Blake Lively has been accused of wearing ‘blackface’ after admitting she would ‘put bronzer’ all over herself and wear a Scary Spice wig to ‘stalk guys.’
The 37-year-old actress, who is currently embroiled in a dramatic lawsuit against It Ends With Us co-star Justin Baldoni, has been slammed after a clip resurfaced showing her joking about using makeup and a wig to make herself look Black.
In the resurfaced interview posted to TikTok, Lively and Justin Long, 46, were talking to MTV while promoting 2006 film Accepted when she admitted to tricking her crush as a teenager.
After telling the interviewer she was a ‘total geek’ – which was laughed at by Long – the Gossip Girl actress launched into the story.
‘My best friend and I when we were in 10th grade had like crazy crushes, we’d drive around like stalking these guys,’ Lively said in the interview.
‘We decided one night to go to the arcade where they were and I put bronzer all over myself and a Scary Spice ‘fro so I think they’d think I was a Black girl, so I could stalk them and my friend dressed up as this goth girl and we literally sat outside their houses,’ she shared.
Her co-stars didn’t bat an eyelid, with Long responding with: ‘So that makes you sweet and charming, you’re still hot.’
But users were appalled by the story, sharing their thoughts in the comments.
‘I BEG your PARDON?’ one shocked user wrote.
‘”I AM a geek… well excuse me because this one time, I bronzed my face to resemble Scary Spice to stalk a guy….” and scene,’ commented another.
‘I…. “So they thought I was a Black girl” like did she just say “I attempted blackface”??????’ questioned another.
‘Did she say the way she is a geek is by cosplaying “as a Black girl,”‘ another user fumed.
Lively has been the center of an ongoing saga that began with rumors of rancor behind the scenes of It Ends With Us when it was released last August.
It then exploded into a legal fight just before Christmas when Blake sued Justin for sexual harassment.
At the same time, the New York Times released a story based on Blake’s legal filing that accused him of orchestrating a negative publicity campaign against her and put the smell claim front and center.
In turn, Justin sued the Times for defamation and, last week, launched a $400 million lawsuit against Blake and her husband Ryan Reynolds that accused her of using her celebrity power to hijack his film and attempt to torpedo his career.
In Baldoni’s suit, Lively is accused of failing to read the novel on which the book is based until long after filming had begun and orchestrating a negative publicity campaign of her own with the connivance of her own publicist Leslie Sloane and the New York Times.
During one incident, according to the legal filing, Lively attempted to intimidate Baldoni by pointing to her famous husband and close friend Taylor Swift then comparing herself to Game of Thrones character Khaleesi and telling him ‘I have a lot of dragons.’
The actress and her team are also accused of doctoring text conversations between Baldoni’s publicists to make them look damning and as if they’re plotting a smear campaign against her – which led to both being subjected to social media abuse when the edited texts were published.
Baldoni’s cross-complaint also revealed that he and his family had been forced to spend the premiere of It Ends With Us sitting in a basement because Lively refused to allow him to be in the same room as her.
