If you’re one who gives weight to social media speculation, then you’re perhaps of the belief getting Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively to work together again may not have been such a simple favour.
Rumours of a rift between the A Simple Favor and Another Simple Favor co-stars have been swirling seemingly since the beginning of time – and while neither actress has commented on their alleged ‘feud’ publicly, someone else with authority on the matter has.
As Lively’s court battle with It Ends With Us co-star Justin Baldoni – which in part grapples with algorithms allegedly feeding false narratives – escalates, director Paul Feig has made it clear he’s not going to entertain the storyline that dominated A Simple Favor‘s release in 2018, and beyond.
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Feig – who directed both actresses in both films – responded to allegations made by YouTuber Melanie King in early March on X (formerly Twitter), denying her claim Lively was “terrified to walk the carpet” at Another Simple Favor‘s SXSW premiere as Kendrick “is pissed and never wants to work with her again.”
“Um … you’re wrong,” Feig wrote on X one day after the event, which marked Lively’s return to the spotlight after filing a lawsuit against Baldoni in January.
Murmurings of a feud between Lively and Kendrick were further amplified due to the fact they didn’t pose for photos as a duo – though they did pose together with Feig and the wider cast – on the red carpet, and because Kendrick gave a cryptic response to a simple question levelled at her by a reporter at the premiere.
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When asked what it was like to reunite with Lively for the project, Kendrick responded to Entertainment Tonight: “Oh, you know…”
Lively, meanwhile, told the outlet at SXSW that being back with Kendrick was “the best”.
Months earlier, however, Kendrick did tell People “it was lovely” to reunite with Lively years on from the initial film.
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”I think that those characters have such weird chemistry that it’s so fun to just get the gang back together, and it does feel a little bit like riding a bike,” Kendrick told the publication in October 2024.
Lively and Kendrick’s relationship has been under the microscope since 2018, when A Simple Favor came out.
In 2021, a viral video reignited the flames, with feud rumours closing in on the pair three years after the first film’s release, and more than four years after they had filmed it together.
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Are Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively feuding?
In a video posted to TikTok in 2021, Celebrity Memoir Bookclub alleged that by the time the thriller film A Simple Favor wrapped shooting, Lively, now 37, and Kendrick, 39, “were not speaking”.
The video claimed “they were basically enemies and their press tours had to be booked separately”.
Speculating what exactly the drama is between the pair – or if they are just “not nice people” – the video highlights that Lively had previously allegedly feuded with Gossip Girl co-star, Leighton Meester, 38, while Kendrick is known for allegedly being “disrespectful and rude” to people ranging from “waiters, bartenders and fans”.
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TikTok users flooded the comments with criticism and questions, accusing Celebrity Memoir Bookclub of making the feud up, but the TikToker stuck to her guns.
In response to the controversy, Celebrity Memoir Bookclub released another video, saying they are not lying and the information was given to them by somebody “who worked at the studio”.
Given none of this is verified, and that neither Lively nor Kendrick have ever publicly addressed it, it’s important we take it with a grain of salt.
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In the video, Celebrity Memoir Bookclub showed a screenshot of a message they received from a person who claimed to work at Lionsgate, the studio behind A Simple Favor, who confirmed “the rumours are true”.
“They HATED each other. The studio even had to have a talk with them about making it look like they liked each other on press tours because it was starting to get obvious,” the supposed Lionsgate messenger claimed.
“Anna in particular was really competitive with Blake and was constantly asking to make sure she got more promotion than Blake and even made us PHOTOSHOP HER CLEAVAGE in the Simple Favor poster to be as big (or bigger) than Blake’s.”
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Who is Anna Kendrick?
Kendrick’s rise to fame came early for the talented actress/singer, whose career began as a child theatre star.
Her first role was at age 12, where she played Dinah Lord in Broadway musical High Society in 1998, which earned her a Theatre World Award and nominations at the Drama Desk Awards and Tony Awards.
The star went on to sing and act in many more stage productions, television shows and films, including her roles as Jessica Stanley in the Twilight film saga and Becca Mitchell in the Pitch Perfect movie-musical series, which made her a household name.
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A TikToker called Tahira posted a video in 2021 discussing her alleged experiences with Kendrick as a New York-based stylist – and they were all negative.
According to Tahira, the first strike for Kendrick was when she came into the store the stylist was working for to prepare for a book signing in 2016, and told Tahira she would only wear their clothes for US$10,000 (approx. $15,673).
“She won’t speak to me, that’s strike one. She won’t say anything,” Tahira claimed.
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The stylist claimed Kendrick gave a ‘look’ to her PR staffer, who allegedly then took Tahira outside and said, “If you guys want her to wear a look, $10,000.”
This is not best practice, as normally a stylist would give a celebrity an outfit to wear free of charge, in exchange for the celebrity promoting the look on their social media platforms and at the event.
Tahira then said after this exchange, Kendrick asked her to throw out all the fan mail she had received at the event, including gifts, paintings, drawings and letters painstakingly crafted by die-hard fans who had waited hours to give it to Kendrick.
This was “strike two”.
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When Tahira went to give Kendrick the “three bags” of fan mail, Kendrick allegedly said, “I don’t look at that stuff,” and Kendrick’s publicist apparently told Tahira to “trash everything”. This exchange has not been verified.
In a second video released by Tahira on her TikTok page, she said that two years after this first encounter, which would have been around the time of A Simple Favor, she encountered Kendrick at her new workplace, Barney’s, and asked her co-worker to style her as she was “avoiding [Kendrick] like the plague”.
“After [my colleague] helps her, she comes over to me and goes, ‘Tahira, do you have any idea who that is?’ and I said, ‘Oh yeah, she’s an actress.’ And she goes, ‘I had no idea who she is but she just got so nasty with me’,” Tahira claimed.
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Celebrity Memoir Bookclub seemed to agree with Tahira’s statements, posting another TikTok video claiming one of Kendrick’s “favourite ways to be relatable is to say mean things about other people” and drawing on comments made in her memoir Scrappy Little Nobody about Olivia Palermo and Alexa Chung.
Kendrick’s camp did not comment on any of these claims, which still exist unverified on TikTok.
Who is Blake Lively?
Like Kendrick, Lively’s Hollywood career started when she was young.
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Unlike Kendrick, however, Lively is Tinseltown royalty. Her father is actor Ernie Lively, and her professional debut was in his film Sandman (1998), though her breakout role was as Bridget Vreeland in The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants films a few years later, alongside fellow actresses Amber Tamblyn, America Ferrera and Alexis Bledel.
In 2012, Lively married fellow actor Ryan Reynolds, 48. The couple share three daughters together: James, born in 2014, Inez, born in 2016 and Betty, born in October 2019.
They also share one son, Olin, who was born in February 2023.
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The actress was also famously cast as Serena van der Woodsen in The CW’s series Gossip Girl during the noughties, and this is where rumblings of feud-like behaviour began.
While Lively played the on-screen best friend to Meester’s Blair Waldorf, rumours that they did not get along off-screen clung to the two all throughout the show’s six-season run.
In 2017, 10 years after the show first hit screens, Gossip Girl writer Joshua Safran cleared their relationship up once and for all.
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Speaking with Vanity Fair, he said: “Blake is very much in the moment. Blake knows what’s happening. She knows this movie’s coming out, this band is happening. Leighton [on the other hand] was very removed and very quiet, and, after her scenes were done, she would wander the stage. I had this image of her just in these gorgeous dresses with a book in her hand, sort of a little bit out of focus out in the corners.”
“Blake and Leighton were not friends,” Safran said. “They were friendly, but they were not friends like Serena and Blair. Yet the second they’d be on set together, it’s as if they were.”
Apparently, no animosity existed between the two stars, they just did not connect.
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How do Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively know each other?
Kendrick and Lively met on the set of 2018 black comedy crime thriller A Simple Favor, directed by Paul Feig.
Kendrick played Stephanie Smothers, a widowed single mother who runs an arts-and-crafts vlog for parents, while Lively played Emily Nelson, a PR director for a fashion company who has a son and a husband.
The two characters form a close but twisted friendship, which gradually unravels as the film progresses.
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Principal photography began in 2017 in Toronto, Canada, with the film later being released in September 2018.
To promote the film, Lively completely scrubbed her Instagram account, and the two embarked on a press tour together.
This is where the rumours of the feud began.
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Are Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick friends?
The short answer is, apparently not.
Lively and Kendrick were never really seen publicly together until the press tour for A Simple Favor in 2018, which was at the centre of Celebrity Memoir Bookclub’s 2021 claims.
In an interview with MTV, Kendrick spoke about how she previously worked with Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, and says she used to think Lively was nice but does not think that now.
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On a surface level, this interaction looks like it could be a playful joke between two acquaintances, but fans speculated both actresses’ body language and facial expressions seem stilted. Kendrick then goes on to tell Lively not to touch her.
In another interview, Lively reveals that Kendrick blocked her on Instagram.
From then onwards, the co-stars did a majority of their A Simple Favor promotion separately.
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Was Taylor Swift involved in the drama?
You may be wondering, what does country-slash-pop music icon and known angel Taylor Swift have to do with the two actresses’ potential feud?
Well, Lively and husband Reynolds are actually quite close with the 35-year-old songstress.
In fact, Swift confirmed that the characters in her song Betty are named after the couple’s children.
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In September 2017, one month after filming for A Simple Favor began, American tabloid magazine Star (now In Touch Weekly) reported that Lively and Swift’s friendship caused the clash of Hollywood not-quite-titans Lively and Kendrick, as apparently, Kendrick dissed Swift’s infamous girl squad multiple times, even after Lively requested her to stop.
No one from Kendrick, Lively or Swift’s camps, however, has confirmed this.
Have either Anna Kendrick or Blake Lively spoken out about this alleged feud?
In the years since the feud allegedly began, neither Kendrick or Lively have publicly confirmed or denied their falling out.
Perhaps fans should take this feud with a pinch of skepticism.
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