Justin Baldoni Takes Us Through His Camera Roll & Talks Casting Blake Lively and 'It Ends With Us'

Variety

Watch Justin Baldoni Takes Us Through His Camera Roll & Talks Casting Blake Lively and 'It Ends With Us' - Variety on Dailymotion

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00:00Hey, I'm Justin Baldoni, and Variety asked me to show you some pictures from my camera roll.

00:12Okay, photo number one.

00:16Okay, this is a FaceTime screen grab, and it was eight in the morning,

00:24and we had just wrapped a 16-hour day. It was the final day of shooting, it ends with us.

00:29And this is me and my wife. She couldn't be there on that final day, but it was like,

00:35this had been such a hard shoot, as it was my first time directing and acting,

00:40and my company was producing, and I just, I had put so much into it,

00:44and she knew just how much I cared about this film.

00:48And so I FaceTimed her when we wrapped, and I was just like, crying,

00:52and I'm like, baby, we did it, and she was crying.

00:55That's the thing. Find somebody that cries whenever you cry.

00:58What made me interested in It Ends With Us?

01:00So about five years ago, I was just starting Wayfair Studios,

01:04and I was looking for films that could speak to the human experience,

01:09and I was sent It Ends With Us.

01:12I got hooked in the first chapter, and I was sobbing by the end,

01:16and I just knew that it was a movie that I had to make, and that Wayfair had to make.

01:21It took four years, five to get us here, and it's finally coming out.

01:27Casting Blake Lively was super intimidating, first of all.

01:31I remember our first meeting, I was so nervous.

01:33She's like a creative force, and also so funny and charming and disarming when you meet her.

01:39I just knew right away that she was Lily, and I'm just so grateful that she agreed to do this.

01:45I think it was really sweet for me, as the filmmaker,

01:48to see that the fans felt that we honored their vision,

01:52and kind of what they had imagined as an example, like Lily Bloom's to be and to look like.

01:57We spent a lot of time trying to get that right,

01:59because you only have a few lines of description in the book.

02:03It's always scary when you're adapting a book, because you don't know.

02:06You don't know what the fans have created in their mind,

02:09and you have millions of readers, and every person sees something a little bit different.

02:13So the fact that it was so overwhelmingly positive just really warmed my heart.

02:18Oh, this was a couple days ago.

02:20I'm trying to raise a fearless girl.

02:25And it's very hard, because you have older generations in the family

02:31that get very scared when my daughter does crazy things.

02:36So there's a lot of like, be careful, and don't do that.

02:38And I'm trying to tell everybody, relax. It's okay.

02:42To do dangerous things carefully, I think, is a good, beautiful thing.

02:46And so my daughter loves to climb.

02:48So this is a photo of all of her older aunts and uncles,

02:53we're talking about people in their 70s and 80s,

02:55resisting the urge to say, get down from there.

02:58And I was cheering her on as she was scaling this, what is this?

03:04Yeah, it was like this lamppost.

03:06And she was just scaling it fearlessly.

03:09And I was looking at my family, just telling them all she was safe.

03:13Like, it's okay, don't say anything.

03:15And she got down, and I gave her the biggest hug,

03:17and she was so proud of herself for doing it.

03:19And that's how we're trying to raise her.

03:21Parenting is like the greatest gift.

03:25Speaking of parenting, this is me and my son.

03:28He came to visit me on set.

03:31My beautiful boy, who still loves to kiss his daddy.

03:36This boy teaches me so much about life.

03:40He wakes up with joy.

03:43I tell him every day how proud I am to be his daddy.

03:47Okay, all right.

03:48This photo, this was like day, I don't know, like 36 of the shoot.

03:54And this was my 40th birthday.

03:56I had a few friends fly out.

03:59My best friend's Travis, my baby sister, my friend Mitra.

04:02This is my producing partner and other bestie, Jamie Heath.

04:05And I actually was so sick that night.

04:09I ended up with like a 103 fever.

04:11They were there like, I don't know, giving me all their energy.

04:15And it was just a really sweet way to spend my birthday,

04:18getting to do what I love and with the people that I love.

04:23All right, this was a couple days ago.

04:26The kids were out with their non and papa.

04:29We live outside of L.A.

04:31And I was reading, and she was reading.

04:34She stopped me because she was reading this book to me.

04:38And then I just took this picture.

04:39She was wearing this feral hat, which I love so much

04:42because this is very much my wife, if you knew her.

04:45And it was just this beautiful kind of picturesque moment

04:47with the Topatoma Mountains behind her.

04:49And sometimes I take pictures to remind me of what actually matters.

04:53This is what matters.

04:56Oh, this is so sweet.

04:58So Wayfair Studios produced Garfield.

05:02And getting to take my kids to the Garfield premiere,

05:04they got to hug Garfield, which was very exciting for them.

05:08It was such a sweet movie, and it did so well,

05:11and we're so thrilled with it.

05:12But I just want to make movies for my kids.

05:14So I love this picture.

05:16I love this picture so much.

05:19So my daughter just turned 9,

05:23and she wanted to have a Harry Potter-themed birthday party.

05:26And so this is my sexy witch wife.

05:31We had a blast, but I just love this picture.

05:33And I joke because she's a witch in real life.

05:35She's doing all the magic stuff and the healing stuff,

05:38and I'm like, oh, well, this is who I married to.

05:43All right, speaking of Harry Potter, my sister showed up as Moaning Myrtle.

05:47She made Maya a homemade, gluten-free, sugar-free, dairy-free cake

05:54in the shape of the castle, in the shape of the school.

05:58Okay, here's a good one.

06:01This is a photo of my wife took this picture.

06:06My new assistant, this was his job interview.

06:08He's 6'6", and he is a former D1 basketball star.

06:14And I just happened to have a hoop in my backyard,

06:19and I told him that if he beat me, he could have the job.

06:23And he was very smart to let me beat him

06:27because I hired him immediately.

06:31All right, this is a beautiful picture.

06:33So for my 40th birthday, I was shooting, and then we were editing,

06:36and I didn't get a chance to be with my closest group of men.

06:40And so all my best friends and I and my father went on a men's retreat together

06:47designed just for us.

06:49So this is a picture of Jamie dancing in the middle.

06:54My dad, one of my other dear friends, Adam, Garrett, Lucas,

06:59and, you know, there was 11 of us in this house.

07:03This is just such a sweet moment of all of us men just being free,

07:08which is one of my wishes and prayers for not just myself but for all men

07:15that they can experience, like, freedom in their bodies,

07:18freedom to express, freedom to feel, freedom to yell,

07:22freedom to be angry when they're angry and then be sad when they're sad.

07:25And getting to do that with my dad was really special.

07:29It was the best birthday of my life.

07:31So this was just, like, two days ago.

07:34This is me and my wife.

07:36She was just taken off to go to England for a women's retreat.

07:41And I just snapped this picture, and she started crying

07:45and buried herself into my new beard.

07:47And it's just so sweet.

07:49This is just so much of our relationship.

07:51Her hand on my heart, and I can't get enough of her.

07:55When we started this movie, we had never been apart for more than a week.

08:01And over the course of the film, we did four months apart

08:06with seeing each other, like, in the middle.

08:09So we'd see each other for, like, a week.

08:11And it's really hard, which is why I say that this movie

08:15couldn't have happened without my wife

08:18because she didn't just, like, hold me up.

08:22Like, she held up the family.

08:24She took care of the kids.

08:26And I don't think mothers get enough credit for the work that they do at home

08:31while we, our husbands or wives, go out and chase our dreams or make money.

08:38So, yeah, she's incredible.

08:41And then I think this is the last picture.

08:43So this was last night.

08:45I'm trying to teach my kids mindfulness because I'm trying to learn mindfulness.

08:50And last night, we had the most beautiful sunset where we live.

08:55And we went out, and we just sat, and we said some prayers together.

09:00And we just sat, and we took deep breaths for five minutes,

09:03which I'm sure for them felt like two hours.

09:06And they did amazing, and they just sat there.

09:08And then I took this picture when they didn't know everything was perfect

09:12except their mama wasn't there, so then we FaceTimed mama.

09:15And because so much of this industry and this work takes me away from them

09:21when I am home and the time that we're together,

09:24so long as we're present, like, it doesn't even matter what we're doing.

09:27So, yeah, I just think it's just being present with them.

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