What did Blake Lively say about Woody Allen? Alexa Nikolas targets 'It Ends With Us' star over 2016 ‘Cafe Society’ interview 

In 2016, Blake Lively praised Woody Allen as “empowering to women” during an interview with Hamptons Magazine while promoting Café Society. Later, at the Cannes Film Festival, she declined to comment on the s*xual abuse allegations against him, saying she wasn’t familiar with the issue.

Now, eight years later, her remarks have once again gone viral after former child actress and YouTuber Alexa Nikolas took to her Instagram Story on August 21, 2024, and reposted a screenshot of the second interview, originally shared by the user @melaniever0nica.

“It’s very dangerous to factor in things you don’t know anything about. I… know my experience. And my experience with Woody is he’s empowering to women – Blake Lively, 2016,” @melaniever0nica’s post read, along with Nikolas's text “oh” with a crying emoji.

Alexa Nikolas' latest target at Blake Lively. (Image via Instagram/ matchthesource)

Alexa Nikolas reshared it with a rolling eyes emoji seemingly expressing her disappointment towards Blake Lively. Her recent target at the Gossip Girl actress comes a day after she called her out for including the music of her former husband and Canadian electronic musician Mike Milosh aka Rhye in her latest movie It Ends With Us' soundtrack.

The former Nickelodeon artist claimed that her ex-spouse groomed and abused her which was part of a much-publicized lawsuit. But despite her accusations, Blake Lively and the It Ends With Us team put his tune in their film.

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Exploring what Blake Lively said about Woody Allen in her 2016 interview

During an interview with Hamptons Magazine published in June 2016, following the release of her film Café Society, Blake Lively shared her experience of working with the director Woody Allen.

“It’s really cool to work with a director who’s done so much because he knows exactly what he wants. The fact that he does one shot for an entire scene—[and] this could be a scene with eight people and one to two takes—it gives you a level of confidence because when he’s got it, he knows he’s got it,” she shared.

Blake Lively further continued by saying that although Woody Allen was minimally conversational, his communication was “clear” and he told her exactly “what he wanted.” She also called him “supportive” and pointed out that she felt “empowered” by him.

“He also is really encouraging as to why he cast you, so he’ll say, ‘Say the dialogue that’s written and then you can improvise for a while.’ And his dialogue is so specific… so, it’s intimidating to think, Oh, let me just improvise there and hope that my words blend seamlessly alongside Woody Allen’s. Which they clearly wouldn’t and don’t. But he’s very empowering,” she explained.

The Town star even mentioned that Allen created a “very pleasant set where everybody’s just happy to be there and happy to be making a movie, and happy to be a part of film history.”

Notably, Blake Lively’s interview came in the wake of an essay published by The Hollywood Reporter where Woody Allen’s estranged son Ronan Farrow called out the Café Society cast and crew for working alongside his father despite s*xual abuse accusations against him. He claimed that Amazon paid these people "millions" to work with Allen, "bankrolling a new series and film."

He further went on to add:

“Actors, including some I admire greatly, continue to line up to star in his movies. ‘It's not personal,’ one once told me. But it hurts my sister every time one of her heroes like Louis C.K., or a star her age, like Miley Cyrus, works with Woody Allen. Personal is exactly what it is — for my sister, and for women everywhere with allegations of s*xual assault that have never been vindicated by a conviction.”

The son of actress Mia Farrow continued by saying that the “silence” in this matter wasn’t just “wrong” but also “dangerous,” adding “It sends a message to victims that it’s not worth the anguish of coming forward. It sends a message about who we are as a society, what we’ll overlook, who we’ll ignore, who matters and who doesn’t.”

At the time when Ronan Farrow’s interview went viral, Café Society premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival in May 2016. When Vanity Fair asked the Green Lantern actress at the festival about Woody Allen’s son’s claims, she refused to comment on it saying it was “dangerous” to talk about things she knew nothing about, adding that her personal experience of working alongside Allen was “empowering.”