Blake Lively Expresses Regret for Plantation Wedding, Addresses Backlash During Justin Baldoni Deposition

Blake Lively is addressing the backlash surrounding her wedding venue.

In her July 2025 deposition with Justin Baldoni‘s lawyer, the Gossip Girl actress was asked about getting married at Boone Hall, a former slave plantation in South Carolina.

Blake and her husband Ryan Reynolds got married at the venue in September 2012 and their venue choice became a headline many years later during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. The couple apologized and announced a $200,000 donation to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in August 2000.

In her deposition for the It Ends With Us cast against Baldoni, Blake was asked if she’s bothered by negative press.

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“I’m used to it after this many years in the industry, but it’s not something I’ve had to deal with often,” Blake said.

Justin‘s lawyer responded, “Well, I mean, it’s true that you dealt with negative press with respect to being married on a plantation during, kind of, the height of Black Lives Matter; is that right?”

“It’s true that I dealt with negative press during that. I was not married then,” Blake responded, correcting him about their wedding date, which was nearly a decade prior.

She continued, “And I feel like that negative press was deserved. It’s a mistake we have publicly acknowledged and done a lot of work to reconcile for ourselves and others… I take full accountability for that decision, as does my husband.”

Ryan addressed the wedding venue backlash back in 2020.

“It’s something we’ll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for,” Ryan told Fast Company. “It’s impossible to reconcile. What we saw at the time was a wedding venue on Pinterest. What we saw after was a place built upon devastating tragedy. Years ago we got married again at home—but shame works in weird ways. A giant f*cking mistake like that can either cause you to shut down or it can reframe things and move you into action. It doesn’t mean you won’t f*ck up again. But repatterning and challenging lifelong social conditioning is a job that doesn’t end.”

Blake‘s texts with Taylor Swift were unsealed in the latest court documents and have gone viral online.