7 Times Blake Lively's Oversized Ego Was Put On Blast

It's fair to say that many people would like to walk a mile or two in Blake Lively's shoes. The Hollywood star often lives well thanks to her designer clothes, a cool husband, and an insanely glamorous life. Throughout her career, Lively's been put in positions that most people only dream of: She was the star of a hit show, made a swift transition from TV to cinema, and starred in a slate of well-received movies.

While it's safe to theorize that this kind of trajectory certainly has an impact on a person's ego, with Lively it seems like this theory gets proven with an uncomfortable frequency. As many people will tell you, the way you treat other people says a lot about you, and the Hollywood star has proven time and again that she can be ruthless when someone bruises her ego. It's not always that her behavior is caught on camera or in text, but, unfortunately for her, there were quite a few times where we got a taste of her personality — and it wasn't the best look for her.

If you had to make a list of the most awkward interviews ever made, Kjersti Flaa's interview with Blake Lively and Parker Posey would probably make the top 5. Dubbed by the Norwegian journalist as the interview that almost made her quit her job, it is awkward from beginning to end, and all because Flaa tried to start off by paying a compliment to Lively. As the interview starts, Flaa congratulates Lively on her bump — she was pregnant at the time — and the actor clearly didn't like it. For the rest of the interview, Lively barely acknowledges that the journalist is in the room and almost never looks in her direction, making it all painful to watch.

Even if Flaa had been rude to Lively — which wasn't the case — fans would expect an actor to be professional and talk about the movie. After all, this is usually why people press play on most interviews. In that particular case, Lively ended up making it all about herself and the fact that she took to heart a comment that she perceived as rude.

We do have to be fair: Junkets, interviews, and press conferences can be exhausting and stressful. However, journalists are usually just doing their job and trying to get a unique take from an artist about their own project. If an actor lets their ego get in the way, they are not only damaging the movie's publicity but also getting in the way of other people's work.

It is pretty clear that Blake Lively can be a disaster when it comes to interviews, but you'd think that things would be different when it's about a movie that she's more invested in. For "It Ends With Us," Lively acted as producer, meaning she was a lot more involved in several aspects of the story. However, as she started going around promoting the movie, fans realized that the actress' tone seemed completely off once you considered what the movie was about.

"It Ends With Us" features a beautiful romance, but it's also about domestic violence and abuse. Fans slammed Lively and felt that she was shying away from discussing these topics, because it might ultimately hurt the movie's performance at the box office. The most uncomfortable example of this was during an interview that Lively gave to "Jake's Takes." The journalist asked a serious question about the possibility of victims of abuse wanting to reach out to her, and Lively treated it as a joke.

Back when she was in the main cast of "Gossip Girl," Blake Lively played the uber-rich Serena van der Woodsen. In the story, she was best friends with another member of the Manhattan elite — Blair Waldorf, played by Leighton Meester. Despite sharing the screen for six seasons, Lively and Meester never became close friends, and one interview might have hinted at why they never bonded.

Meester's parents were arrested for smuggling drugs — a subject that the actor is open about, but it's a sensitive one nonetheless. For some reason, Lively thought it would be funny to take a jab at her co-star during a "Gossip Girl" panel. It was a weird panel because Lively seemed to think she was the only one being interviewed. After calling her co-stars monkeys, she joked that "some of us started in a cage." When Meester was born, her mother was in federal prison. 

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Why would Lively believe this was a nice thing to joke about? No one knows, and fans slammed the star on social media for her remarks. But if her other interviews can be used as a reference, it seems that the actor doesn't care too much about what her words may do to other people.

Before the "It Ends With Us" drama hit the fan, people were already noticing some weird decisions that happened during the movie's promotion. At first, fans and social media users thought it was highly insensitive — to say the least — that Blake Lively was using a movie about domestic violence to promote her personal brand of hair care products. It got even worse when it became clear that Justin Baldoni seemed to be the only one talking about the actual themes of the movie, while Lively dodged sensitive questions. This made fans think that she was afraid of hurting her brand.

Another element that made it seem like Lively was letting her ego get in the way of the movie promotion was the fact that she included Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman in events. Not that there's anything wrong with bringing your husband and a possible friend to events of a movie you produced, but it was weird that Lively was taking fewer pictures with her co-workers and more with the "Deadpool & Wolverine" stars.

Now that the "It Ends With Us" drama has been revealed, we know why Baldoni was separated or isolated at press events. At the same time, it seems like Lively and Reynolds — who reportedly wrote scenes from the movie himself — never considered that audiences would immediately realize there was something fishy about the movie's press events. Maybe that's another indication that Lively's ego doesn't allow any time to think about anyone else?

Also during the "It Ends With Us" press tour, a fellow actor might have hinted at how difficult it is to work with Blake Lively. In the movie, Brandon Sklenar ("The Housemaid," "1923") plays one of Lively's character's love interests. Whenever a journalist asks about actors building up a chemistry for the camera, they'll usually flatter each other and say how easy it was to connect with each other. That wasn't the case with Sklenar at all. During an interview with "Access Hollywood," Sklenar stated that he "couldn't tell you" how they ended up building that chemistry, which leads to an awkward moment in which Lively tells him, "You could say really nice things about me." To Lively's horror, he deflects and states: "I'm just a really good actor. You know? I'm a really good actor. Everything was really challenging with Blake."

Sklenar never expanded on why working with Lively was such a challenge, but judging from her behavior in other interviews, we get an idea of what the actor might have been hinting at. Ultimately, Sklenar told the journalist that they got lucky and clicked, and that helped a lot with their onscreen chemistry. Was he initially trying to make a joke? Or did he course-correct his answer when he realized it could bring drama to his doorstep? We'll probably never know.

Did Ben Affleck inadvertently reveal that there's no place in his life for Blake Lively's ego anymore? In another development of the Lively v. Baldoni lawsuit, it was revealed that Lively reached out to Affleck to get his input on the final cut of "It Ends With Us." Lively supposedly started the e-mail with "please don't hang up," and Affleck reportedly didn't reply. People speculate that he refused to make contact because he spent many years reconstructing his relationship with Jennifer Garner after their divorce, and he didn't want to run into a ghost from the past (Lively and Affleck had a flirty relationship back in 2010 that reportedly hurt his marriage).

In the email exchange, Lively asks if Affleck has time to watch her cut of the movie and says that she would love to hear his input — and Jennifer Lopez's, to whom he was married at the time. Affleck's supposed lack of reply and Lively's opening line suggest that their flirty relationship didn't end on good terms, and it looks like Affleck isn't about to massage Lively's ego by giving her attention after so many years.

After so many instances of questionable behavior on camera, you'd think that Blake Lively would have something to say about it. But that's not the case: The actor chose not to comment on any of the events that took place during interviews. Yet the situation was a little different when she realized that she was at risk of losing the support of one of the most popular and wealthiest people in the world.

Lively only admitted that she was being self-absorbed when she realized that Taylor Swift was not responding to her texts. The unsealed legal docs that were unveiled during the Justin Baldoni trial revealed that Lively sent texts to Swift with content like: "I felt like a bad friend lately because I was such a sad sack who only talked about my own s*** for months." Swift eventually replied, stating that reading Lively's text felt like "reading a mass corporate email sent to 200 employees."

Lively had previously referred to Swift as her "dragon," which was allegedly an attempt to intimidate Baldoni by suggesting that powerful people would come for him if he decided to sue Lively. Was she scared at the possibility of losing one of her beasts? Is that what it takes for an oversized ego to consider they might have gone overboard? That seems to be the case for Lively.