Justin Baldoni has responded to Blake Lively’s lawsuit which accuses him of sexual harassment and orchestrating a ‘social manipulation’ campaign which led to ‘severe emotional distress’.
Baldoni, 40, served as the director of It Ends With Us as well as starring as the co-lead, Ryle Kincaid, opposite Lively, 37, who played his love interest Lily Bloom.
The 2024 film was based upon the 2016 Colleen Hoover novel of the same name, and despite being a box office hit, was plagued by rumours of an on-set rift between Baldoni and Lively.
It was unclear what the driving force behind the tension was, until news of Lively’s lawsuit in recent days.
The New York Times published the details of Lively’s legal complaint on 21 December, which had obtained private text messages via a subpoena.
The messages appear to detail a strategy to smear Lively’s reputation, devised by Baldoni, his publicist Jennifer Abel, and crisis management expert Melissa Nathan.
Alongside details of the lawsuit becoming public, Lively stated: “I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted.”
Legal representation for Baldoni has since responded.
Attorney Bryan Freedman said: “It is shameful that Ms. Lively and her representatives would make such serious and categorically false accusations against Mr. Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and its representatives.”
Blake Lively has alleged ‘severe emotional distress’ (Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
Wayfarer Studios is a production company co-founded by Baldoni.
Freedman said Lively’s suit was ‘yet another desperate attempt to ‘fix’ her negative reputation which was garnered from her own remarks and actions during the campaign for the film; interviews and press activities that were observed publicly, in real time and unedited, which allowed for the internet to generate their own views and opinions.’
He continued: “These claims are completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media.”
He further stated that Baldoni ‘made the decision to proactively hire a crisis manager prior to the marketing campaign of the film’ as a result of due ‘multiple demands and threats made by Ms. Lively during production which included her threatening to not showing up to set, threatening to not promote the film, ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met.’
Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni filming It Ends With Us (Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
Lively’s lawsuit alleges that during filming, a meeting was held so that Lively could outline her demands to Baldoni, and that her husband Ryan Reynolds was in attendance.
As per the lawsuit, the demands included ‘no more showing nude videos or images of women’ to Blake, no more mention of Baldoni’s alleged previous ‘pornography addiction’, no more discussions about ‘personal experiences with sex’ in front of Blake and others, no more ‘descriptions of… genitalia’, no more inquiries about Blake’s weight, and no further mention of Blake’s dead father.
Tyla has previously contacted Sony Pictures, Baldoni and Lively’s reps for comment.
