Blake Lively reveals her mother survived an attack on her life during gala speech

Blake Lively turned the spotlight onto the woman who brought her into the world during a moving acceptance speech this week.

While being honored at the 2025 Time100 gala, which celebrated Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, the actress used her stage time to pay tribute to her mother, Willie Elain Lively (née McAlpin).

“I have so much to say about the last two years of my life, but tonight is not the forum,” Lively began, alluding to her current legal battle with her It Ends With Us costar and director, Justin Baldoni. “What I will speak to separately is the feeling of being a woman who has a voice today.”

Explaining that her mother directly influenced her life, Lively continued, “Ever urging in her unwavering bravery, she wanted me to share that she is a survivor of the worst crime that someone can commit against a woman. I’ve watched her conceal her raw and underserved shame my entire life, so as her daughter, being asked to share this today is monumental. If we name it, we change it.”

She then detailed the dark incident involving her mother. “My mom never got justice from her work acquaintance who attempted to take her life when she was the mother of three young kids, years before I was born,” Lively said. “She has always credited her beating heart today with stories she heard from another woman in a similar circumstance, speaking on the radio, as my mom drove home one day entirely unaware of the future ahead in which she would call upon this critical moment to save her own life.”

The Gossip Girl alum explained that in the segment her mother heard on the radio, a woman “painfully and graphically” recalled how she escaped a dangerous situation.

“And because of hearing that woman speak to her experience instead of shutting down in fear and unfair shame, my mom is alive today,” Lively said. “She was saved by a woman whose name she’ll never know. I’m alive and standing here with you all today, being honored, because of a woman whose name I’ll never know. I am here and my mom is here because that woman not only survived, but she told others how.”

She added, “It’s a silent torch of womanhood that we’ve come to know, a pact that privately we must show others how to survive — literally or spiritually.”

Calling the “superpower of female triumph” a “basic human right,” she told the crowd, “Never underestimate a woman’s ability to endure pain.”

Later in her speech, Lively shouted out her “sweet husband” Ryan Reynolds, thanking him for being “kind and good when no one is watching.”

The event was not Lively’s first public appearance since she sued Baldoni, but her comment about “the last two years” of her life did mark a rare acknowledgment from her of their legal battle.

The conflict dates back to 2023, when the actress was cast alongside Baldoni in the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s best-selling book It Ends With Us.

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The film’s 2024 press tour was plagued by rumors of a feud between the stars, and after its successful theatrical run ended, Lively filed a lawsuit against Baldoni and his film studio Wayfarer (after first filing a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department) in which she accused her costar and director of sexual harassment on set and orchestrating a smear campaign against her in the aftermath.

Baldoni then filed a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, which first reported Lively’s allegations, and later filed a separate suit against Lively and Reynolds. That lawsuit, which EW has reviewed, alleges defamation, civil extortion, and breach of contract, and it requests at least $400 million in damages.