Justin Baldoni loses scheduling bid to depose Taylor Swift in legal battle with Blake Lively

• A judge has denied Justin Baldoni’s request to extend the timeline to depose Taylor Swift.
• Baldoni’s lawyers previously said Swift was unable to appear for a deposition before October 20.
• Baldoni sought to depose the pop star in his ongoing legal fight with Blake Lively.

He’s too late.

A Manhattan federal judge has rejected Justin Baldoni’s bid for a timeline extension to depose Taylor Swift in his legal fight with the billionaire pop star’s old pal, Blake Lively.

That means Baldoni’s attorneys likely won’t be able to question the “Cruel Summer” singer under oath in the case, like they had hoped.

“The only justification they have provided for the extension is their assertion that Swift’s preexisting professional obligations now prevent her from appearing for a deposition prior to October 20, 2025,” US District Judge Lewis Liman wrote in his order late Friday.

Baldoni’s attorneys recently asked the judge if he could extend the deposition deadline in the case to the end of October so that they could depose Swift.

In a court filing last Thursday, lawyers for Baldoni wrote that Swift “agreed” to appear for a deposition in Lively’s sexual harassment lawsuit against Baldoni, her director-costar in the 2024 flick “It Ends With Us.”

Baldoni’s attorneys said in the filing that Swift, however, could not do it before October 20 due to “preexisting professional obligations.” Swift’s new album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” is scheduled to drop on October 3.

Swift’s lawyers countered in a Friday letter to the judge that the chart-topping superstar never agreed to a deposition in the case.

“Further, my client did not agree to a deposition, but if she is forced into a deposition, we advised (after first hearing about the deposition just three days ago) that her schedule would accommodate the time required during the week of October 20 if the parties were able to work out their disputes,” Swift’s attorney wrote. “We take no role in those disputes.”

The letter added, “since the inception of this matter we have consistently maintained that my client has no material role in this action.”

Representatives for Swift, Lively, and Baldoni did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Business Insider on Monday.

Meanwhile, the judge in his Friday ruling suggested that Baldoni’s lawyers had waited too long to seek Swift’s deposition, saying that the movie director’s team had not demonstrated “good cause” for their requested extension.

Baldoni’s camp “provided no discussion of when they began attempting to schedule the deposition” of Swift, Liman wrote in his order.

“Discovery has been ongoing in this case for approximately six months,” Liman continued.

The judge said that Baldoni’s legal team previously requested Swift’s deposition in May before ultimately withdrawing the subpoena.

“They have offered no evidence that they have served a renewed subpoena on Swift,” Liman added. “Thus, at most, the Wayfarer Parties have demonstrated that scheduling the deposition now presents logistical difficulties; that does not answer the question of why the deposition ‘could not have been conducted earlier.'”

In his ruling, the judge granted Lively’s request for a 10-day extension of the September 30 deadline to complete depositions of Baldoni and his associates.

“Lively has demonstrated good cause for her requested extension,” the judge wrote, saying that Baldoni’s team has “only recently produced certain additional responsive documents—nearly 80,000 pages in total—and have failed to produce others entirely, notwithstanding this Court’s order of August 27, 2025, which required that those documents be produced by September 8, 2025.”

Lively sued Baldoni late last year, accusing him of sexual harassment on the “It Ends With Us” movie set and of engaging in a retaliatory online smear campaign against her. Other defendants in the lawsuit include Baldoni’s production company, Wayfarer Studios, his fellow producers, and his publicists.

Baldoni — who has denied the allegations — then countersued Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, in a defamation complaint.

The judge dismissed Baldoni’s $400 million countersuit in May. The now-dismissed lawsuit referred to Swift as Lively’s “megacelebrity friend.”

A spokesperson for Swift told Business Insider in May, after Swift was initially subpoenaed in the case, that the move to subpoena the pop star was made to create “tabloid clickbait.”

“Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie, she was not involved in any casting or creative decisions, she did not score the film, she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film, she did not even see ‘It Ends With Us’ until weeks after its public release, and was traveling around the globe during 2023 and 2024 headlining the biggest tour in history,” the spokesperson said at the time.

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