to carry in private?”
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Lively and Baldoni, her It Ends With Us costar and director, have been in a public legal dispute since December. Lively has sued Baldoni and his production company for sexual harassment and retaliation, while Baldoni is suing Lively and her husband, actor Ryan Reynolds, for defamation. They have denied the respective allegations.
Lively praised Reynolds on Thursday, who was also at the gala, for being “kind and good when no one is watching.”
She added, “to all the communities across the gender, age, political, geographical and racial spectrum who fight every day just to be safe, I see you.”
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