Blake Lively sues It Ends With Us director Justin Baldoni alleging harassment and smear campaign

Actor Blake Lively sued It Ends With Us director Justin Baldoni and several others tied to the romantic drama on Tuesday, alleging harassment and a coordinated campaign to attack her reputation for coming forward about her treatment on the set.

The federal lawsuit was filed in New York just hours after Baldoni and many of the other defendants in Lively’s suit sued The New York Times for libel for its story on her allegations, saying the newspaper and the star were the ones conducting a coordinated smear campaign.

The lawsuits are major developments in a story emerging from the surprise hit film that has already made major waves in Hollywood and led to discussions of the treatment of female actors both on sets and in media.

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Lively’s suit said that Baldoni, the film’s production company Wayfarer Studios and others engaged in “a carefully crafted, coordinated, and resourced retaliatory scheme to silence her, and others, from speaking out.”

She accuses Baldoni and the studio of embarking on a “multi-tiered plan” to damage her reputation following a meeting in which she and her husband, actor Ryan Reynolds, addressed “repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behaviour” by Baldoni and a producer Jamey Heath, who is also named in both lawsuits.

The plan, the suit said, included a proposal to plant theories on online message boards, engineer a social media campaign and place news stories critical of Lively.

The alleged mistreatment on set included comments from Baldoni on the bodies of Lively and other women on the set.

And the suit says Baldoni and Heath “discussed their personal sexual experiences and previous porn addiction, and tried to pressure Ms. Lively to reveal details about her intimate life.”

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Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Lively’s lawsuit. But he previously called the same allegations “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious.”

Lively’s lawsuit comes the same day as the libel lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by Baldoni and others against the Times seeking at least $250 million. The Times stood by its reporting and said it plans to “vigorously defend” against the lawsuit.

Others who are defendants in Lively’s suit and plaintiffs in the libel suit include Wayfarer and crisis communications expert Melissa Nathan, whose text message was quoted in the headline of the December 21 Times story: “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.”

Written by Megan Twohey, Mike McIntire and Julie Tate, the story was published just after Lively filed a legal complaint with the California Civil Rights Department, a predecessor to her new lawsuit.

The libel lawsuit says the newspaper “relied almost entirely on Lively’s unverified and self-serving narrative, lifting it nearly verbatim while disregarding an abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims and exposed her true motives. But the Times did not care.”

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A spokesperson for the Times, Danielle Rhoades, said in a statement that “our story was meticulously and responsibly reported.”

“It was based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article. To date, Wayfarer Studios, Mr Baldoni, the other subjects of the article and their representatives have not pointed to a single error,” the statement said.

But Baldoni’s lawsuit says that “If the Times truly reviewed the thousands of private communications it claimed to have obtained, its reporters would have seen incontrovertible evidence that it was Lively, not Plaintiffs, who engaged in a calculated smear campaign.”

Lively is not a defendant in the libel lawsuit. Her lawyers said in a statement that “Nothing in this lawsuit changes anything about the claims advanced in Ms Lively’s California Civil Rights Department Complaint, nor her federal complaint, filed earlier today.”

The romantic drama It Ends With Us, an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling 2016 novel, was released in August, exceeding box office expectations with a $50 million debut.

But the movie’s release was shrouded by speculation over discord between Lively and Baldoni.

Baldoni took a backseat in promoting the film while Lively took centre stage along with Reynolds, who was on the press circuit for Deadpool & Wolverine at the same time.

Lively came to fame through the 2005 film The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and bolstered her stardom on the TV series Gossip Girl from 2007 to 2012. She has since starred in films including The Town and The Shallows.

Baldoni starred in the TV comedy Jane the Virgin, directed the 2019 film Five Feet Apart and wrote Man Enough, a book pushing back against traditional notions of masculinity.

He responded to concerns that It Ends With Us romanticised domestic violence, telling the AP at the time that critics were “absolutely entitled to that opinion.”

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He was dropped by his agency, WME, immediately after Lively filed her complaint and the Times published its story.

The agency represents both Lively and Reynolds.

Baldoni’s attorney, Freedman, said in a statement on the libel suit that “the New York Times cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful ‘untouchable’ Hollywood elites.”

“In doing so, they pre-determined the outcome of their story, and aided and abetted their own devastating PR smear campaign designed to revitalise Lively’s self-induced floundering public image and counter the organic groundswell of criticism amongst the online public,” he added. “The irony is rich.”

Associated Press writer Ryan Pearson contributed to this story.

Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).

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