The actor Blake Lively has sued the director of It Ends With Us, Justin Baldoni, and several others associated with the film, 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 on Tuesday, 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.
Lively’s suit alleges 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 after a meeting in which she and her husband, the 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 included a proposal to plant theories on online message boards, engineer a social media campaign and place news stories critical of Lively, the suit alleges.
The alleged mistreatment on set included comments from Baldoni on the bodies of Lively and other women on the set. The suit also alleges 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”.
Baldoni’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Lively’s lawsuit, but he has previously called the same allegations “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious”.
Lively’s lawsuit comes on the same day that Baldoni and others filed their libel lawsuit against the New York Times in Los Angeles superior court seeking at least $250m (£200m) in damages. The paper said it stood by its reporting and planned to vigorously defend itself against the lawsuit.
Others who are defendants in Lively’s suit and plaintiffs in the libel suit include the Wayfarer and crisis communications expert Melissa Nathan, whose alleged text message was quoted in the headline of the 21 December story which read: “‘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 federal 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.”
A spokesperson for the New York 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,” the statement said. “To date, Wayfarer Studios, Mr Baldoni, the other subjects of the article and their representatives have not pointed to a single error.”
Baldoni’s lawsuit, however, claims: “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.”
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Lively is not a defendant in the libel lawsuit. Her lawyers said in a statement: “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 $50m 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 centerstage 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 reputation 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, saying at the time that critics were “absolutely entitled to that opinion”.
He was dropped by his agency, WME, immediately after Lively filed her complaint and the New York Times published its story. The agency represents both Lively and Reynolds.
Freedman said in a statement on the libel suit: “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 revitalize Lively’s self-induced floundering public image and counter the organic groundswell of criticism amongst the online public. The irony is rich.”
