Given that Ryan Reynolds wrote a letter of apology for Justin Baldoni to sign, trying to force him & Wayfarer to take responsibility for things it seems clear that they were not responsible for, I thought it might be helpful to share a "letter of apology" for Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, for things it seems clear that they are responsible for. I used some of the same language that Ryan used in his draft intended for Justin.  This is meant to be a bit of a humorous roast.  If there is a way you feel differently, you can add your own ideas in a comment.  Here is the sample apology ;)

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It Ends with Us (IEWU) was a troubled production which we take full accountability for. We are very sorry to everyone we caused upset to privately and publicly.

Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer, and the entire cast and crew led with professionalism every step of the way.  Any negativity aimed at any of them is ours to own.

Blake and I were overcome with feelings of entitlement, superiority, greed, and desperation.  We saw this as an opportunity to position Blake as the face of a new franchise - both for the fame and fortune from the franchise itself, and as a platform from which to promote her businesses - by taking over someone else’s project instead of having to do all of the work ourselves.  That’s a tendency we both suffer from.  

It’s very hard for us to accept that we are not entitled to have everything we want, even when it is not our place to decide. Unfortunately, when we are met with resistance to what we want, we have been conditioned to believe that we can resort to weaponizing exaggerations, passive-aggressive humor, threats, and lies without having to suffer any consequences.  Looking back on it, we are deeply embarrassed and sorry that we resorted to taking certain things out of context and twisting them to fit into a narrative of sexual harassment to use as leverage to get our way.  And I, Ryan, am deeply embarrassed and sorry to have used a character in one of my movies to vent my hatred of an earnest and well intentioned man with my adolescent and sometimes violent humor. We are learning to welcome the gift of having our bullying stood up to, which will help us find our way back to being the decent and fun-loving people we are at our cores.  

As it turns out, the negative press that Blake received during and following the press for IEWU was unwittingly generated by us and not part of a "hidden" smear campaign.  We now understand that our unprecedented and cruel banning of Justin and Wayfarer from joining the rest of the cast for the premier and press for IEWU set off a tidal wave of curiosity as to why this was happening.  That intense curiosity combined with the understandably negative reactions that the majority of people were having to the way that Blake was conducting herself in interviews, described as tone deaf and offensively opportunistic for promoting her products (including alcohol in the context of a movie about DV), is what gave rise to Blake’s viral negative press.  We now see that Justin and Wayfarer’s long held intentions about how to speak about and promote IEWU were far superior to what we had planned, which was partly influenced by wanting to force, with maximum effort, an artificial Barbenheimer moment with IEWU and Deadpool because we are, unfortunately, always in a hyper-vigilant state of competition.  

We apologize for all of the efforts we made, every step of the way, to undermine Wayfarer’s and Justin’s creative control of IEWU and their sincere efforts at collaboration that we took advantage of.  We would also like to extend our sincere apologies to the crew and creatives that we had fired from project in order to assert our dominance.  We hold ourselves accountable.  Part of our work is to have uncomfortable conversations for private and public growth.  IEWU is doing that on screen and Blake and I will begin to do that off screen.  

Speaking of "off" screen, we are also inspired to examine why we feel the need to be constantly in the press, and to be forever seen as powerful entertainment and business elites.  For some reason, we never feel like we have enough, and we can’t just be happy with ourselves without constant external validation.  

With that in mind, we also acknowledge what a grave mistake it was to work with the New York Times to publish an article attempting to paint Justin as a sexual harasser and Wayfarer as toxic and retaliatory, in combination with filing a misleading complaint that would have otherwise remained private.  We accept our responsibility for the ensuing explosion of even more intensely negative press for Blake, which then extended to others who were believed to be participating in our deceit, once it became clear that our allegations were grossly exaggerated, misleading, and/or false.  

If it is what our named defendants would prefer, we would like nothing more than to reach a settlement with all of the parties that were forced to seek legal representation because of our unwarranted allegations.  We acknowledge that, regardless of personal differences, there was, in fact, no sexual harassment. We acknowledge that the highly viral negative press was instigated by our own actions, not generated from a "hidden" nor "untraceble" PR "smear" campaign.  We acknowledge that any toxicity on the set of IEWU was caused by the step by step, strategic pressures we were putting on all of the powers that be to, piece by piece, take over the film.  

We would like to meet with the representatives of all of the named parties to hear what it is that we need to do restore damages and clear names, so that we can and all move forward, in good faith, to resume the good works that have been negatively impacted by our actions.

We are so very sorry for all of the unnecessary drama, stress, and damages our actions have caused.  We aim for restoration and resolution as "swiftly" as possible for us all.

With humanity and dedication,

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