On December 20th, Blake Lively filed her bombshell complaint with the California Civil Rights Department, accusing Justin Baldoni of sexual harassment and waging a “social manipulation” campaign to destroy her. Her team provided emails and texts to the NYT, communications between Baldoni’s publicist and crisis manager, to authenticate Blake’s claims. Baldoni was also dropped by WME and his publicist. On New Year’s Eve, Baldoni and his team responded by suing the New York Times for $250 million. They’ve also promised to countersue Blake and release all of the texts & communications between Blake and Baldoni, but that hasn’t happened yet. Alongside all of these legal issues, there’s been a large-scale PR war happening across the trade papers, news outlets and beyond as regular gossip-watchers try to follow the ins and outs of the situation. Both Blake and Justin have fully engaged in the PR war. But according to a new statement from Blake’s legal team, Justin’s side needs to stop?
Blake Lively’s legal team is condemning what they call “more attacks” from Justin Baldoni. On Dec. 20, Lively, 37, who starred in Baldoni’s film It Ends with Us, filed a complaint against Baldoni and others, including his producing partners and publicists, alleging sexual harassment and a retaliatory smear campaign to tarnish her reputation. Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman called the claims “false, outrageous and intentionally salacious,” and on Dec. 31, the actor-director also filed a $250 million lawsuit against The New York Times over the newspaper’s Dec. 21 article about Lively’s complaint, alleging it was the actress “who engaged in a calculated smear campaign.”
On Monday, Jan. 6, Lively’s legal team told PEOPLE in a statement that her “serious claims of sexual harassment and retaliation” are “backed by concrete facts.”
“This is not a ‘feud’ arising from ‘creative differences’ or a ‘he said/she said’ situation,” her lawyers’ statement read. “As alleged in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and as we will prove in litigation, Wayfarer [Studios] and its associates engaged in unlawful, retaliatory astroturfing against Ms. Lively for simply trying to protect herself and others on a film set. And their response to the lawsuit has been to launch more attacks against Ms. Lively since her filing.”
The statement continued: “Sexual harassment and retaliation are illegal in every workplace and in every industry. A classic tactic to distract from allegations of this type of misconduct is to ‘blame the victim’ by suggesting that they invited the conduct, brought it on themselves, misunderstood the intentions, or even lied. Another classic tactic is to reverse the victim and offender, and suggest that the offender is actually the victim. These concepts normalize and trivialize allegations of serious misconduct.”
“Most importantly, media statements are not a defense to Ms. Lively’s legal claims,” Lively’s legal team wrote. “We will continue to prosecute her claims in federal court, where the rule of law determines who prevails, not hyperbole and threats.”
It’s true that Baldoni’s lawyer issuing briefings and threats is not a countersuit. It’s true that Baldoni’s team is trying to muddy the waters and cast doubt on certain aspects of Blake’s claims. But it’s also true that Justin Baldoni has every right to fight back and sue and wage a battle in the court of public opinion, just as Blake is doing. Did Blake think Baldoni was just going to roll over? Did she think that he would have no power to fight back? From what I’ve seen, there are absolutely issues that need to be dealt with in court, with both sides providing evidence and receipts.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.
