Blake Lively’s Lawyers Accuse Justin Baldoni’s Team Of “Blame The Victim” Tactics As ‘It Ends With Us’ Battle Fought Out In Media & Courts
Justin Baldoni has yet to actually go after Blake Lively in court over her accusations of sexual harassment and an online smear campaign, but the It Ends With Us actress’ attorneys are rebuking the Jane the Virgin alum’s team over “more attacks” in the media.
“Ms. Lively’s federal litigation before the Southern District of New York involves serious claims of sexual harassment and retaliation, backed by concrete facts,” Lively’s Manatt, Phelps & Phillips attorneys and Willkie Farr & Gallagher lawyers said late Monday, noting their client’s stinging 93-page NYE lawsuit.
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“This is not a ‘feud’ arising from ‘creative differences; or a ‘he said/she said’ situation,” they stated mere hours after Baldoni’s main attorney Bryan Freedman appeared on NewsNation taking swings at the New York Times, Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds. “As alleged in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and as we will prove in litigation, Wayfarer and its associates engaged in unlawful, retaliatory astroturfing against Ms. Lively for simply trying to protect herself and others on a film set. And their response to the lawsuit has been to launch more attacks against Ms. Lively since her filing.”
Following the near radioactive blast radius from a December 20 complaint by Lively with California’s Civil Rights Department alleging sexual harassment and retaliation during and after the production of the Baldoni co-starring and directed IEWU and a clearly coordinated and text message illustrated NYT ‘We Can Bury Anyone: Inside A Hollywood Smear Machine’ deep dive into the Gossip Girl‘s vet’s claims, the reprisals and lawsuits started flying.
On December 21, Baldoni was unceremoniously dumped by WME, the uber-agency he shared with Lively and the Deadpool superstar. A flood of A-listers flocked to Lively’s side quickly afterwards over what went down on the Sony-released box office hit It Ends With Us – including author Colleen Hoover, who wrote the 2016 book the domestic violence spotlighting film is based on.
In any publicist’s nightmare scenario, Stephanie Jones, the head of Baldoni’s old PR firm, was first with a Christmas Eve defamation and breach of contract suit in New York state court against Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios and publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel.
To no one’s surprise, next up was a December 31 Freedman-filed $250 million libel suit from Baldoni and his PR gang against the Gray Lady and the journalists behind the “We Can Bury Anyone” article. The same day, Lively hit Baldoni and team with a lawsuit of her own that basically reiterated her CRD filing of a week before. “As laid out in this Complaint, the Baldoni-Wayfarer-led public attack of Ms. Lively was the intended result of a carefully crafted, coordinated, and resourced retaliatory scheme to silence her, and others, from speaking out about the hostile environment that Mr. Baldoni and Mr. Heath created,” the 13-claim complaint said of Baldoni, his Wayfarer CEO Jamey Heath and their Crisis PR people.
Both sides have promised more lawsuits are to come, with a filing from Baldoni in particular suing Lively expected within days. In the meantime, Freedman put an amended complaint in the LASC docket for Baldoni this week with some embarrassing texts from journalists suddenly clipped and redacted
Joining NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo in primetime on January 6, Freedman went after the NYT’s integrity and so-called cherry picking of the correspondence between the IEWU stars and the Baldoni’s flacks.
“We’re going to take what the young kids call receipts, and we’re going to take those text messages and we’re going to put them out for the public to see,” the Hollywood heavyweight told Cuomo, who is also a client. “And we’re doing it as we speak, and we have been doing it, and what you’re starting to see is you’re starting to see a complete turnaround in this story, and you’re starting to see a turnaround, because people are questioning, is this truthful or not?”
In response, as Lively and Reynolds stay out of public view, Lively’s lawyers and publicists are trying to reset the media table.
“While we go through the legal process, we urge everyone to remember that sexual harassment and retaliation are illegal in every workplace and in every industry,” Lively’s DC and L.A. legal teams exclaimed. “A classic tactic to distract from allegations of this type of misconduct is to “blame the victim” by suggesting that they invited the conduct, brought it on themselves, misunderstood the intentions, or even lied. Another classic tactic is to reverse the victim and offender and suggest that the offender is actually the victim.”
Lively’s lawyers conclude: “These concepts normalize and trivialize allegations of serious misconduct. Most importantly, media statements are not a defense to Ms. Lively’s legal claims. We will continue to prosecute her claims in federal court, where the rule of law determines who prevails, not hyperbole and threats.”
“Mr. Baldoni, Wayfarer and the other subjects chose not to have any conversations with The Times or address any of the specific text messages or documents and instead emailed a joint response, which was published in full,” the New York Times has said in its most recent response, taking aim at Team Baldoni’s assertion they were boxed in by the paper. “Also, they sent their response to The Times at 11:16pm ET Dec 20th, not at 2:16am ET Dec 21st as the complaint says.”
“We plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”
Tuesday, Freedman mocked Lively’s side for its own media strategy in this legal locking of horns.
“It is painfully ironic that Blake Lively is accusing Justin Baldoni of weaponizing the media when her own team orchestrated this vicious attack by sending the New York Times grossly edited documents prior to even filing the complaint,” the Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson and Gabrielle Union-representing attorney told Deadline.
“We are releasing all of the evidence which will show a pattern of bullying and threats to take over the movie,” he continued, staying on message from his various media appearances. “None of this will come as a surprise because consistent with her past behavior Blake Lively used other people to communicate those threats and bully her way to get whatever she wanted. We have all the receipts and more.”
A.K.A. – See you a lot more in court and on screen.
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