As the dust settles on his messy legal battle with Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni has spoken out.
On Wednesday, the It Ends with Us director and star shared a video in which he and wife Emily Baldoni opened up about “the injustice and the pain” they said they’ve endured during the contentious two-year battle with his co-star from their 2024 Colleen Hoover adaptation.
“We have not spoken publicly for the better part of the last two years, and it’s not because we haven’t had anything to say, because Lord knows we have,” Justin prefaced in the Instagram video. “But it just felt like every time we went to make a video like this, we wanted to speak, something was telling us not to. It just didn’t feel like the right time.”
Although Justin noted that “gratitude has saved us,” Emily said, “We’ve had to wrestle with so many things and try to understand so many things, like, how could something like this even happen? Let alone disguised as a fight for women. So much to unpack. And the truth is, reality is that there’s been a lot of trauma for us to move through as a family, which also makes it hard to speak.”
Justin added, “There have been so many painful things that have been spoken into existence over the last couple years, and that created so much noise, and we didn’t want to add to the noise. We just wanted to let the justice system run its course.”
The couple credited their faith and fans for keeping them strong amid the lawsuit, which ended when a federal judge ruled last month that Justin and his Wayfarer Studios have to pay Blake Lively’s legal fees for the court battle in which Lively accused him of harassment and retaliation, to the tune of $8,035,040.88 to be specific.
“We are healing. And if you’ve ever been through something traumatic, you know that healing isn’t linear. It looks different every day,” said Justin. “And we have had to rethink for ourselves what is real and what matters. And it’s this. It’s the kids. It’s our family. It’s our friends. It’s our community who’ve been there for us. It’s our faith. I think we’re closer and more devoted and steadfast in our faith than we’ve ever been.
“Also, this has been on both of our hearts. There were so many of you who, when we didn’t have a voice, were our voice. You had a prayer at the very beginning, which was that you just pray that people would have discernment. And so many of you had discernment and you used your intuition and you trusted that. And you have given your time to fight for us. And thank you does not feel like enough, but we’re here in large part because of so many of you and all of our friends and family. And one thing that we’ve learned is that when God presses the reset button and everything else is stripped away, that that’s when love shows up. And we feel so loved,” he added.
While Emily said “there is so much more to say,” she continued, “That time will come, but for now, we are going to focus on continuing the healing and hanging out with our kiddos and enjoying life.”
Baldoni’s side has until July 13 to either agree to the more than $8 million or put up a fight. Reps for the Wayfarer Studios co-founder did not respond this morning to Deadline’s request for comment on Lively’s math and her filings.
