Blake Lively Disputes “False Premise” of Justin Baldoni’s $250 Million New York Times Libel Suit

As the new year begins, a pair of lawsuits from former It Ends With Us collaborators Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni are making waves across Hollywood.

Baldoni, director and colead of the big-screen adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s 2016 bestseller, is suing The New York Times for libel and false-light invasion of privacy over a December 21 article titled “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.” The piece reported that Baldoni sexually harassed Lively and then hired a crisis PR firm to enact a smear campaign against her. Lively initially filed a complaint against Baldoni, his Wayfarer production company, and others allegedly involved in the smear campaign, with California’s Civil Rights Department. And on Tuesday, the day Baldoni filed his $250 million libel suit against the Times, Lively filed a suit in New York federal court as well.

The latest litigation arrives after previous rumors of discord between Lively and Baldoni, who did not complete any joint press obligations during the August rollout for It Ends With Us. The film ultimately grossed more than $350 million worldwide. Conversation about the costars’ relationship had quieted until about December, when The New York Times’ report came out, detailing text messages and emails Lively’s team had obtained via subpoena that appeared to show a coordinated plan to plant stories about Lively that would tarnish her reputation.

In a written statement shared with media, including with Vanity Fair, Lively said: “I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted.”

Lively’s claims focused on Baldoni, as well as It Ends With Us producer Jamey Heath; Wayfarer Studio cofounder Steve Sarowitz; Baldoni’s publicist, Jennifer Abel; and Melissa Nathan, the crisis PR manager Baldoni hired as the film was being released. Those five are now suing the Times, claiming the idea that they “orchestrated a retaliatory public relations campaign against Lively for speaking out about sexual harassment…is categorically false and easily disproven,” according to the suit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

As first reported by Variety on December 31, Baldoni’s suit claims that the Times “relied almost entirely on Lively’s unverified and self-serving narrative,” alleging that the digital correspondence the report quotes were “cherry-picked” and “stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead.” The suit also accuses the outlet of not giving Baldoni and his team sufficient time to respond to Lively’s allegations ahead of the story’s publication, which allegedly occurred nearly two hours earlier than expected and 14 hours after they were first contacted by the paper.

“The role of an independent news organization is to follow the facts where they lead,” a spokesperson for The New York Times said in a statement to press. “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. We published their full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well. We plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.” In an email to Vanity Fair, a Times spokesperson disputed the claim that the newspaper did not provide a sufficient time to respond to the allegations and said that “Baldoni, Wayfarer, and the other subjects chose not to have any conversations with the Times or address any of the specific text messages or documents.”

After the Times story was published, Lively received public support from many key players in It Ends With Us—including author Colleen Hoover and costars Jenny Slate and Brandon Sklenar, as well as studio Sony Pictures, which said of Lively in a statement to Deadline: “We strongly condemn any reputational attacks on her.”

Baldoni, meanwhile, has been dropped from the talent agency William Morris Endeavor, which also represents Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds. In his suit, Baldoni claims that Lively and Reynolds pressured an WME agent to drop the actor at the Deadpool & Wolverine premiere. In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, WME denied that Baldoni’s former representative attended the event or that there was “any pressure from Reynolds or Lively at any time to drop Baldoni as a client.”

Baldoni has denied Lively’s claims of sexual harassment, including allegations that the studio ignored her request to have an intimacy coordinator present while shooting sexual scenes, and that Baldoni made inappropriate comments on set and entered Lively’s trailer without consent as she breastfed. In the suit, Baldoni argues that he hired a crisis PR firm as a “protective measure” ahead of the film’s premiere, claiming that Lively attempted to seize control of the movie during production before coordinating a “strategic and manipulative” smear campaign of her own.

“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,” attorneys for Lively said in a statement to press. “This lawsuit is based on the obviously false premise that Ms. Lively’s administrative complaint against Wayfarer and others was a ruse.… While we will not litigate this matter in the press, we do encourage people to read Ms. Lively’s complaint in its entirety. We look forward to addressing each and every one of Wayfarer’s allegations in court.” Vanity Fair has reached out to a representative for Lively for further comment.