Why Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s Ages in It Ends With Us Differ from the Book: Explained

It Ends With Us, the sea of unsteady emotions of a book by Colleen Hoover, has seized hearts around the world. With its potent story, it became a world-spanning hit, especially after going viral on BookTok in 2021.

The novel tells the story of Lily Bloom, a young florist trying to escape her traumatic past, and Ryle Kincaid, a neurosurgeon with anger issues. Their intense romance quickly spirals into something dire, mirroring the cycle of abuse in Lily’s past.

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni in It Ends With Us (Credits: Sony Pictures Releasing)

As the film adaptation hit theaters in August 2024, fans had a lot to say about one key difference: the ages of the main characters, Lily and Ryle. While the ages in the book seemed true to life, the movie made a change. Let’s explore why the filmmakers decided to age up these characters and how this change affected the film.

What’s the age of Lily Bloom and Ryle Kincaid in It Ends With Us book?

Blake Lively in It Ends With Us (Credits: Sony Pictures Releasing)

In Colleen Hoover’s book, Lily Bloom is 23 years old, freshly out of college and just starting her adult life. She’s a florist who’s trying to leave her grievous past behind and build a new future.

On the other hand, Ryle Kincaid is 30, a neurosurgeon with big career goals but serious anger issues. They meet, fall in love, and things quickly get perplexing. The age gap of seven years between them plays a role in their relationship, but it’s not the focus of the story.

Lily is at a point in her life where she’s contemplating who she is, and Ryle is already settled in his career, but he still has a lot of emotional baggage to work through. But when it comes to the movie, things are a little different.

Instead of being in their early twenties and thirties, both Lily and Ryle are depicted as being in their mid-thirties. This change caught the heed of many fans, who pondered why the filmmakers made this decision. To answer that, we need to grasp why the ages were shifted in the first place.

Here’s why the ages of characters were altered in the It Ends With Us movie

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni in It Ends With Us (Credits: Sony Pictures Releasing)

The decision to change the ages of Lily and Ryle wasn’t just a random choice. The filmmakers had a clear-cut reason for aging them up. Director Justin Baldoni, who also plays Ryle in the film, explained that he wanted the story to be resonant to a broader audience.

Originally, It Ends With Us was a young adult novel, but by the time the movie was made, the filmmakers wanted the story to appeal to more than just the YA crowd.

Aging up the characters allowed the movie to feel more like an adult drama rather than a young adult story. Baldoni shared that he wanted women of all ages to connect with the film. In his own words, the 40-year-old said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly:

I just knew from the beginning the type of movie I wanted to make was not about a 23-year-old girl . I wanted women of all ages to be able to see themselves, and aging up the characters, I think, really helps it become a universal story, and it takes it out of the YA genre.

When you think about it, a 23-year-old might not have the life experience to deal with such heavy topics as abuse, trauma, and toxic relationships. So, by making Lily and Ryle a little older, the filmmakers were able to make the story feel more grounded in real-life struggles.

Plus, as Baldoni pointed out, having people talk about the film (even if it’s criticism) means it’s getting attention. And honestly, who doesn’t love a bit of drama? After all, the more people talk about a movie, the more likely they are to watch it.

Colleen Hoover’s explanation on why the characters in It Ends With Us were aged up in the film

Colleen Hoover (Credits: Instagram/@colleenhoover)

Colleen Hoover, the author of the original book, also weighed in on the decision to change the characters’ ages for the movie.

In a 2023 interview at the Book Bonanza festival (as reported by Capital FM), Hoover admitted that when she first wrote It Ends With Us, she didn’t fully understand how impractical it was for Ryle, a neurosurgeon, to be in his twenties. She explained:

Back when I wrote It Ends With Us, the new adult [genre] was very popular. You were writing college-age characters. That’s what I was contracted to do. I made Lily very young. I didn’t know that neurosurgeons went to school for 50 years. There’s not a 20-something neurosurgeon.

When it came time to adapt the book into a movie, Hoover realized that she needed to “correct” the ages of the characters. She explained that there’s no way someone in their twenties could be a neurosurgeon because it takes years of education and training to reach that point. The author added:

I’m like, we need to age them [up], because I messed up. So that’s my fault.

In an interview with E! News, Hoover also pointed out that having older characters made sense for the heavy topics the story covers. She felt that a 23-year-old dealing with the complex issues of abuse and trauma just didn’t feel right. Aging the characters allowed the film to explore these tough topics in a more mature way. The 45-year-old even mentioned:

So I think aging them up was such a great move, and it worked so well on film.

In the end, Hoover believes that the change in age was a positive one. It allowed the characters to better exhibit the adversities they face in the story, making the film more convincing to a broader audience. Having Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni play the roles of Lily and Ryle definitely imparted a measure of profundity upon the narrative.

It Ends With Us is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video!