Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni have filed competing lawsuits, ramping up the bitter battle over their claims of what happened on the set of It Ends With Us.
On Tuesday, Lively filed a lawsuit in New York against her co-star and the director of the film, alleging sexual harassment on the movie set and a co-ordinated effort to “destroy” her reputation in Hollywood.
Meanwhile, Baldoni is suing the New York Times – the outlet that first reported on Lively’s initial complaint late last month – for libel, accusing the journalists who reported the story of working with Lively to tarnish his reputation and claiming they glossed over important evidence.
The lawsuits are major developments in a story emerging from the surprise hit film that has already made major waves in Hollywood and led to discussions of the treatment of female actors both on sets and in media.
Lively’s suit claims that Baldoni, the film’s production company Wayfarer Studios and others put together “a carefully crafted, coordinated, and resourced retaliatory scheme to silence her, and others, from speaking out.”
Blake Lively attends the New York premiere of ‘It Ends With Us’ at at AMC Lincoln Square in New York, Aug. 6, 2024.
Charly Triballeau / AFP via Getty Images
She accuses Baldoni and the studio of embarking on a “multi-tiered plan” to damage her reputation following a meeting in which she and her husband, actor Ryan Reynolds, addressed “repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behavior” by Baldoni and a producer, Jamey Heath, who is also named in both lawsuits.
The plan, the suit said, included a proposal to plant damaging theories on online message boards, engineer a social media campaign and place news stories critical of Lively.
The alleged mistreatment on set included comments from Baldoni on the bodies of Lively and other women on the set. And the suit says Baldoni and Heath “discussed their personal sexual experiences and previous porn addiction, and tried to pressure Ms. Lively to reveal details about her intimate life.”
Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni are seen on the set of ‘It Ends with Us’ on Jan. 12, 2024 in Jersey City, N.J.
Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
She is seeking compensatory damages, in an unknown monetary amount, which includes “lost wages” and money for “mental pain and anguish.”
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Baldoni’s lawsuit, meanwhile, alleges that the New York Times “cherry picked” communications from the materials given to them and reported some of the claims “stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead.”
His lawsuit is asking for a trial by jury and damages of US$250 million (C$360 million.)
In a statement provided to several news outlets, the New York Times defended its report, saying 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.”
(L-R) Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds attend the ‘It Ends With Us’ New York Premiere at AMC Lincoln Square Theater on Aug. 6, 2024 in New York City.
Cindy Ord / Getty Images
“We published their (Baldoni and his team’s) full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well,” it continued, telling The Associated Press it plans to “vigorously defend” against the lawsuit.
But Baldoni’s lawsuit says that “If the Times truly reviewed the thousands of private communications it claimed to have obtained, its reporters would have seen incontrovertible evidence that it was Lively, not Plaintiffs, who engaged in a calculated smear campaign.”
Lively is not a defendant in the libel lawsuit. Her lawyers said in a statement that “Nothing in this lawsuit changes anything about the claims advanced in Ms. Lively’s California Civil Rights Department Complaint, nor her federal complaint, filed earlier today.”
It Ends With Us, an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling 2016 novel, was released in August 2024, exceeding box office expectations with a US$50 million debut. But the movie’s release was shrouded by speculation over in-fighting between the two leads. Baldoni took a back seat in promoting the film while Lively took centre stage along with Reynolds, who was on the press circuit for Deadpool & Wolverine at the same time.
Baldoni — who starred in the telenovela send-up Jane the Virgin, directed Five Feet Apart and wrote Man Enough, a book pushing back against traditional notions of masculinity — did respond to concerns that the film romanticized domestic violence, telling the AP at the time that critics were “absolutely entitled to that opinion.”
“If anybody has had that real-life experience, I can imagine how hard it would be to imagine their experience being in a romance novel,” he said. “To them, I would just offer that we were very intentional in the making of this movie.”
Baldoni was dropped by his agency, WME, last month following Lively’s complaint filing and the NYT story.
Baldoni’s lawyer, Freedman, said in a statement on the libel suit that “the New York Times cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful ‘untouchable’ Hollywood elites.”
“In doing so, they pre-determined the outcome of their story, and aided and abetted their own devastating PR smear campaign designed to revitalize Lively’s self-induced floundering public image and counter the organic groundswell of criticism amongst the online public,” he told The Associated Press. “The irony is rich.”
—with files from The Associated Press
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