“I have so much to say about the last two years of my life, but tonight is not the forum,” Blake Lively said in her speech at the Time 100 Gala on Thursday night.
Lively was honored by Time magazine as one of the most influential people of the year. Over the past several months, coverage surrounding the actress has largely been focused on her ongoing legal battle with her It Ends With Us co-star and director, Justin Baldoni.
However, Lively’s focus of the night was honoring her mom, who survived an attack that threatened her life by a work acquaintance. “What I will speak to separately is the feeling of being a woman who has a voice today,” Lively said. “My life was influenced most by my mother sitting here tonight, Willie Elain McAlpin.”
“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 stories 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 in which she would call upon this critical moment to save her own life,” she said while holding her mother’s hand throughout the speech. “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.”
The actress continued, “She was saved by a woman whose name she’ll never know. I’m alive and standing here with you all today, being honored, because of a woman whose name I’ll never know. I am here and my mom is here because that woman not only survived but she told others how. It’s a silent torch of womanhood that we’ve come to know, a pact that privately we must show others how to survive — literally or spiritually.”
The A Simple Favor star also took a moment to thank every man, including her “sweet husband” Ryan Reynolds, sitting next to her mom, for being so “kind and good when no one is watching.”
Lively received a round of applause for her vulnerable speech. But not everyone was thrilled she was being recognized for Time‘s honor, including Megyn Kelly, who has been vocal about the Lively-Baldoni legal battle and shared how she believes Lively’s honor was “a ploy to get her to attend” the event.
“She’s definitely not here because she’s one of the most influential people,” Kelly told The Hollywood Reporter on the red carpet before Lively’s speech. “There’s zero chance that Blake Lively is one of the most influential people in America. She’s one of the most controversial. In fact, she’s managed somehow to alienate half of the country and her fan base by getting involved in what I think is a fake #MeToo situation. And it’s going to be a rough year for Blake.”
Lively is suing Baldoni for sexual harassment from their time working together, in addition to retaliation against her, in a legal filing made in December.
Baldoni wasn’t on the list, but Kelly shared, “he’s not one of the most influential either.” The journalist, who is on the Time 100 list herself, added, “If it were up to me, it’d be all military men and women standing here, and I wouldn’t care if they were in a fancy dress or not. So, it’s tough to really reach back and pat myself or anyone else here, to be perfectly honest with you.”
Next, Lively stars in Another Simple Favor, a sequel to Paul Feig’s 2018 film, which begins streaming on Amazon’s Prime Video on May 1.
