Blake Lively on Justin Baldoni’s Lawsuit: “Another Chapter in the Abuser Handbook”
Blake Lively‘s legal team has a response for Justin Baldoni’s new lawsuit against the actress, saying it’s another chapter in the abuser playbook.
“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,” read a statement from Lively’s lawyers that was given to The Hollywood Reporter late Thursday afternoon.
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Lively is represented by Manatt, Phelps & Phillips and Willkie Farr & Gallagher.
The rebuttal was issued hours after Baldoni filed a 179-page lawsuit in New York federal court against Lively, and her husband Ryan Reynolds, alongside two publicists, alleging extortion, defamation and claims related to breach of contract tied to the making and release of It Ends With Us.
The movie was directed by Baldoni, who stars alongside Lively. Both are credited PGA producers on the pic, which may have been a blockbuster at the box office but has become the subject of cascading legal actions that began when Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment and waging a smear campaign against her in retaliation for speaking up about misconduct on set. Her complaint was filed in late December with the California Civil Rights Department before a formal lawsuit was lodged earlier this month in New York federal court.
Baldoni — who is likewise claiming he is the subject of a smear campaign and denies any sexual harassment — is joined in his lawsuit by his movie studio, Wayfarer, and its chief executive Jamey Heath, alongside their public relations representatives, Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel. They are seeking at least $400 million in damages. Wayfarer is backed by billionaire Steve Sarowitz.
Bryan Freedman, the no-holds-barred L.A. attorney who is repping the Baldoni side of the aisle, said the lawsuit filed early Thursday is “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 added, “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.”
In her suit, Lively names Baldoni, Wayfarer, Abel, who is Baldoni’s publicist, and veteran crisis PR executive Nathan. The latter was hired by Baldoni around the time of the film’s premiere, when virtually the entire cast sidelined their director in support of Lively, who refused to be photographed with him on the red carpet or appear with him at junkets.
Baldoni’s narrative is that he was “under duress” when he and Heath agreed to sign a list of 30 demands if Lively were to return to set following the conclusion of the SAG-AFTRA strike. The numerous provisions included no more showing nude videos or images of women, including of the producer’s wife, to Lively or her employees; no more mention of Baldoni or Heath’s “pornography addiction” or Lively’s lack of pornography consumption; no more discussions with Lively about her personal experiences with sex, including as it relates to spouses or others; no more descriptions of their own genitalia to Lively; and no more inquiries about Lively’s weight. The actress also secured assurances that Baldoni would no longer talk about how he spoke with her late father, or enter her trailer unannounced. Sony, which was on board as a distributor, was also required to be more involved.
The doc was signed in early November 2023. In early January 2024, before production resumed following the actors strike, a meeting was called at Lively and Reynolds’ loft in New York City with Wayfarer and Sony execs, among others. Baldoni has alleged that things got heated, and that Reynolds accused him of fat-shaming his wife (Lively had her fourth child, a son, in early 2023, just before the shoot began).
According to Baldoni’s lawsuit, “Wayfarer was blindsided when Lively, upon the conclusion of the industry strikes, refused to return to production absent the company’s agreeing to her nonnegotiable ‘Protections for Return to Production’ (the ‘Return to Production Demands’) that insinuated misconduct had occurred during filming (which, as evidence will establish, did not). Wayfarer was equally blindsided when Lively leveraged this document, essentially signed under duress, to seize control of the Film.”
Lively’s lawyers countered, “They are trying to shift the narrative to Ms. Lively by falsely claiming that she seized creative control and alienated the cast from Mr. Baldoni. The evidence will show that the cast and others had their own negative experiences with Mr. Baldoni and Wayfarer. The evidence will also show that Sony asked Ms. Lively to oversee Sony’s cut of the film, which they then selected for distribution and was a resounding success.”
Sony did indeed go out with Lively’s cut of the film, and has issued public support for her in the wake of the dispute with Baldoni.
In describing how Lively allegedly slowly and deliberately took over the movie, Baldoni says she invoked best friend Taylor Swift’s name when presenting him with rewrites, telling him that both Swift and Reynolds, whom she referred to as “her dragons,” thought the changes were great. Baldoni ultimately acquiesced, and told Lively in an email that he didn’t need her to bring up Swift and Reynolds in order to sway him, according to Thursday’s lawsuit. In addressing other ways in which she tried to take over the film, he says she took control of her wardrobe early on, including asking for expensive shoes.
Lively’s lawyers said Baldoni’s response to the sexual harassment allegations is “she wanted it, it’s her fault. Their justification for why this happened to her: look what she was wearing. In short, while the victim focuses on the abuse, the abuser focuses on the victim. The strategy of attacking the woman is desperate, it does not refute the evidence in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and it will fail.”
Continuing, they said that “Wayfarer has opted to use the resources of its billionaire co-founder to issue media statements, launch meritless lawsuits and threaten litigation to overwhelm the public’s ability to understand that what they are doing is retaliation against sexual harassment allegations.”
The same day that legal action was initiated earlier this month in federal court by Lively, Baldoni sued The New York Times for allegedly conspiring with Lively’s public relations team to advance an “unverified and self-serving narrative” while ignoring evidence that contradicted her claims.
In another twist, Baldoni and Freedman are also going after Disney and Marvel Studios, saying that Reynolds used the character Nicepool in Deadpool & Wolverine to mock him.
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