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If you happen to have seen the movie adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling book, It Ends With Us, you might have noticed a few things that differed as it played out on screen.
Of course, whenever a book is adapted for TV or film, there’s always going to be things that they can’t include, whether that be specific storylines or characters. But one key difference has caught fans' attention. Did you notice it too?
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What is the most notable difference?
If you’ve read the book, two of the main characters, Lily Bloom and Ryle Kincaid are 23 and 30 respectively in the current day chapters. However, when the two main actors were announced many were quick to point out a massive age difference between the actors and the characters that they were playing.
Blake Lively, who is 37 in real life is playing Lily as if she was in her thirties, while Justin Baldoni (who also happened to direct the film) is 40. That’s over a decade of a difference for both.
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However, the author has publicly defended this decision.
She revealed to Today, “As an author, we make mistakes. There’s no 28-year-old neurosurgeons, you know? You go to school for 15 years. And so to make corrections to what I messed up in the book, we aged the characters up somewhat.”
In saying this, she seemed to admit that the ages of Lily and Ryle in the film are much more reflective of where the characters would actually be in their lives, age-wise.
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And given the important but heavy subject matter of domestic violence, she also explained that having the characters be older was better for tackling the issues that the characters are dealing with.
When speaking to E! News, she continued: “"Eight years ago, when I wrote the book, new adult was huge and everyone was wanting to read characters in their very early 20s. And this is such a tough subject matter that putting young, young characters on screen just didn't feel right to us. So I think ageing them up was such a great move, and it worked so well on film.”
What are fans saying?
Quite a few fans have taken to social media to point out this big age difference.
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One declared: “Can we start casting actors the actual age of the character in a book when it turns into a movie because as much as I love Blake Lively she does not pass as a 23 year old.”
Whereas another doesn’t want to see the same happen with the adaptation of another of Hoover’s books, Verity. They exclaimed: “Colleen Hoover, I urge you to pick the cast that the people want for the Verity movie because #itendswithus is not it. Stop clout chasing and cast actual people who ARE & reflect the same age as in the book.”
Have you seen it yet?
Topics: Blake Lively, Cinema, Books
Ellis Cochrane