On Thursday, Justin Baldoni sued/countersued Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds and their publicist. In his 179-page complaint, Baldoni provides a lot of text messages between himself and Lively before and during the It Ends With Us production. He also includes texts and emails with other producers and actors. In one mind-numbingly hilarious section, Baldoni and his team are increasingly concerned during the production that Blake Lively has never read the source material, Colleen Hoover’s novel of the same name, and that Blake is Googling information about her character. I bring that up because Blake took it upon herself to rewrite some scenes, alongside her husband Ryan Reynolds. At one point, Blake invited Baldoni to her Tribeca penthouse, and Blake, Ryan and Taylor Swift gave Baldoni a hard sell on why he should use all of Blake and Ryan’s rewrites. Afterwards, Baldoni and Lively exchanged texts and she referred to herself as the Khaleesi (from Game of Thrones) and suggested that Ryan and Taylor Swift are her dragons.
Justin Baldoni claims Taylor Swift was involved in backing Blake Lively’s vision for It Ends With Us when he resisted some rewrites. Among the claims made in his 179-page complaint, Baldoni, 40, alleges that Swift, 35, and Reynolds, 48, pressured him into accepting one of Lively’s rewrites for the film. Christy Hall is credited as the screenwriter who adapted Colleen Hoover’s blockbuster novel.
In the pre-production phase, Lively allegedly asked to “take a pass” on the film’s rooftop scene, where her character Lily Bloom meets Baldoni’s Ryle Kincaid for the first time. Baldoni was “reluctant” to let her “rewrite this key scene,” per the complaint, “but “agreed to take a look at what she put together.”
Baldoni claims her version was “dramatically” different from how it was originally written, and after his “exceedingly mild resistance,” Lively “went silent for multiple days” and later said in an alleged text message that his reaction to her rewrite “didn’t feel great for me” — or to Reynolds and what Baldoni characterizes as “another megacelebrity friend.” A text message included in the filing reveals that “influential and wealthy” celebrity friend to be Swift.
Baldoni claimed he was “summoned” to an earlier meeting with Reynolds at their New York City penthouse where the pop superstar arrived and “began praising Lively’s script. Baldoni understood the subtext: he needed to comply with Lively’s direction for the script.”
Per the complaint, Baldoni felt he didn’t need “Reynolds and her megacelebrity friend to pressure him,” so he texted her that while her changes made the scene “so much more fun and interesting” he “would have felt that way without Ryan and Taylor,” adding a playful emoji. Lively allegedly responded by comparing herself to the Game of Thrones character Khaleesi and that Reynolds and Swift are her two “dragons.”
Another alleged text from Lively included in the filing shows the actress referring to Reynolds, with whom she shares four kids and married in 2012, and Swift as her “Dance Moms level stage moms.”
“They are embarrassingly effusive,” she added per the alleged text messages, calling herself the “luckiest m—–f—er on the planet” to have them as her supporters and “most trusted partners. She allegedly added, “I think they wanted you and me to see how they felt about [the rewrites] because they’ve been by my side for far too many experiences where I’ve been overlooked.”
Lively, in the alleged text message, said to Baldoni: “If you ever get around to watching Game of Thrones, you’ll appreciate that I’m Khaleesi, and like her, I happen to have a few dragons. For better or worse, but usually for better. Because my dragons also protect those I fight for. So really we all benefit from those gorgeous monsters of mine. you will too, I can promise you.”
Even before the lawsuits started happening, back when Blake and Justin were separately promoting IEWU, the story about Ryan rewriting the rooftop/balcony scene came out, because Blake spoke about it openly in the press. People side-eyed it even then – why was Blake getting her husband to do an “unauthorized” rewrite on a crucial scene without the director’s knowledge? That was before we knew Blake was the Khaleesi and that Ryan and Taylor are her dragons. Separate from the allegations of sexual harassment, the way Blake and Ryan were throwing their weight around would have been a huge nightmare for any production and any director. And bringing Taylor Swift in to pressure Baldoni? LMAO.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images, Avalon Red.
