Justin Baldoni’s Lawyer Decries “Revoltingly False Sexual Allegations” From Blake Lively As Lawsuits Fly; Brands At Business Heart Of Dispute
EXCLUSIVE: With yet another week of more lawsuits in the ever increasing obloquy fray between It Ends With Us stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, the court of public opinion has proved as much of a field of operations as the state and federal dockets.
A front that Bryan Freedman is willing to concede to no rival.
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“After my clients filed a comprehensive lawsuit packed with almost 200 pages of undeniable facts and documentary evidence which crushed their false allegations of a smear campaign by providing doctored communications to the New York Times, Blake and her legal team have just one heinous pivot left, and that is to double down on the revoltingly false sexual allegations against Mr. Baldoni,” the hard hitting and media savvy attorney told Deadline.
The Liner Freedman Taitelman + Cooley LLP co-founder was responding Saturday to the January 16 response from Lively’s Manatt, Phelps & Phillips attorneys and Willkie Farr & Gallagher lawyers to Baldoni’s long expected lawsuit of last week against his co-star, hubby Ryan Reynolds, the publicist Leslie Sloane and her VisionPR shingle. Match point of sorts to Lively’s NYE legal action against Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios, CEO Jamey Heath, financier Steve Sarowitz and PR chiefs Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel for sexual harassment on IEWU and a post-production smear campaign, the $400 million-seeking move by the Jane the Virgin vet goes after Lively, Reynolds and Sloane for defamation and extortion.
A quick few hours after the Freedman-led Baldoni crew of lawyers put their filing in the docket, Lively’s team exclusively and brusquely told Deadline: “This latest lawsuit from Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and its associates is another chapter in the abuser playbook.” They added: “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.”
Those were fighting words the often pugilistic Freedman couldn’t let stand without reply.
As he also said to me today:
The mere fact that Ms. Lively feels that she can publicly destroy Mr. Baldoni’s reputation in an attempt to devastate his future career and then deny him or his team their own ability to defend theirselves against her is preposterous. Mr Baldoni never once publicly attempted to call Ms. Lively out for her own many wrongdoings during filming, he kindly addressed all her concerns during filming in the correct manner despite the fact that he wholly disagreed, he himself was committed to do things differently and to keep the peace as she specifically admitted to in her own lawsuit. We will not only continue to defend our clients against Blake’s power, privilege and all out lies, but we will now fight even harder for the voiceless in the DV community who are unfairly suffering while she continues to push on her own self-serving and selfish vendetta in the media.
Based on Colleen Hoover’s 2016 novel, It Ends With Us focused on domestic abuse across generations and in the relationship between Lively’s grieving florist character and co-star/director Baldoni’s rage-filled neurosurgeon. A box office hit last summer for Sony with a nearly $400 million haul on the big screen before moving on Netflix, It Ends With Us was surrounded by rumors of problems between its leads, with Lively and Baldoni doing no press for the film together before its August premiere.
The now very public airing of that alleged dirty laundry began when Lively filed a detailed sexual harassment and retaliation complaint against Baldoni and others with California’s Civil Rights department on December 20. The next morning, the NYT, who Baldoni is now suing for $250 million, ran an extensive ‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine’ story, full of text message and emails from Baldoni’s Crisis PR people. Baldoni and Freedman have said the NYT story was a set-up, full of cherry-picked info. The Gray Lady has said its journalists were fair, deeply reporting and doing their jobs.
With all the allegations of what-you-did-to-me and the rejoin of I-did-nothing-to-you-you-smeared-me that A-lister backed Lively and recently WME-dumped Baldoni and their various partners, publicists and pricey lawyers have been flinging at each other for nearly the past month in a phalanx of filings and statements, the business aspect of show business should not be overlooked here. This whole affair is personal in the pocketbook as it is to reputations. Baldoni complains his movie was stolen from him by Lively, with Reynolds’ help, and now the duo and their accusations have left his career DOA. Lively says she was subjected to harassment and abuse on set and dragged through the digital mud by a Nathan and Abel-constructed attack that severely damaged her brand.
To that — amid all the accusations of “astroturfing” by Team Baldoni against Lively and Reynolds’ allegedly berating Baldoni at a charged meeting a year ago — one significant aspect of Lively’s initial CRD complaint and her NYE lawsuit has slid somewhat out of the spotlight. While not centering on the supposed weaponization and unleashing of a “digital army” against Lively, the matter may give away the heart of the clash and why the Green Lantern-starring couple waited months to take their dispute with Baldoni public.
In both the December 20 CRD filing and the federal lawsuit 11 days later, Lively’s lawyers note how the fallout from the online caustic criticism of her personally was “harming her businesses.” Like her multi-platforming husband, Lively has long had a number of lucrative revenue streams from brand products and endorsement deals.
The ramifications of Livley’s 2024 haircare line flopping, in relative terms, as the onslaught of negative social media posts about her abounded, must certainly play a role, contractually or otherwise.
“Following the August 2024 launch of Ms. Lively’s hair care line, Blake Brown, which she spent seven years building, the Instagram account of the brand was flooded by harassing and derogatory comments, including many posted by user accounts that had no followers and no prior posts (suggesting inauthenticity), and which did not relate to the brand’s products,” Lively’s lawsuits states.
“The retaliation campaign against Ms. Lively has also damaged her companies,” the unspecified damages-seeking suit continues. “The long-planned launch of her haircare line, Blake Brown—a date which was set more than a year prior to the date selected (not by Ms. Lively) for the release of the Film—was caught up in the crossfires of the negative environment against Ms. Lively. Initially, before the ‘social manipulation’ campaign started, Ms. Lively was informed that Blake Brown was Target’s largest haircare launch on record. Based on internal sales projections, the sudden and unexpected negative media campaign launched against Ms. Lively depressed retail sales of Blake Brown products by 56%–78%. This dramatic drop was completely at odds with the high satisfaction scores that Blake Brown products received in the significant consumer testing performed before launch or its initial success after launch.”
Adding to all that, Freedman — after putting Reynolds on notice on client and pal Megyn Kelly’s show, which discussed slags against Baldoni that appeared in last summer’s mega-hit Deadpool & Wolverine — sent an evidence preservation letter on Jan. 7 via FedEx to Disney CEO Bob Iger and Marvel president Kevin Feige. Full of speculation about if the Shawn Levy-helmed ‘Merc with a mouth’ movie was mocking Baldoni with its intentionally deplorable Nicepool character, the correspondence also promised more lawsuits. In another brand ambush, it additionally floated unsubstantiated notions of “complaints of sexual or other harassment asserted against Ryan Reynolds by any person.”
That low blow aside, it is unclear exactly when the Nicepool character, who is not part of Deadpool lore, was conceived and put in the $1 billion and more earning supesflick.
However, with Deadpool & Wolverine filming at the same time as the first part of It Ends With Us‘ production before the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes that shut down Hollywood for several months, all indications are that Nicepool was a late addition to the R-rated Disney picture, studio sources tell me. At the same time, those same sources say Deadpool & Wolverine was a very fluid production with Reynolds and Levy making last minutes changes and additions frequently.
With more filings and perhaps even lawsuits to come in the Lively vs. Baldoni battle, Freedman has taken a hard hit himself with his home decimated in the fire that roared through Pacific Palisades earlier this month. Lively’s team had no response to Freedman’s latest statement today when contacted by Deadline. If they do reply, this post will be updated.
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