Justin Baldoni Files $250 Million Lawsuit Against New York Times Over Blake Lively Story: It Relied on Her ‘Self-Serving Narrative’ (EXCLUSIVE)
On June 2, 2023, Blake Lively began a text exchange with her “It Ends With Us” director and co-star Justin Baldoni that blamed her assistant for not getting her an updated batch of script pages. “She didn’t realize they were new,” Lively wrote. “New pages can always be sent to me as well please.” The actress signed the missive with an “X” — the universal symbol for a kiss. Lively followed up with another text shortly thereafter. “I’m just pumping in my trailer if you wanna work out our lines.” Baldoni responded: “Copy. Eating with crew and will head that way.” Eighteen months later, that interaction was depicted in a New York Times bombshell report in a far more sinister light. The Times wrote: “[Baldoni] repeatedly entered her makeup trailer uninvited while she was undressed, including when she was breastfeeding.”
That discrepancy is one of many highlighted in a scathing $250 million lawsuit filed Tuesday afternoon by Baldoni against the Times in Los Angeles Superior Court. Baldoni is among a group of 10 plaintiffs that also includes publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel who are suing the newspaper for libel and false light invasion of privacy over the Dec. 21 article titled “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.” The parties, which also include “It Ends With Us” producers Jamey Heath and Steve Sarowitz, claim that the Times relied on “‘cherry-picked’ and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead.”
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A New York Times spokesperson responded, “The role of an independent news organization is to follow the facts where they lead. Our story was meticulously and responsibly reported. It was based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article. To date, Wayfarer Studios, Mr. Baldoni, the other subjects of the article and their representatives have not pointed to a single error. We published their full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well. We plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”
The 87-page complaint, which also accuses the Times of promissory fraud and breach of implied-in-fact contract, offers a rebuttal of the narrative set forth in the 4,000-word article that has rocked Hollywood and led to WME dropping Baldoni as a client hours after publication. Written by Megan Twohey, Mike McIntire and Julie Tate, the piece painted Lively as an actress who allegedly endured months of sexual harassment from Baldoni and Heath and supposedly faced retaliation in the form of a smear campaign because she voiced her concerns. But according to the lawsuit, it was Lively who embarked on a “strategic and manipulative” smear campaign of her own and used false “sexual harassment allegations to assert unilateral control over every aspect of the production.” And according to the suit, Lively’s husband, actor Ryan Reynolds, allegedly berated Baldoni in an aggressive manner during a heated meeting at their Tribeca penthouse in New York, “accusing him of ‘fat shaming’” his wife. The suit claims that the A-list actor also pressured Baldoni’s agency, WME, to drop the director during the “Deadpool and Wolverine” premiere in July, well before Baldoni enlisted crisis PR.
A WME rep denies that there was any pressure from Reynolds or Lively to drop Baldoni as a client.
Attorney Bryan Freedman, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs, tells Variety that the Times “cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful ‘untouchable’ Hollywood elites, disregarding journalistic practices and ethics once befitting of the revered publication by using doctored and manipulated texts and intentionally omitting texts which dispute their chosen PR narrative.”
The Times’ reporting that Nathan and Abel planted negative stories about Lively with the press was bolstered by one particular text exchange in which the two appear to take a victory lap following a Daily Mail story about Lively that slammed her “tone deaf” promotion of the film about domestic violence and resurfaced embarrassing interviews from her past. “You really outdid yourself with this piece,” Abel wrote, prompting Nathan to reply: “That’s why you hired me right? I’m the best.”’ But in its full context, it appears as though Nathan and Abel are jokingly taking credit for a story that emerged organically. The Times story omits a Nathan text that preceded the exchange in which she says she was uninvolved in the story’s publication. “Damn this is unfair because it’s also not me,” she wrote. The Times also clipped Abel’s use of the upside-down smiley face emoji, which is typically used to convey sarcasm.
“The Times story relied almost entirely on Lively’s unverified and self-serving narrative, lifting it nearly verbatim while disregarding an abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims and exposed her true motives,” the suit says.
Lively’s side of the story was laid out in an 80-page letter filed Dec. 20 with the California Civil Rights Department, which the Times used as the bedrock for its story. Unlike a lawsuit, CRD complaints typically remain confidential unless they are leaked. In its previous reporting on the subject, Variety was unable to confirm that Lively even filed a letter, with the department declining to comment on the case.
“Notably, Lively chose not to file a lawsuit against Baldoni, Wayfarer, or any of the Plaintiffs — a choice that spared her from the scrutiny of the discovery process, including answering questions under oath and producing her communications. This decision was no accident,” the complaint says.
That’s apparently no longer true, as just after the publication of this story, Lively’s attorneys said they had filed a federal complaint against Wayfarer Studios, Baldoni et al in the Southern District of New York.
“Unfortunately, Ms. Lively’s decision to speak out has resulted in further retaliation and attacks. As alleged in Ms. Lively’s federal Complaint, Wayfarer and its associates have violated federal and California state law by retaliating against her for reporting sexual harassment and workplace safety concerns. Now, the defendants will answer for their conduct in federal court,” read a statement from her legal team.
The suit refers to Baldoni’s “unconscionable conduct” and accuses Baldoni and his associates of breach of contract.”
The plaintiffs also contend that the Times reporters overlooked text messages indicating that Lively’s camp may have been waging its own PR war against Baldoni preemptively. “The [Times] article also deliberately ignores that Lively’s publicist, Leslie Sloane (“Sloane”), of Vision PR, once backed by Harvey Weinstein, seeded stories critical of Baldoni, including that Baldoni was a sexual predator, ahead of the film’s release.” The complaint also states that Nathan’s firm “was made aware of Sloane planting an unfavorable, false and defamatory story about Baldoni’s Bahá?í faith to Page Six” and also planted “a false story alleging that there were ‘multiple’ HR complaints during production.”
While Nathan and Abel have come under intense scrutiny for their PR practices following the Times story, the lawsuit maintains that they were carrying out “standard industry practice,” with the two women merely preparing “for worst case scenarios (based on Lively and Reynolds’ prior behavior) [and that] no aggressive tactics (e.g., astroturfing) were ever employed. TAG maintained this defensive position throughout its engagement, verifying facts and correcting misinformation without retaliation.”
By filing a lawsuit, Baldoni, Nathan and Abel appear ready to see the full contents of their text messages and inboxes laid bare in a discovery process.
Another allegation made by Lively centered on Heath showing her a video of his naked wife. “The Times compounded its journalistic failures by uncritically advancing Lively’s unsubstantiated claims of sexual harassment against Heath and Baldoni. … [with the] CRD complaint even labeling [that] footage as ‘pornography.’ This claim is patently absurd,” the lawsuit says. “The video in question was a (non-pornographic) recording of Heath’s wife during a home birth — a deeply personal one with no sexual overtone. To distort this benign event into an act of sexual misconduct is outrageous and emblematic of the lengths to which Lively and her collaborators are willing to go to defame plaintiffs.” The suit adds that the video in question was shown to Lively as part of a creative discussion regarding a birthing scene in “It Ends With Us.”
As for the allegation that Baldoni inappropriately described Lively’s character’s attire as “sexy,” the suit calls that “exaggerated and misleading.” Text exchanges between Baldoni and Lively that are included in the complaint show the actress using the word herself when she wrote that her character’s clothing should be “much sexier.” “Will show you both ways but beanie is much sexier,” she wrote in what appeared to be her advocating for a particular wardrobe option. “Lively set the tone, a tone that Baldoni respectfully heeded during the creative process,” the suit says.
The Baldoni et al complaint marks the latest development in a sprawling saga that has already generated an earlier lawsuit filed by Baldoni’s former publicist Stephanie Jones against Abel. How Lively’s team came to possess the trove of text messages that became the basis for the Times article was initially a mystery. Lively’s attorneys confirmed to Variety that they obtained the correspondence via a subpoena to Jones’ PR firm Jonesworks. Still, it is unclear on what grounds Jones would have been required to turn over correspondence involving former client Baldoni or former employee Abel given that no lawsuit had been filed. “It is hardly coincidence that all of the communications on which Lively and the Times now rely were purportedly produced by Jones’ company, Jonesworks, LLC, pursuant to subpoena. The propriety of this alleged subpoena is unverified and, at a minimum, highly questionable given Jones’ involvement and the means by which Jones first obtained these confidential communications,” the complaint notes. “Abel, a former employee of Jonesworks, was forced to relinquish her electronic devices when confronted by a Jonesworks’ security guard and attorney upon her separation from the company.”
The Times article states that before shooting on “It Ends With Us” began in 2023, Lively objected to sex scenes Baldoni “wanted to add that she considered gratuitous.” In response, Baldoni’s Wayfarer Studios “agreed to provide a full-time intimacy coordinator.” But today’s lawsuit offers an alternate version of events. In one text message sent by Lively before production included in the suit, she indicates that she is in no hurry to meet with the film’s intimacy coordinator. “I feel good. I can meet her when we start :) thank you though!” Baldoni’s lawsuit also references “notes from the intimacy coordinator [that] included a suggestion that perhaps ‘Ryle’ [played by Baldoni] chooses not to orgasm after he satisfied Lily [played by Lively].” According to the complaint, “Lively personalizes this and states, ‘I’d be mortified if that happened to me,’ to which Baldoni, following Lively’s lead in what seemed like an attempt to connect and develop their characters, says, “I’m not sure about you but those have been some of the most beautiful moments with [my wife] and I.”
The lawsuit also pushes back on a major component of Lively’s CRD complaint and the Times’ reliance on it for its story. It’s a list of 30 items that were allegedly agreed upon during a January meeting that included Baldoni, Heath, Lively and Reynolds and a Sony executive. But today’s lawsuit claims that “no such document was ever presented to Baldoni, the Wayfarer team, or, to their knowledge, anyone else — whether during that meeting or at any other time — and therefore, could not have been agreed to.” The suit adds: “In reality, many of these items were encountered for the first time in the CRD Complaint itself and include references to highly disturbing events that never occurred. The repeated use of the phrase ‘no more’ before each demand falsely suggests that these alleged incidents had previously taken place and needed to cease. This implication is not only misleading but entirely untrue.”
As for the meeting at Lively and Reynolds’ penthouse apartment in Tribeca, everyone was “in shock” by Reynolds’ outburst, the lawsuit claims. According to the lawsuit, one of the film’s producers who was present said that “in his 40-year career he had never seen anyone speak to someone like that in a meeting, [while] the Sony representative mentioned that she would often think of that meeting and her one regret is that she didn’t stop Reynolds’ berating of Baldoni.”
Back in August, when coverage of a mysterious feud between Lively and Baldoni began to spiral on social media and in the press, Variety inquired of Sony whether any HR complaints had been filed against Baldoni during production and was told “no.”
Ultimately, the film became a breakout box-office hit, earning $351 million worldwide despite a $25 million budget. The prospect of a sequel became increasingly unlikely given the bad blood between the two main players. But the drama appeared to have died down until late December, when the Times story hit.
The Times reached out to the plaintiffs for an on-the-record response at 9:46 p.m. on a Friday night, just as the town’s agencies and law firms had shuttered for the holiday break. The Times said it would require on-the-record responses 14 hours later. The story published roughly two hours earlier than that deadline.
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