Blake Lively won’t be among Taylor Swift’s guests in her VIP suite at the Super Bowl this Sunday, with TMZ reporting that their friendship has been “badly damaged” by the actor dragging the pop mega-star into her sordid legal battle with Justin Baldoni, her director and co-star for the film “It Ends With Us.”
Of course, it won’t be known for sure until game day whom Swift has invited to help her cheer on boyfriend Travis Kelce and his Kansas City Chiefs, as they try for their third straight Super Bowl victory. But TMZ said that sources with “direct knowledge” of the situation said that Lively won’t be among Swift’s celebrity friends, expected to join her at New Orlean’s Caesars Superdome.
Lively was Swift’s most prominent celebrity guest at the 2024 Super Bowl, when the Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers in Las Vegas. The two women, close friends for at least a decade, could be seen hugging each other and screaming triumphantly during suspenseful moments in the game.
But TMZ has reported that the friendship has suffered a severe fracture in the wake of the Baldoni legal drama, which began when Lively went to the New York Times in December, then filed a lawsuit accusing the actor and director of sexually harassing her during production of the 2024 domestic violence drama. Lively also accused Baldoni and his co-producer and publicists of orchestrating a smear campaign against her during the “It Ends With Us” press tour.
But Baldoni has hit back with a defamation and extortion lawsuit of his own, denying that he sexually harassed Lively and accusing her and Ryan Reynolds of wresting control of the movie from him and then going on their own P.R. campaign to damage his reputation.
Both TMZ and the Daily Mail have reported that Swift is distancing herself from Lively and feels that the actor used her in her effort take take control of the movie from the director. The outlets reported that Swift is not happy that she’s been identified in Baldoni’s defamation lawsuit as Lively’s “mega-celebrity” friend who made the director feel intimidated.
Baldoni specifically alleged that Lively used her friendship with Swift to put pressure on him to comply with Lively’s re-write of a crucial scene in the drama, in which Lively and Baldoni play lovers. He said he encountered Swift when he visited Lively’s Manhattan apartment in April 2023 to talk about her revisions. Reynolds also was there and Baldoni said that both Reynolds and Swift praised Lively’s revisions.
Baldoni’s lawsuit also reveals what’s become a sore point for Swift, according to the Daily Mail and TMZ. It’s a lengthy text exchange between him and Lively in which Lively likened herself to “Khaleesi,” the iconic “Game of Thrones” character Daenerys Targaryen, and referred to Reynolds and Swift as her two “dragons.”
Being used as an “intimidation tactic” in Lively’s conflict with Baldoni isn’t sitting well with Swift, a source told the Daily Mail.
“For the time being she is taking a step back from Blake because she doesn’t want to get tangled in this more than she already has — which is far more than she ever needed to be,” the insider said.
Her friends also think that Blake’s “I’m Khaleesi, and like her, I happen to have dragons” text to Justin was uncool and unnecessary because she was essentially used as an intimidation tactic,” the source said. “She was referred to as some kind of pet or possession.”
In Swift’s view, she “shouldn’t even be involved in this at all,” the insider told the Daily Mail. On the night when Baldoni encountered Swift, she had gone to Lively and Reynold’s apartment with the expectation that Lively’s meeting with Baldoni would be finished. TMZ’s sources said that Swift wonders if Lively arranged it so that Baldoni would meet her, as a way of Swift letting her director know that she has powerful friends.
But other reports say that the women remain friends, regardless of whether Lively makes it to the Super Bowl or not. Lainey at Lainey Gossip said that Lively probably kept Swift apprised all along of her conflicts with Baldoni during the film’s production, including his alleged sexual harassment. Lainey also questioned TMZ’s sources on the “fractured” relationship, noting that the site is known as “gossip headquarters for the men’s rights movement.” Lainey furthermore doubted that Swift would have a problem with Lively’s “dragon” reference for her, given that she built a whole era around snake symbolism and producing songs about getting revenge on people who have wronged her.
Legal experts this week pointed to other reasons Swift might not be happy with Lively right now. There’s a likelihood that Swift would have to sit for a deposition as part of pre-trial discovery, according to the co-hosts of TMZ’s new legal podcast, Two Angry Men. This is frightening prospect for an image-conscious celebrity because it means she would have to reveal details about her role in the legal saga, co-host Harvey Levin, TMZ’s founder and a long-time attorney, said.
The other co-host, celebrity attorney Mark Geragos, explained that a deposition is “one lawyer, who is adverse to you, taking your deposition. On camera. Without a judge to sustain objections. … You’ve got to answer everything, so every laundry list of dirty deeds that you have ever done could be fair game.”
Levin predicted that the fear of depositions would motivate Lively to settle, even on Baldoni’s terms. Lively doesn’t “want to get deposed. She doesn’t want Ryan to get deposed, and she certainly doesn’t want Taylor to get deposed. And Taylor will put pressure on her for that.”