Blake Lively & Ryan Reynolds Accuse Justin Baldoni & PR Team Of Continuing Smear Campaign Against ‘It Ends With Us’ Actress, Double Down On Gag Order Request
EXCLUSIVE: Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds aren’t holding back at all today on why a so-called gag order is necessary for “extrajudicial statements” by Justin Baldoni’s lead lawyer in the ever-deepening dispute between the It Ends With Us stars over what happened during filming of the Sony-distributed domestic violence film and what happened before it was released.
“Requiring counsel to heed the ethical rules that bind them is not a gag order; it is a mechanism that would ensure the proceedings in this Court are are not prejudiced by counsel’s conduct outside of the courtroom,” attorney Esra Hudson declared for the couple Friday evening in a letter to Judge Lewis J. Liman over Baldoni, his main lawyer Bryan Freedman, Baldoni’s Wayfarer Studios and others.
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“The Wayfarer Parties are attempting to draw a dangerous false equivalence that may have profound consequences not just for this case, but for other women who are sexually harassed in the workplace given the high profile of this matter,” the lawyer from Manatt, Phelps & Phillips continues in the four-page correspondence just filed in federal court in New York.
In what has become a very fast-paced match of legal and media volleyball, the filing from the Gossip Girl alum and Deadpool actor’s side comes just over 24 hours after Baldoni attorney Kevin Fritz wrote to Liman rejecting the couple’s demand of January 22 for a gag order, claiming “the Lively Parties now invoke attorney disciplinary rules as an intimidation tactic.”
For a multi-lawsuit matter that honestly has seen all sides and the respective PR chiefs play the press as much if not more than the courts with “tactical gamesmanship,” as the January 23 letter calls it, Fritz showed no hesitation or irony in hitting the sentimental button hard in his correspondence.
“The results have been utterly calamitous for Mr. Baldoni and the other Wayfarer Parties, who instantly became objects of public scorn and contempt,” the attorney wrote, referencing his client’s pink-slipping by WME (which still reps Lively and Reynolds), the A-lister support Lively has garnered and the loss of work and any hope of a IEWU sequel since this all went public last month. “Already, the Wayfarer Parties have been exiled from polite society and suffered damages totaling hundreds of millions due to Ms. Lively’s scorched earth media campaign.”
Fritz was referencing Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios, risis PR chief Melissa Nathan and fellow publicist Jennifer Abel in another attempt to flip the script on Lively’s initial sexual harassment and retaliation filings that alleged an online smear campaign against her by Baldoni’s Nathan-led crew.
It should be noted that Nathan and her TAG firm were the same pricey Crisis PR team hired by Johnny Depp in the depths of his legal battles over accusations of domestic violence from Amber Heard. A 2022 media frenzy trial in Virginia saw Depp win his $50 million defamation case against his ex-wife as an online media campaign against Heard attacked, threatened and mocked the Aquaman star. While Nathan and Abel have denied that they unleashed a smear campaign against Lively last summer — they say they didn’t need to because the internet hated Lively all on its own — the similarities between the fierce digital assaults on Heard and those on Lively leading up to the August 2024 release of IEWU are striking.
On January 22, as the parties sparred over video footage released by Freedman and Baldoni’s team to try to counter Lively’s claims in her December 20 complaint with California’s Civil Rights Department and subsequent NYE replica lawsuit, Lively and Reynolds’ lawyer Michael J. Gottlieb sent a letter of his own to Liman condemning the always outspoken Freedman for his litigation-via-press statement strategy. The DC-based Willkie Farr & Gallagher lawyer stated that LA-based Freedman “had defamed and engaged in further unlawful retaliation against Ms. and that Lively,and demanded that he immediately cease and desist from making further defamatory, and retaliatory, statements relating to Ms. Lively.”
Raising the stakes this week, Gottlieb added: “The Lively-Reynolds Parties intend to seek an appropriate protective order to govern further proceedings in this case, but given the imminent harm caused by Mr. Freedman’s misleading and selective statements and leaks, we respectfully request that this Court schedule a hearing as soon as possible to address the appropriate conduct of counsel moving forward in these two related matters.”
Facing a defamation and breach of contract suit as well from Stephanie Jones, the head of his former PR firm and Abel’s ex-boss, Baldoni took Lively, Reynolds and their publicist Leslie Sloane to court in a January 16 $400 million defamation and extortion action and The New York Times for $250 million action filed on New Year’s Day.
In Friday’s letter to the judge, Lively and Reynolds’ lawyer Hudson threw it out there that the alleged smear campaign that was one of the instigators of all this is likely still going on in one form or another.
Distinctly naming names, she wrote:
Even more troubling, however, is that the retaliation campaign that Ms. Lively alleged in her Complaint, with substantial supporting documentation, includes highly destructive behind-the-scenes elements, including the regular engagement of Melissa Nathan with her vast tabloid media sources to influence a steady stream of negative media regarding Ms. Lively, as well as a sophisticated and “untraceable” digital social media manipulation campaign designed to impact social media algorithms against Ms. Lively. The Lively-Reynolds Parties are informed and believe that these efforts have continued unabated since the CRD Complaint was filed, and may have even been accelerated. The administration of justice in this case will be severely compromised if this behavior continues.
No date has been set for the requested hearing by Lively and Reynolds on a protective order, but Liman has made it pretty clear he thinks it would be a good idea to meld Lively’s suit against Baldoni and Baldoni’s suit against Lively in the interests of expediency for all. When that might occur also is unknown.
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