Like many people, I thought it was odd that Justin Baldoni’s legal team had not countersued Blake Lively and her PR team in the New Year. Blake’s legal and PR strategy was very effective – she filed a complaint against Baldoni with the California Civil Rights Department on the Friday before Christmas, and her team organized a New York Times exclusive which was published the weekend before Christmas. Baldoni and his people were doing a lot of talking post-Christmas, and Baldoni’s team managed to file a lawsuit against the New York Times on New Year’s Eve. I wondered what the hold-up was on countersuing Blake, but then Variety mentioned (in a piece about Baldoni this week) that Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freeman lost his house in the Southern California wildfires. Which explains the delay. In any case, Justin Baldoni is now suing Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds and their publicist Leslie Sloane. It sounds like a monster lawsuit too.
Justin Baldoni is now suing Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, their publicist Leslie Sloane and Sloane’s PR firm Vision PR, Inc. over the heated situation behind the scenes of It Ends With Us.
Attorneys for the actor-director, 40, filed a $400 million lawsuit in the Southern District of New York on Thursday, Jan. 16 on behalf of Baldoni, producer Jamey Heath, publicist Jennifer Abel and crisis publicist Melissa Nathan, claiming Lively, 37, took measures to gain control of the hit movie. He’s suing on claims of civil extortion, defamation, false light invasion of privacy, breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, intentional interference with contractual relations, intentional interference with prospective economic advantage, and negligent interference with prospective economic advantage.
Reps for Lively, Reynolds and Sloane did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
In a statement, Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman says: “This lawsuit is a legal action based on an overwhelming amount of untampered evidence detailing Blake Lively and her team’s duplicitous attempt to destroy Justin Baldoni, his team and their respective companies by disseminating grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and doctored information to the media. It is clear based on our own all out willingness to provide all complete text messages, emails, video footage and other documentary evidence that was shared between the parties in real time, that this is a battle she will not win and will certainly regret. Blake Lively was either severely misled by her team or intentionally and knowingly misrepresented the truth.”
“Let’s not forget, Ms. Lively and her team attempted to bulldoze reputations and livelihoods for heinously selfish reasons through their own dangerous manipulation of the media before even taking any actual legal action. We know the truth, and now the public does too,” the statement continues. “Justin and his team have nothing to hide, documents do not lie.”
Lively has already sued Baldoni and his associates, making claims of sexual harassment and a retaliatory smear campaign orchestrated by Baldoni.
A few weeks ago, I said I was taking a wait-and-see approach to a lot of this stuff. That still holds. This is going to be a huge case in the months and possibly years to come. Meanwhile, Blake’s legal team has now responded. Here is their statement:
“This latest lawsuit from Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and its associates is another chapter in the abuser playbook. 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. This is what experts call DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim Offender.”
“Wayfarer has opted to use the resources of its billionaire co-founder to issue media statements, launch meritless lawsuits, and threaten litigation to overwhelm the public’s ability to understand that what they are doing is retaliation against sexual harassment allegations.”
Lawyers for Lively, 37, say Baldoni and his associates “are trying to shift the narrative to Ms. Lively by falsely claiming that she seized creative control and alienated the cast from Mr. Baldoni. The evidence will show that the cast and others had their own negative experiences with Mr. Baldoni and Wayfarer. The evidence will also show that Sony asked Ms. Lively to oversee Sony’s cut of the film, which they then selected for distribution and was a resounding success.”
“Their response to sexual harassment allegations: she wanted it, it’s her fault. 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.”
One of Baldoni’s claims, within his lawsuit, is that he and other producers were concerned that Blake hadn’t read the source material, Colleen Hoover’s book, and that Blake was extremely unconcerned about what story they were actually trying to tell. This response from Blake’s team feels similar, like she hasn’t bothered to read any part of Baldoni’s suit. Baldoni isn’t saying at any place that Blake asked for it or that she wanted it. Baldoni is providing context and nuance, often in text form, of some of Blake’s claims. To be fair, I think it’s very likely that Justin did and said some weird/creepy stuff and that Blake really felt uncomfortable. But I also think there’s going to be a lot of evidence that Blake has exaggerated and misrepresented some of her claims about Baldoni, and Team Lively has already been caught in several lies/misrepresentations. If this ends up going far into the legal/trial process, Lively and Reynolds are not going to come out unscathed, especially since they’ve put Justin Baldoni in a position where he’s got nothing to lose.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.
