At the end of last year, Blake Lively filed a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department claiming that her It Ends With Us director and co-star Justin Baldoni had sexually harassed her and waged a smear campaign against her. The day after it was filed, the New York Times dropped an extensive report about the alleged smear campaign. Since then, Lively and Baldoni’s legal battle has only grown more intense. She formally filed her suit against him, and he sued the Times for libel. Now, Baldoni has fired back with his own suit against Lively, claiming that she stole his movie from him and defamed him along the way.
On January 16, Baldoni, It Ends With Us producer Jamey Heath, crisis PR expert Melissa Nathan, publicist Jennifer Abel, and Wayfarer Studios filed a civil suit in New York, naming Lively, Ryan Reynolds, publicist Leslie Sloan, and Vision PR (Sloan’s company) as defendants. If Nathan’s name sounds familiar, it is probably because Johnny Depp hired her during his defamation case against Amber Heard. She was retained by Baldoni in early August, around the time of the film’s premiere.
The 179-page complaint accuses the defendants of extortion and defamation and gives a very detailed account of the plaintiffs’ experience making It Ends With Us and the ensuing drama surrounding its release.
“Had Lively chosen to merely ride out the self-inflicted press catastrophe she faced in August 2024, the public would likely have moved on and never known the truth about her,” the complaint reads. “No one except the parties involved would have known that she used threats and extortion to relegate the colleagues she once highly praised to a basement to sit out their own premiere, while she enjoyed the spotlight of a premiere and afterparty that was ultimately co-financed by both Wayfarer and Sony.”
Baldoni claims that Lively “robbed” him of his movie and “tormented” not only him but his family and business partners for a year and a half. As an example, Baldoni points to a meeting he had at Lively and Reynolds’s home where they met to discuss a version of a scene Lively had rewritten herself. “Lively summoned Baldoni to her New York penthouse where Baldoni was greeted by Ryan Reynolds, who launched into enthusiastic praise for Lively’s version of the scene,” the complaint reads. “Hours later, as the meeting was ending, a famous, and famously close, friend of Reynolds and Lively, walked into the room and similarly began praising Lively’s script.” In screenshots of text messages included in the complaint, it’s revealed that the famous friend is someone named Taylor, presumably Swift.
Most notably, Baldoni’s suit goes point by point through a list of conditions that Lively required in order to return to work after the SAG and WGA strikes ended in late 2023. Lively claims that the list was brought to producers to protect her from sexual harassment she claimed she experienced before the strike. Baldoni claims that Lively was never sexually harassed and the list was a way for her to gain the upper hand in their professional relationship.
For each point, Baldoni and Wayfarer claim that the condition had already been met or that Lively was mischaracterizing an incident that had happened prior. For example, Lively requested an intimacy coordinator be present on set and that all sex scenes be choreographed with them beforehand. The complaint includes screenshots that seem to show that not only had an intimacy coordinator already been hired but that Lively hadn’t wanted to meet with her to plan out sex scenes ahead of shooting.
Another condition for Lively’s return was that no one entered her trailer while she was undressed. Lively was breastfeeding during the film’s production, and Baldoni claims that she invited him into her dressing room while she was pumping so that they could run lines together. In another incident, Heath claims he was invited into her dressing room while she was either nursing or pumping (while fully covered up) and that he turned around while the spoke. According to the complaint, Lively later mentioned that they had made eye contact and it made her uncomfortable, to which Heath replied that he was sorry and hadn’t realized. “I know you weren’t trying to cop a look,” Lively allegedly said.
The defendants say that the final nail in the coffin came when Baldoni, Heath, and Wayfarer Studios refused to issue a public apology to Lively at her request. A talent-agency executive apparently “communicated the demand from Lively and Reynolds that Wayfarer, Heath, and Baldoni make a public apology that day and that, if they failed to do so, the ‘gloves would come off.’” It’s not entirely clear what Lively and Reynolds wanted them to apologize for, but the complaint claims they believed that Baldoni, Heath, and Wayfarer were “waging a shadow campaign against her.”
The next day, Baldoni and Heath say they were told that Lively and Reynolds had written a statement for Wayfarer to issue, in which the company, Baldoni, and Heath “would have to acknowledge and own their ‘mistakes’ and ‘own’ all negativity being aimed at Reynolds and Lively.” They refused to do so. As far as the alleged smear campaign goes, the plaintiffs still insist that their communications were taken out of context by the New York Times and that Lively had created her own bad press by not treating the film’s content matter with enough gravity. The defendants are asking for a $400 million in damages.
In a statement shared with the Cut, a representative for Lively called Baldoni’s suit “another chapter in the abuser playbook,” adding: “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.”
“Their response to sexual harassment allegations: She wanted it, it’s her fault,” the statement continued. “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.”
This post has been updated.