Blake Lively Shares How She Was Recently “Stalked” and “Frightened” By Paparazzi

Blake Lively is over the games paparazzi play to grab a photo of a celebrity and their kids. In a searing comment left on an Instagram post from Daily Mail Austalia, Lively accused a paparazzi of stalking her and her children while they were out for a walk in New York City — though she looks happy in the photos, Lively wants the public to know the truth: “it’s fucking scary.”

“You edit these images together to look like I’m happily waving. But that is deceitful,” Lively wrote in the comment on the Daily Mail Australia post, which has since been taken down. “The real story is: My children were being stalked by a [man] all day. Jumping out. And then hiding.”

Her comment, captured and reposted by Comments By Celebs Instagram account, continues, “When I tried to calmly approach the photographer you hired to take these pictures in order to speak to him, he would run away. And jump out again at the next block.”

Do you do background checks on the photographers you pay to stalk children? she asked. Where is your morality here? I would like to know. Or do you simply not care about the safety of children?

Lively wrote that she spoke to several other photographers following her that day, and agreed to pose for them (without her children) so they could get the shot and leave. However, the Daily Mail photographer wouldn’t “hiding and hunting children,” as Lively said.

“Tell the whole story @Dailymailau,” she wrote. “At minimum, listen to your followers. They too understand this is dark and upsetting that you pay people to stalk children…There are plenty of pictures you could’ve published without the kids. Please delete. C’mon. Get with the times.”

Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds have made a conscious effort to keep their three daughters out of the public eye and off social media. Upon seeing the repost on Comments By Celebs, Lively added a few tips in the comments section to help cut down on the invasive and frightening tactics paparazzi use to get photos of celebrities and their kids.

One simple thing people can do is stop following and block any publications or handles who publish kid’s pictures, she wrote. Feel free to report them. Or send a dm sharing why you don’t follow them.

Lively continued, “It’s a simple way of only aligning with publications who have morality. And so many do. All are trying to service an audience. So if that audience makes it clear they don’t want something—like photos of children obtained by men frightening and stalking them—the publication or account will do what the audience wants. It’s the only way that so many have already stopped. Because the people demanded it.

“So thank you to everyone who’s made that difference already,” she wrote. “And thank you again for sharing. It’s fucking scary.”

At the end of the day, seeing a photo of a celebrity and their children doesn’t really add anything to our lives. Therefore, there’s really no need for paparazzi to act this way and be so incredibly intrusive. Let the crusade against immoral paparazzi begin.