Blake Lively Makes Shock Revelation About Her Mother Surviving Past Attack on Her Life

Blake Lively shared a deeply personal story at the Time100 Gala on Thursday evening as she honored her mother Willie Elain McAlpin.

Before launching into a shocking story about how her mom survived an attack, Blake seemed to acknowledge her “It Ends with Us” legal war with Justin Baldoni. She shared, “I have so much to say about the last two years of my life, but tonight is not the forum. What I will speak to separately is the feeling of being a woman who has a voice today.”

The actress, who was standing next to McAlpin, shared, “My life was influenced most by my mother, Willie Elain McAlpin, who’s here with me tonight, an eternal optimist who’s always leaving me messages, hoopin’ and hollerin’, sayin’, ‘Life’s just a bowl of cherries.'” 

Blake later added, “At her urging and unwavering bravery, she wanted me to share with you that she is a survivor of the worst crime someone can commit against a woman. I’ve watched her conceal her raw and undeserved shame my entire life. So as her daughter, being asked to share this today is monumental.”

Quoting Time100 honoree Gisèle Pelicot, Blake continued, “It’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them.”

Blake revealed, “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. She has always credited her beating heart today with the story 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 where she would call on this critical moment to save her own life.”

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

Blake went on,  “It is a silent torch of womanhood that we come to know, a pact that privately we must show others how to survive literally or spiritually.”

As Lively closed out her speech, she noted how parents have to eventually tell daughters that “they will never be safe.”

She said, “At work, at home, in a parking lot, in a medical office, online, in any space they inhabit physically, emotionally, professionally, but why does that torch have to be our burden to carry in private?”

Blake then praised the “superpower of female triumph” and insisted, “never underestimate a woman’s ability to endure pain.”

She ended by saying, “Thank you to every woman who’s strength brought life to me and my four children and thank you to every man, including my sweet husband [Ryan Reynolds], who are kind and good when no one is watching.”

The speech comes amid her ongoing legal battle with Baldoni.

In December, Lively initially filed a legal complaint with the California Civil Rights Department claiming Baldoni sexually harassed her on set. She also accused him of a smear campaign in a New York Times article. In return, he sued The New York Times, which denied any wrongdoing. 

Lively then sued Baldoni, and he sued her back. Both parties have also denied any wrongdoing.