Left: Justin Baldoni attends a special screening of “The Boys in the Boat” at the Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023, in New York (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP). Right: File Photo by: zz/John Nacion/STAR MAX/IPx 2022 2/28/22 Blake Lively at the Netflix premiere of “The Adam Project” held on February 28, 2022 at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City (NYC).
The gloves are off in the ongoing legal dispute between actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni over allegations of sexual harassment and smear campaigns related to their 2024 movie “It Ends With Us,” with a judge issuing warnings to both sides in federal court on Monday — demanding that they stop attacking each other publicly — just days after Baldoni’s lawyers launched a website going after Lively.
Attorney Benjamin Chew, one of the lawyers who represented actor Johnny Depp during his defamation case against ex-wife Amber Heard, says he was blown away by the website move and legal tactics by Baldoni’s team, calling it “bold” and “aggressive” while appearing on Law&Crime’s “Sidebar with Jesse Weber” this week.
“I think it is very impressive,” Chew said. “Usually, you would not do something like that before a hearing. … It’s a novel approach, a bold approach.”
The website, thelawsuitinfo.com, features an amended complaint and an alleged timeline of what Baldoni says are relevant events, including text messages, emails and other content related to conversations between Baldoni and Lively. Content and court materials compiled by Baldoni’s lawyers between January 2019 and January 2025 — such as pleadings and court documents — are purportedly included, which they say are directly related to the making of “It Ends With Us” and allegations being hurled by Lively.
“I’m sure that they vetted it carefully,” Chew said. “Certainly, posting a pleading doesn’t seem to me to be out of bounds. These are pleadings made in the public records. Whenever you’re getting into work product or advocacy pieces, then I think it’s getting closer to the line.”
Chew sees similarities between the Depp v. Heard legal battle and ongoing feud between Lively and Baldoni, but he said there’s one key difference.
“In this case, I think both sides run the risk — more risk I think than in Depp v. Heard — of the jury not understanding why they should really care as much as I think the jurors may have in Depp and Heard,” Chew explained “A challenge that we had, and I think the other side had — but they really have it in this case — is to convince a jury of lay people why they should care about a dispute between two very powerful, successful, attractive actors. And I think that’s a challenge irrespective of the serious nature of the allegations.”
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Lively and Baldoni’s legal teams appeared in Manhattan federal court for a pretrial hearing to discuss a protection order blocking comments about the case after continued back-and-forth exchanges between the two parties, both online and in interviews.
“You’re not supposed to launch attacks on the other party’s character,” Lively’s lawyer, Michael Gottlieb, told the court.
“My clients are devastated financially and emotionally,” said Baldoni’s attorney, Bryan Freedman.
Lively is suing Baldoni, his production company and several others in connection to allegations of sexual harassment on the set of “It Ends With Us” — an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s 2016 bestselling novel of the same name, which details the life of a woman going through domestic abuse — and name-smearing during its release and promotion, her lawyers say. The movie was released in August 2024 and reports of Lively and Baldoni feuding over creative decisions and “secret” script revisions by Lively — allegedly leading to a behind-the-scenes beef between them that ballooned over time — emerged after the movie was released in theaters.
Lively’s suit, which was filed in California, claims Baldoni orchestrated a smear campaign against her across multiple social media platforms. She says the director and actor engaged in inappropriate conduct, such as entering into Lively’s trailer uninvited while she was breastfeeding her young child, showing Lively “pornographic” imagery and videos and failing to retain an intimacy coordinator for sexually-related scenes.
Baldoni, who claims the allegations against him are untrue, has filed a $400 million lawsuit against Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds, accusing them of civil extortion, defamation and invasion of privacy. Baldoni’s lawsuit accuses Lively of hijacking the creative direction of “It Ends With Us” and deflecting blame for torpedoing her own career with her reported attitude on set. He claims Lively fabricated accusations of a hostile work environment to smear his reputation and shift the public’s focus away from her allegedly hijacking the film.
Lively’s legal team has blasted Baldoni’s suit as “another chapter in the abuser playbook,” calling it 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,” Gottlieb told CNN in a statement last month.
On the same day Lively’s complaint was filed, The New York Times reported on the second half of Lively’s complaint against Baldoni, alleging that he and his public relations team were behind a “largely undetectable smear campaign” that targeted Lively. Baldoni subsequently filed a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times over the report.
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The 41-year-old insists that he in no way engaged in sexual harassment or improper conduct against Lively, and that any negative coverage she has received via social media was derived from her own actions. In his suit against Lively, Baldoni released text messages between himself and the “Gossip Girl” star that were sent during the production of “It Ends With Us,” in which Lively allegedly invited Baldoni to come into her trailer while pumping breast milk for her son. The messages purportedly show Lively confirming she did not need to meet an intimacy coordinator Baldoni had hired to be on set, which presents a vastly different story from Lively’s account.
While Lively’s recent lawsuit has gotten more press than other similar claims, it is only the most recent in a mounting trend of individuals claiming, either through lawsuits or otherwise, that part of the way they were damaged was by or through social media.
In 2022, after Depp scored his victory against Heard in his defamation suit against her, Heard’s attorney Elaine Bredehoft stated their belief was that a negative social media presence surrounding her at the time played a factor in the decision against her.
Asked whether jurors would see stuff like that during a trial, Bredehoft said: “How can you not? They went home every night. They have families. The families are on social media. We had a 10-day break in the middle because of the judicial conference. There’s no way they couldn’t have been influenced by it.”
Chew believes it’s the content being shared on social media — text messages, emails, audiotape and even video — from Baldoni’s lawyers that ultimately sways jurors, rather than comments by attorneys and random posts.
“I do think that the more they can cite to audiotape and video tape, I think that is particularly persuasive evidence,” Chew told Law&Crime. “Everybody can see it. And I think it’s much more impactful than just assertions, certainly assertions of counsel.”
One piece of purported evidence being floated by Baldoni’s team is a set of text messages between him and Lively, as well as ones sent by Reynolds, in which they praise him for being great to work with and express “mutual respect,” per their amended complaint.
Describing an alleged text exchange between Lively and Baldoni in April 2023, Baldoni’s lawyers write: “Baldoni shares the updated script with Lively. Lively excitedly texts Baldoni her thoughts on the pivotal Rooftop ‘meet-cute’ scene, acknowledging its significance in the story. She asks if she can take a pass at the dialogue, hoping to infuse more of her voice into the character and make it more ‘flirty and yummy.’ Baldoni welcomes her input, eager to see her take on the moment and make the character hers. He waits for her notes.”
Lively’s lawyers, meanwhile, have released messages and voicemails in which Baldoni is apologizing to her and calling her late at night to talk about her breastfeeding.
“Hey, Blake, it’s 2 a.m. Hopefully this does not wake you up,” Baldoni purportedly says in one audio recording. “I want to start with an apology. I f—ed up. That is a fail on my part.”
Chew believes that messages and evidence like this is what Lively and Baldoni’s case could come down to.
“Whenever you can hang someone with their own language and they’re in a position of having to explain that they didn’t really mean what they said,” he told Law&Crime. “You know the cliche, ‘When you’re explaining, you’re losing.’ So I think on both sides, whenever they have actually used video tape, audiotape, or used the actual words of the other side, I think that that’s a good day for them. … I think there is risk on both sides. … So it will be fascinating to see this play out.”
Elizabeth Vulaj contributed to this report.
