AUSTIN, Texas—Late Friday afternoon, the crowd stationed outside of South by Southwest’s biggest theater hoisted large balloons shaped like martini glasses—a branded homage to the first A-list premiere at this year’s festival. As the stars of Another Simple Favor arrived in downtown Austin, they paused to snap selfies with the admirers cheering for them behind barricades. One of those actresses, Anna Kendrick, recently directed a movie called Woman of the Hour , but it was her colleague, Blake Lively , who commanded that title in and outside of the Paramount Theatre.
Not a word was said—at least publicly—about the other topic that has streered so many eyes toward Lively lately. Although new legal melodrama concerning her and Justin Baldoni emerges almost daily at this point, Lively has maintained her game face, appearing at Saturday Night Live ‘s 50th-anniversary celebration and now at SXSW’s opening night.
On the red carpet, Kendrick and director Paul Feig dodged vague questions about what one reporter referred to as “everything happening.” Only one person seemed perturbed by Lively’s presence, a lone woman in athleisure holding a sign outside the Paramount that read “Justice for Justin Baldoni.”…