Blake Lively is no stranger to the UAE, having visited the country a handful of times. Her most publicised visit, however, was in 2014, when the It Ends With Us star travelled to Dubai as the face of a Gucci fragrance.
Lively appeared at Galeries Lafayette in Dubai Mall on January 3, taking part in a special event promoting Gucci Premiere. The perfume featured top notes of bergamot and blackberry, heart notes of orange blossom and musk and base notes of patchouli with sandalwood. Fans who bought a large bottle of the perfume got the chance to take their picture taken with the actress, who had become a global figure following her role in the hit series Gossip Girl.
Lively spoke to The National during her visit, saying it was her third time in Dubai, but that she barely had time to properly explore the city. “I’m never here more than 24 hours, so I really want to have a time when I can actually see Dubai,” she said.
Lively also discussed her relationship with fame and the tendency of the public to align her with her Gossip Girl character, Serena van der Woodsen.
“My friends know who I am,” she said. “People on the street, they see so much more of this character – once a week for six years they see Serena. And then the press tries to align you with the character or to create the same sort of scandal and drama. And how I dress on the show is pretty similar to how I dress now, so I guess if I was watching the show, I would associate me with my character.”
Lively has taken up plenty of other roles since her 2014 visit to Dubai, and since then it has perhaps become easier for characters to extricate her from Serena.
The actress has recently been making headlines when rumours of a rift between her and her It Ends With Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni grabbed headlines following the film's release in August. The film, based on the best-selling book of the same name, went on to become a major box office hit, despite most coverage about it being focused on the drama between its main leads.
Early in December, Lively filed a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department claiming Baldoni co-ordinated a PR campaign with a crisis firm to destroy her reputation. She followed that with a lawsuit in New York later in the month, accusing Baldoni, his publicist, the film's studio and other defendants for "retaliating against her for reporting sexual harassment and workplace safety concerns".
“This is not a ‘feud’ arising from ‘creative differences’ or a ‘he said/she said’ situation,” Lively’s lawyers recently told Variety. “Sexual harassment and retaliation are illegal in every workplace and in every industry. A classic tactic to distract from allegations of this type of misconduct is to ‘blame the victim’ by suggesting that they invited the conduct, brought it on themselves, misunderstood the intentions, or even lied. Another classic tactic is to reverse the victim and offender, and suggest that the offender is actually the victim. These concepts normalise and trivialise allegations of serious misconduct.”
Baldoni responded with his own lawsuit, but targeted at The New York Times for their reporting on Lively's allegations and accused the outlet of having "cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful 'untouchable' Hollywood elites," referring to Lively's husband, actor Ryan Reynolds.
In the suit, Baldoni claims, among other things, that Lively constantly attempted to change things about the film and was "aggressively berated" by Reynolds over a fat shaming incident involving Lively. The actress also tried to ban him from the film's premiere, Baldoni claims, and was ultimately permitted to attend "under humiliating conditions".
