Justin Baldoni and Purina Dog Chow spotlight service dogs at the 9th Annual NY Dog Film Festival, highlighting powerful stories of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) service dogs and the positive impact they’ve made on veterans’ lives. Purina Dog Chow
When Justin Baldoni directed — and starred in — It Ends With Us, he made sure to add a few subtle homages to his two children.
“I put my family in all my movies,” Baldoni, 40, exclusively told Us Weekly on Wednesday, October 23, while discussing his Purina partnership, mentioning that his wife, Emily Baldoni, had cameos in his directorial projects Five Feet Apart, Clouds and It Ends With Us.
Based on Colleen Hoover’s bestselling 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 cameo appearances did not stop there.
“I have a few Easter eggs in the movie dedicated to my kids,” Justin, who shares daughter Maiya and son Maxwell with Emily, told Us, adding that they also make cameos on the big screen. “There’s a scene in It Ends With Us where you start off on two kids, you see the back of their heads running into a crowd and you see the farmer’s market. Those are my kids.”
It Ends With Us director, Justin Baldoni, has paid tribute to domestic violence survivors, sharing an open letter written in their honor. Baldoni shared the inspirational words via his Instagram on Friday, August 30 and credited those who have endured domestic violence with possessing positive traits such as “resilience”, “courage” and an “unyielding spirit”. “Dear […]
Maiya, 9, and Maxwell, 7, were “so proud” to witness their dad’s work up close, he gushed to Us.
Justin Baldoni Nicole Rivelli
“They told all their friends they’re in Daddy’s movie,” he mused on Wednesday. “I always try to put my family in my films. It’s a family affair, you know? That’s why I do it.”
One of the reasons that Justin signed onto It Ends With Us was to help raise awareness of and point attention to the epidemic of intimate partner violence — the Jane the Virgin alum is an impassioned advocate for dismantling the concept of toxic masculinity.
“For the eight years-plus that I’ve been talking about this publicly, I’ve always made an effort to not say ‘toxic masculinity’ and the reason why is because it’s one of those words that’s been phrases that’s been politicized and you lose a bunch of people,” Justin explained. “In my experience, a word isn’t worth it. If 50 percent of the people will not hear my message because of a phrase, then I don’t need to say the message because I wanna 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’s so much doom and gloom in the world. There’s so much negativity. The question is, ‘Can we refrain things and think about it from a positive lens?’ I love being a man. Being a man is awesome. I love being alive. Being a human being is awesome. We’re living at such an exciting time.”
Justin Baldoni (R) unveiled the short film A Dog Can Make a Difference as the winner of the new “Service Dog Salute” category at the 9th Annual NY Dog Film Festival presented by Dog Chow. The film by Spencer Matches (L) explores the impact of PTSD on veterans and their families and the healing they’ve found with the help of their service dogs. Purina Dog Chow
According to Justin, men — and all individuals regardless of gender — are “struggling” with loneliness, school duties and more.
“[Men] are the driving force of all crime, both male-on-male crime, which is the highest level of crime, but also, with the film I just made It Ends With Us, one in four women nationally are victims of intimate partner domestic violence,” Justin stated. “And the majority of this is at the hands of men. Now, we know that men are also victims of this, but the vast majority of crimes being committed are from men. … I believe that there is a cry for help. There’s a cry for community right now. We want to be good men. We want to be better men.”
Instead of placing labels on people, Justin believes “we as men have to do a better job supporting” others and “creating safe spaces.”
“We have to learn how to build each other up versus tearing each other down for the sake of dominance and power and gaining power in a hierarchy,” Justin told Us on Wednesday. “I’ve learned that we’re all works in progress, that work’s imperfect and that healing is not linear.”
Justin tries to take all the lessons that he has and continues to learn and apply them to his work. He recently teamed up with Purina Dog Chow to announce the winner of the “Service Dog Salute” category at the 9th Annual NY Dog Film Festival. (The categy aims to highlight stories of PTSD service dogs and how they help military veterans.)
“I always try to be of service with whatever I do,” Justin said. “This [partnership] was really unique because I spent so much time working in the masculinity space and so much time advocating for emotional bravery and trying to help men see that emotional bravery is as important as, if not more important than, just fiscal bravery.”
He continued, “My heart was just going out to all of those men because I was thinking, and women who had the courage to get diagnosed ’cause that is a big deal to be a veteran, to be somebody who fought for our country, to have witnessed the horrors that happened during war, to have PTSD, to come back to try to like live a life, to have a job, to have a family, and to be willing to go get diagnosed is such a massive feat of emotional bravery that I don’t believe is talked about enough.”
With reporting by Travis Cronin
