Ryan Reynolds has praised his wife Blake Lively after she appeared to make a public comment about her legal battle with her It Ends With Us co-star and director, Justin Baldoni.

On Thursday (24 April) Lively delivered a six-minute speech at the Time100 gala at the Jazz at Lincoln Centre in New York City, where she was honoured as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

During her address, the Gossip Girl star said: “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 and since I could speak, because of the pain, caution and fight of the many women who have paved the way and the men who stood beside them – millions I will never know the name of – because every life, every act, big or small, affects another.”

Speaking to People on Friday (25 April), Reynolds said that he was in “awe” of Lively adding that “I don’t know that I’ve met somebody stronger”.

The Deadpool actor then joked: “And her coping mechanisms are just coffee, which is amazing to me because I don’t know how I could hold what she holds and do it with [her] grace and strength. It’s pretty profound.”

Lively is currently embroiled in a highly publicised legal dispute with Baldoni, whom she claims sexually harassed her while they were filming It Ends With us.

Baldoni has vehemently denied the accusations and counter-sued, alleging that Lively orchestrated a smear campaign to destroy his reputation. A trial date for the legal dispute has been set for March 2026.

Elsewhere in her speech, Lively revealed that her mother, Elaine, was assaulted by a co-worker years before she was born.

Accepting her honoree nomination at last night’s Time100 Gala in New York, Lively said that at her mother’s “urging and unwavering bravery, she wanted me to share with you that she is a survivor of the worst crimes someone can commit against a woman.”

The Another Simple Favor star said her mother, who was present at the gala, “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,” 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 with you all here today, being honoured, 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.”