If you remember correctly, Blake Lively launched her lifestyle site, Preserve, last summer. The collective reaction went from ambivalence to… laughter, I think. There were some defenders, but I think most of us recognized it for what it was: a hipster, artisanal-lite take on Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop. The writing on the site was widely mocked, deservedly, because in additional to shilling hipster nonsense, Blake was also writing pro-Antebellum-South essays. Anyway, Blake’s Preserve launch coincided with her August 2014 Vogue cover story, in which she talked almost exclusively about Preserve and how unique it was and how no one ever thought of shilling hipster junk on the internet. Now, in a new Time Magazine interview, Blake is coming clean about how the launch was rushed on Anna Wintour’s orders. You can read the full Time piece here. Some highlights:

Whether she’s an actress or a businesswoman: “I don’t see an “or” there. I see myself as a storyteller—or at least that’s what I try to do. As an actress, I try to tell stories in the most honest way possible, and hope people will connect to that emotionally. With Preserve, I’m doing the same thing: meeting chefs, meeting artisans, designers, craftsmen. I’m moved by their stories and I’m sharing them with my friends.”

Whether Preserve has a business plan: “I hope there’s a business plan! It’s a proper company… It’s hard to make something different. I’m lucky to have friends who are successful entrepreneurs, and their companies’ valuations are very impressive and they’re up against time and money. I’ve seen such generosity that I haven’t seen in the profession of acting—it’s not that actors aren’t generous, but no one has connected me with Meryl Streep to muse about what has worked onscreen and why. In the world of entrepreneurs, I’ve been amazed to be connected with other companies’ CTOs and CFOs and talk about what has worked and what didn’t.”

Anticipating the negative reaction to Preserve: “I see what happens in the world of female entrepreneurs and I see what the media does. And that they pit women against each other and there’s an “or”—should women stick to this or this? I knew we’d probably get grilled, or celebrated for being someone they’re not already picking on. It felt like a new kid coming to school: I’ll get picked on, or liked, for being from a different place. And I’ve been to 16 schools in my life, so I’ve experienced that bullying. There is constructive criticism we’ve taken to heart. And then there’s people being mean for the sake of being mean, or when you’re trying to be light and people take you literally. It’s a nasty world. You don’t see male entrepreneurs pitted against each other, destroyed, picked apart, and every word they say served up to judge.”

Anna Wintour’s demands: “The things that keep me up are things I look at on the site and I know could be better. I knew this was supposed to be better. Time and money, time and money. What I wanted Preserve to be at launch was not what it is at all. It’s just impossible! We found ourselves at launch and we had a Vogue cover set up, so I couldn’t call Anna Wintour and say “I need six more months”—people hacked into our site a week and a half before it was meant to launch, so the site leaked. The site’s not close to what I want it to be. I hope by the time it’s what I want it to be, my standards will be raised infinitely more.”

She never wanted to be an actress: “I never knew I wanted to be an actor. I fell into it and was lucky to have incredible opportunities that shaped my life. There were things I planned for my life that I missed out on. Going to an Ivy League school was my dream. I wanted to be an entrepreneur and carve my own path.”

[From Time Magazine]

Poor baby, Anna Wintour forced her to launch her silly lifestyle site to coincide with a Vogue cover!! #RichWhiteWomanProblems. I feel like the whole “bullying” section of the interview was specifically about the “Allure of Antebellum” issue, in which she attempted to force Gawker to remove their critical coverage and they in turn published her legal threats. If she says that Preserve is not where it needs to be and that they’ve experienced 9 months of growing pains… sure, I agree. But I don’t think that gives her a free pass. She made such a big deal about how this site was going to be SO different and special and we had never seen anything like it, and now that everyone has seen that it’s a pretty mundane, poorly organized, hard-to-navigate site shilling hipster nonsense, now she wants a do-over.

PS… This interview was part of Time Magazine’s larger profile on celebrity women and their lifestyle sites. Go here to see Gwyneth’s piece.

Photos courtesy of WENN.