Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively. Getty Images (2)
Justin Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman fired back at Blake Lively’s response to the director’s $400 million lawsuit.
“After my clients filed a comprehensive lawsuit packed with almost 200 pages of undeniable facts and documentary evidence which crushed their false allegations of a smear campaign by providing doctored communications to The New York Times, Blake and her legal team have just one heinous pivot left, and that is to double down on the revoltingly false sexual allegations against Mr. Baldoni,” Freedman told Deadline in a Saturday, January 18, statement.
Baldoni, 40, sued Lively, 37, earlier this week, seeking $400 million in damages. In the filing obtained by Us, Baldoni’s legal team claimed that Lively was “determined to make Baldoni the real-life villain in her story” to conceal her alleged “tone-deaf” promotion of their film It Ends With Us.
Baldoni directed and starred in the 2024 adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel about an abusive relationship. Lively portrayed protagonist Lily Bloom on screen and also served as an executive producer. Baldoni played Lily’s husband, Ryle Kincaid.
Justin Baldoni is leaning on his loved ones amid his ongoing legal battle against Blake Lively. “We’re grateful to be with the family, man,” Baldoni, 40, told photographers on Friday, January 17, at Los Angeles International Airport in a video obtained by TMZ. “We have amazing friends and family and faith.” Baldoni shares daughter Maiya, […]
Months after the movie’s August 2024 premiere, Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment and fostering a “hostile work environment.” She also claimed in her December 2024 lawsuit that Baldoni attempted to coordinate a concentrated campaign to ruin her reputation. (Freedman, on behalf of Baldoni, denied the allegations at the time.)
Shortly after Baldoni sued Lively last week — also naming her husband, Ryan Reynolds, and their team of publicists in the suit — she denied the accusations.
Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds. Theo Wargo/WireImage
“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,” Lively’s lawyers told Us in a statement. “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.”
Update: 1/7/24, 12 p.m. ET — Bryan Freedman, who is Justin Baldoni‘s lawyer, issued the following statement in response to Lively’s team: “It is painfully ironic that Blake Lively is accusing Justin Baldoni of weaponizing the media when her own team orchestrated this vicious attack by sending the New York Times grossly edited documents prior […]
The publicists named in the suit also issued a statement.
“It is devastating that we are forced to answer this viciously selfish ongoing litigation littered with documented and provable lies in the midst of the tragedy impacting California where we reside,” the statement shared with Us reads. “Five months ago Ms. Lively chose to promote a film about domestic violence in a way that caused instant negative and organic backlash due to her own highly publicized actions. Instead of accepting responsibility, she decided to cruelly blame us. This malicious attack on private individuals by Ms. Lively and her team in which they chose to spoon-feed The New York Times with doctored, out of context and edited text messages in an effort to paint herself as a victim set off a chain of events that has been harmful beyond measure.”
The message continued, “To be clear, Ms. Lively and her team initiated this smear campaign in the media for the sole intention of gaining undeserved public sympathy for her own missteps. Over the last month we have received death threats, abhorrent abuse and vile anti-semitic slurs hurled at us due to her decision to use us as scapegoats for her own choices promoting her film in which she made millions of dollars. With this filing, we lift our own curtain of what happens when the entitled weaponize power, fear and money to destroy, intimidate and bully those who get in their way.”
Baldoni, meanwhile, has been staying focused on his family in light of the situation.
“We’re grateful to be with the family, man,” he told photographers at Los Angeles International Airport on Friday, January 17. “We have amazing friends and family and faith.”
Baldoni shares daughter Maiya, 9, and son Maxwell, 7, with his wife, Emily Baldoni.
