Justin Baldoni Says Blake Lively Tried to ‘Destroy’ Him With False Allegations in $400 Million Lawsuit
Justin Baldoni has filed a $400 million lawsuit against Blake Lively, accusing his It Ends With Us co-star of trying to “destroy” him with false allegations of sexual misconduct.
The suit, filed in New York’s Southern District, accuses Lively, her husband, Ryan Reynolds, publicist Leslie Sloane, and her company, Vision PR, of defamation, extortion, and invasion of privacy. Along with Baldoni, the suit lists as plaintiffs his film studio, Wayfarer, its chief executive, Jamey Heath, and PR reps Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel.
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In a statement, Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, said the suit was ”based on an overwhelming amount of untampered evidence detailing Blake Lively and her team’s duplicitous attempt to destroy Justin Baldoni, his team and their respective companies by disseminating grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and doctored information to the media.”
He continued: “It is clear based on our own all out willingness to provide all complete text messages, emails, video footage and other documentary evidence that was shared between the parties in real time, that this is a battle she will not win and will certainly regret. Blake Lively was either severely misled by her team or intentionally and knowingly misrepresented the truth. Ms. Lively will never again be allowed to continue to exploit actual victims of real harassment solely for her personal reputation gain at the expense of those without power.”
In a statement to Rolling Stone, Lively’s legal team called Baldoni’s latest suit “another chapter in the abuser playbook.” It continued, “This is an age-old story: A woman speaks up with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation and the abuser attempts to turn the tables on the victim. This is what experts call DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim Offender.”
Lively’s team also accused Wayfarer of using “the resources of its billionaire co-founder” to impact the “public’s ability to understand that what they are doing is retaliation against sexual harassment allegations.” The statement claimed that evidence would show that others in the cast had their “own negative experiences with Mr. Baldoni and Wayfarer” and that Sony asked Lively to “oversee Sony’s cut of the film.”
Reps for Reynolds and Sloane did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
Baldoni’s new suit alleges that Lively “deliberately and systematically robbed” him and Wayfarer Studios of It Ends With Us. It claims that after the 2023 actors strike, Lively “refused to return to production” unless Wayfarer agreed to sign a “Protection for Return to Production” document that “insinuated misconduct had occurred during filming” (Baldoni and others deny the misconduct ever occurred). Lively allegedly used this document to “seize control” of the movie, overseeing everything from wardrobe and music to marketing strategy and editing.
The lawsuit alleges that this “power play cost numerous people their jobs,” while Lively’s “wrongheaded creative decisions reflected her fundamental lack of understanding of the book” It Ends With Us is based on. According to the lawsuit, Lively had never even read the book.
The suit further alleges that the tumultuous It Ends With Us press tour was the result of Lively’s own actions. It claims that Lively used her position of power to boot Baldoni from the It Ends With Us promotional campaign, only for her own “disastrous marketing efforts and tone-deaf press interviews and appearances” to backfire and garner “widespread criticism.”
Following the film’s premiere, the lawsuit claims, Lively and Reynolds tried to “deflect the avalanche of negative media coverage of Lively” by demanding Baldoni, Wayfarer, and Heath sign a statement publicly apologizing for “so-called ‘mistakes’ during production.” The statement, the suit alleges, required the plaintiffs to “fall on their sword, despite having done nothing wrong — or else the ‘gloves would come off.’”
After Baldoni and Co. refused to sign the statement, the lawsuit claims Lively, Reynolds, and others “advanced a fabricated narrative in the press that Plaintiffs had sexually harassed Lively, then embarked on a calculated and malicious smear campaign to destroy her reputation as retaliation for daring to complain about the harassment.” The suit states that Lively and others “knew full well that their claims were entirely baseless, because their own wrongfully obtained ‘evidence’ proved that neither the alleged sexual harassment nor the accompanying smear campaign against Lively ever existed.”
Baldoni’s suit comes after Lively opened the legal sparring late last month with a precursor complaint filed with the California Civil Rights Department. In that document, she accused Baldoni of sexually harassing her on set and orchestrating a smear campaign against her. Freedman denied the allegations at the time, claiming the actress’ suit was an attempt to “fix her negative reputation.” Lively reiterated many of her allegations in an official lawsuit brought on Dec. 31.
Near the end of December, a report surfaced in the Daily Mail suggesting Baldoni would file a suit of his own once the courts reopened in 2025. Freedman all but confirmed the impending action with a statement to People on Dec. 30, describing the next step not as a “response or countersuit,” but a “deliberate pursuit of truth.”
He also said Baldoni’s complaint would “expose” the falsities in Lively’s lawsuit, specifically regarding the text messages sent between Baldoni and members of his PR and crisis-management team, Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan. Lively has claimed these texts show Baldoni and his team were orchestrating a smear campaign against her during the tumultuous It Ends With Us press tour.
“This lawsuit will uncover and expose the false and destructive narrative that was intentionally engineered by a trusted media publication who relied upon nefarious sources and neglected a thorough fact-checking process to confirm the validity of these texts,” Freedman said.
Previously rebuffing the smear-campaign claims, Freedman said the text messages showed only that Baldoni and his team were preparing a PR strategy that was never implemented. Freedman said this “standard scenario planning” that Nathan’s company drafted was ultimately “unnecessary as audiences found Lively’s own actions, interviews, and marketing during the promotional tour distasteful, and responded organically to that which the media themselves picked up on.”
Prior to suing Lively and Reynolds, Baldoni and others also brought a lawsuit against The New York Times over the story it published about Lively’s sexual-harassment and smear-campaign allegations. That suit accused the newspaper of libel and false light invasion of privacy, among other claims, and is seeking $250 million in damages.
In her original complaint, Lively claimed she experienced “severe emotional distress” while making It Ends With Us, which Baldoni also directed. She claimed production got so toxic that an emergency meeting was held where a list of demands for Baldoni was drawn up that included he refrain from talking about his previous “pornography addiction,” sexual conquests, and the cast and crew’s genitalia. Baldoni was also allegedly told “no more adding of sex scenes, oral sex or on-camera climaxing by BL outside the scope of the script BL approved when signing onto the project.”
Furthermore, Lively accused Baldoni and lead producer Jamey Heath of walking into her dressing room uninvited while she was breastfeeding. The suit alleged that Heath also showed Lively a naked video of his wife and entered her dressing room while she was topless, having her body makeup removed.
Lively’s smear-campaign allegations also spawned a separate lawsuit, this one brought by Baldoni’s former publicist Stephanie Jones, against the actor, Abel, and Nathan (Abel previously worked for Jones’ company, Jonesworks, during the It Ends With Us rollout). They are accused of defamation and breach of contract, with Jones claiming she was kept in the dark about Abel and Nathan’s “scheming to ‘bury’ and ‘destroy’” Lively using “an aggressive media smear campaign.”
This article was updated on Jan. 16 at 9:55 p.m. ET to include a statement from Blake Lively’s legal team.
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