Jana Kramer is sharing her thoughts on the way Blake Lively promoted her new movie It Ends With Us, a film that involves domestic violence as a storyline.
Blake made it a point in interviews to say that her character Lilly Bloom’s experience with domestic violence did not define her.
“She defines herself, and I think that that’s deeply empowering to remind people that no-one else can define you. No experience can define you. You define you,” she told BBC News.
Jana, who has experienced DV, disagrees.
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“I would love the messaging to go to DV with media, instead of talking about riffs and everything else. The movie is about domestic violence,” Jana said on her Whine Down podcast. “I haven’t seen the movie. I have a tough time watching movies that deal with domestic violence given my history with it.”
Jana said she originally assumed It Ends With Us was a rom-com based on the promo materials, but then she “started hearing stuff about the interviews, and for me, I was just, like, it made me sad because I just want the messaging to be about domestic violence and how to help people and how to get help.”
She continued by saying “it’s hard for people to talk about domestic violence when they haven’t, themselves, been, in real life, had the hands of domestic violence on them.”
“So, for people to say it doesn’t define you, it does define you. … It has made me who I am. And though people can say, ‘It doesn’t define you,’ it is one of the biggest pieces of me, is domestic violence, and has been the biggest thread in my life,” she added.
Jana recently had a big life update!