The legal battle between It Ends With Us co-stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni continues.
In response to Baldoni’s new $400-million defamation and extortion lawsuit against the Gossip Girl star, Lively’s legal team said in a 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,” the statement continued. “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,” the statement added.
Lively’s legal team, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips and Willkie Farr & Gallagher, issued their rebuttal hours after Baldoni filed his lawsuit in New York Federal Court on Thursday against the 37-year-old and her husband Ryan Reynolds, alongside two publicists.
They said that Baldoni is “trying to shift the narrative” to Lively “by falsely claiming that she seized creative control and alienated the cast” from 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,” the statement read.
“Their response to sexual harassment allegations: she wanted it, it’s her fault,” the statement concluded. “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.”
The suit by Baldoni and production company Wayfarer Studios seeks at least $400 million for damages that include lost future income. It alleges that Lively and Reynolds hijacked the production and marketing of It Ends With Us and manipulated media to smear Baldoni and others on the production with false allegations of sexual and other kinds of harassment.
It is the latest move in the legal battle surrounding the dark romantic drama.
Get breaking National news
For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen.
“This is a case about two of the most powerful stars in the world deploying their enormous power to steal an entire film right out of the hands of its director and production studio,” the suit says. “Then, when Lively and Reynolds’ efforts failed to win them the acclaim they believed they so richly deserved, they turned their fury on their chosen scapegoat.”
The lawsuit comes about two weeks after Lively sued Baldoni and several others tied to the film, alleging they retaliated against her for coming forward about her treatment on set.
It Ends With Us, based on the bestselling 2016 novel by Colleen Hoover, was released in August and exceeded box office expectations with a $50-million debut. It begins as a standard romantic drama before taking a dark turn into domestic violence. The fallout in its aftermath has made major waves in Hollywood and led to discussions of the treatment of female actors both on sets and in media.
“Heartbreakingly, a film that Baldoni envisioned years ago would honor the survivors of domestic violence by telling their story, with the lofty goal of making a positive impact in the world, has now been overshadowed beyond recognition solely as a result of Lively’s actions and cruelty,” the lawsuit says.
Lively’s allegations of sexual and other harassment followed by retaliation are utterly false, Baldoni’s suit alleges.
“Lively was so close and comfortable with Baldoni that she freely breast-fed in front of him during meetings,” the suit says.
Baldoni’s new suit also says that counter to Lively’s allegations, every request she made for an intimacy coordinator to help with sensitive scenes on the film was honoured. It focuses especially on a birthing scene, saying Lively’s contention that she was “mostly nude” with non-essential people present, including the film’s financier, were “knowingly false.”
The new lawsuit includes text messages between Lively and Baldoni, where she seemingly alludes to Taylor Swift as “one of her dragons.” Swift and Lively have been very close friends since 2015 and the pop star is the godmother of Lively’s children.
(Swift is not named as a defendant in Baldoni’s new suit and her name is not mentioned in the filing. There is only a reference to “Taylor” in a text message between the two co-stars.)
In the text messages between the pair, Baldoni goes into detail about the rooftop scene in the movie that Lively had allegedly reworked. His lawyers claim that the actor “felt obliged to text Lively to say that he had liked her pages and hadn’t needed Reynolds and her megacelebrity friend to pressure him.”
According to the suit, Lively invited Baldoni to her penthouse in New York, where Reynolds and a “megacelebrity friend” both praised Lively’s version of the rooftop scene.
“Also was working on rooftop scene today, I really love what you did. It really does hep a lot,” Baldoni wrote in the text message. “Makes it so much more fun and interesting. (And I would have felt that way without Ryan and Taylor). You really are a talent across the board. Really excited nd [sic] grateful to do this together.”
In a text from Lively, according to the suit, she calls Reynolds and another person, whose name is redacted, “absolute titans as writers and storytellers outside of their primary gig.”
“They also know I’m not always as good at making sure I’m seen and utilized for fear of threatening egos, or fear of affecting the ease of the process. They don’t give a sh*t about that. And because of that, everyone listens to them with immense respect and enthusiasm. So I guess I have to stop worrying about people liking me,” Lively allegedly wrote.
Lively goes on to compare herself to Khaleesi, a Game of Thrones character played by Emilia Clarke. “If you ever get around to watching Game of Thrones, you’ll appreciate that I’m Khaleesi, and like her, I happen to have a few dragons. For better or worse, but usually for better. Because my dragons also protect those I fight for. So really we all benefit from those gorgeous monsters of mine. You will too, I can promise you,” Lively wrote.
In Baldoni’s suit, he claims that the Game of Thrones reference was a way that Lively asserted her dominance.
“The message could not have been clearer,” the complaint stated. “Baldoni was not just dealing with Lively. He was also facing Lively’s ‘dragons,’ two of the most influential and wealthy celebrities in the world, who were not afraid to make things very difficult for him.”
Baldoni’s suit also alleges that Reynolds “swore at Baldoni and accused him of fat-shaming his wife.”
“In fact, Lively had earlier expressed insecurity about her postpartum figure, and Baldoni made every attempt to genuinely reassure her,” the lawsuit says.
The Jane the Virgin actor took a back seat during promotion of This Ends With Us while Lively took centre stage along with her husband, Reynolds, as he promoted his latest film, Deadpool & Wolverine.
During this time, Baldoni was dropped by his agency WME, which also represents Lively. The suit alleges that Reynolds was responsible for this after he approached a WME executive at the Deadpool & Wolverine premiere and “expressed his deep disdain for Baldoni, suggesting the agency was working with a ‘sexual predator.’”
Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, said in a statement Thursday that “this is a battle she will not win and will certainly regret.”
“Ms. Lively will never again be allowed to continue to exploit actual victims of real harassment solely for her personal reputation gain at the expense of those without power,” he said.
—With files from The Associated Press
