Justin Baldoni Put ‘Easter Eggs’ for His Kids in ‘Ends With Us’

When Justin Baldoni directed – and starred in – It ends with ushe made sure to add a few subtle tributes to his two children.

“I put my family in all my films,” Baldoni, 40, said exclusively We weekly on Wednesday, Oct. 23, while discussing his Purina partnership, mentioning that his wife, Emily Baldonihad cameos in his directorial projects Six feet apart, clouds And It ends with us.

Based on Colleen Hoover‘s best-selling novel of the same name, It ends with us followed an abusive relationship between Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) and Ryle Kincaid (Justin). Emily, 40, is also an actress and appeared as the nurse who informed Lively’s Lily that she was having a daughter. The special guest appearances didn’t stop there.

“I have a few Easter eggs in the movie dedicated to my kids,” Justin says daughter Maiya and son Maxwell with Emily, narrated Usadding that they also make cameos on the big screen. ‘There’s a scene in it It ends with us where you start with two kids, you see the backs of their heads running into a crowd and you see the farmer’s market. Those are my children.”

Maiya, 9, and Maxwell, 7, were “so proud” to experience their father’s work up close, he enthused Us.

“They told all their friends they’re in daddy’s movie,” he mused on Wednesday. “I always try to involve my family in my films. It’s a family affair, you know? That’s why I do it.”

One of the reasons Justin signed up It ends with us was to help raise awareness and draw attention to the epidemic of intimate partner violence – the Jane the Virgin alum is a passionate advocate for dismantling the concept of toxic masculinity.

“During the eight-plus years that I’ve been talking about this publicly, I’ve always tried my best not to say ‘toxic masculinity,’ and the reason for that is because it’s one of those words that has been politicized and that makes you losing a lot of people,” Justin explained. “My experience is that one word is not worth it. If 50 percent of the people don’t hear my message because of a sentence, then I don’t need to say the message because I want to reach people where they are. So for me it’s about healthy masculinity.”

He added: “I always like to approach things from the positive versus the negative. There is so much doom and gloom in the world. There is so much negativity. The question is, “Can we step away from things and think about them from a positive lens?” I like being a man. Being a man is great. I like to live. Being human is wonderful. We live in such exciting times.”

According to Justin, men – and all individuals, regardless of gender – “struggle” with loneliness, school duties and more.

“(Men) are the driving force behind all crime, both man-on-man crime, which is the highest level of crime, but also, with the film I just made It ends with usone in four women nationally are victims of domestic violence,” said Justin. “And most of this is in the hands of men. Now we know that men are victims of this too, but the vast majority of crimes committed are men. … I believe there is a cry for help. There is a call for community right now. We want to be good men. We want to be better men.”

Instead of putting labels on people, Justin believes that “we as men need to do a better job of supporting others and ‘creating safe spaces.’

“We need to learn how to build each other up instead of tearing each other down for the sake of dominance and power and gaining power in a hierarchy,” Justin said. Us on Wednesday. “I learned that we are all works in progress, that work is imperfect, and that healing is not linear.”

Justin is trying to take all the lessons he has and is still learning apply them to his work. He recently teamed up with Purina Dog Chow to announce this the winner of the “Service Dog Salute” category on the 9th Annual NY Dog Film Festival. (The category is intended to highlight stories about PTSD service dogs and how they help military veterans.)

“I always try to be of service with everything I do,” Justin said. “This (partnership) was really unique because I’ve spent so much time working in the masculinity field and spent so much time advocating for emotional courage and trying to help men understand that emotional courage is just as important as, as nothing more important than, just fiscal courage. .”

He continued, “My heart went out to all those men because I thought, and women who had the courage to be diagnosed, because that’s a big deal to be a veteran, to be someone who stands for our country has fought. to have witnessed the horrors that happened during the war, to have PTSD, to come back to try to have a life, to have a job, to have a family, and to be willing to be diagnosed is such a huge feat of emotional courage that I don’t think gets talked about enough.”

With reporting by Travis Cronin