Blake Lively graces the Feb. 2010 issue of Esquire Magazine, available Jan. 19. While the leggy blonde may play glamorous Manhattan socialite Serena on The CW soap Gossip Girl, her next role finds Lively a world away.

“It was crazy,” Blake says of the Ben Affleck-directed crime drama The Town, in which she plays a cash-strapped woman who is the victim of a sexual assault.

“I have a sex scene in this film and that’s never comfortable,” she tells Esquire. “You think, ‘Oh, this is going to be so awkward.’ But this scene isn’t supposed to be a steamy one – it’s sort of tragic. … I’m pretty much crying in it.”