UPDATED with statements from Blake Lively‘s lawyers, WME & the New York Post: In a move straight out of the Donald Trump playbook, Justin Baldoni and his publicists have sued the New York Times for millions because of the paper’s explosive story on his It Ends With Us co-star Blake Lively’s claims of sexual harassment and a smear campaign from the Jane the Virgin alum and his flacks.
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The 87-page libel complaint filed in LA Superior Court just hours before 2024 ends accuses the Gray Lady and its journalists of being in league with Lively with a lengthy December 21 article that “cherry-picked and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead.” Painting with a broad brush, the four claim filing from Baldoni, Melissa Nathan, Jennifer Abel and others asserts “the Times’ complicity arises from its apparent endorsement of the criminal alteration of these text messages by Lively.”
“In addition, Defendants, and each of them, willfully refused to afford Plaintiffs meaningful opportunity to respond to the allegations.”
Blake Lively’s side, on the other hand, had another perspective on events, as one would expect with the stakes rising.
“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 told Deadline.
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“This lawsuit is based on the obviously false premise that Ms. Lively’s administrative complaint against Wayfarer and others was a ruse based on a choice ‘not to file a lawsuit against Baldoni, Wayfarer,’ and that ‘litigation was never her ultimate goal,” Lively’s Manatt, Phelps & Phillips attorneys and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP firm add of the “astroturfing” attack she alleged suffered to her and Reynolds personal and professional detriment. “As demonstrated by the federal complaint filed by Ms. Lively earlier today, that frame of reference for the Wayfarer lawsuit is false. 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.”
Full of text messages from Baldoni’s TAG PR team and others, Lively’s 80-page December 20 complaint to the California Civil Rights department accuses her IEWU co-star/director of sexually harassing her and subsequently enacting “a coordinated effort to destroy her reputation” via social media attacks and planted press pieces.
A “shocking” countersuit was promised, and now we have it — though the shock value isn’t that high.
Written in the hyperbolic tones that lawyer Bryan Freedman is well known for, Baldoni’s suit Tuesday tries to taint Lively’s own publicist Leslie Sloane for her past associations with Harvey Weinstein and clutches its pearls over Ryan Reynolds’ stern words to Baldoni and his Wayfarer Studios team during an all-hands January 4th meeting and on other occasions. The filing states that one producer present at the January 4th meeting over Lively’s requirements to resume filming said “in his 40-year career he had never seen anyone speak to someone like that in a meeting.” Additionally, “the Sony representative mentioned that she would often think of that meeting and her one regret is that she didn’t stop Reynolds’ berating of Baldoni.”
In fact, even though Sony on December 23 said they “strongly condemn any reputational attacks” on Lively, Baldoni’s filing denies that he and his team ever even saw the itemized requirements contained in Lively’s 10-claim complaint that the Gossip Girl vet says was presented at the January 4, 2024 sit-down.
“In reality, many of these items were encountered for the first time in the CRD Complaint itself and include references to highly disturbing events that never occurred,” Baldoni’s libel and invasion of privacy suit says of the list (which you can see here). “The repeated use of the phrase ‘no more’ before each demand falsely suggests that these alleged incidents had previously taken place and needed to cease. This implication is not only misleading but entirely untrue.”
What’s odd and left fundamentally unmentioned today is that the Nathan and Abel repped Baldoni and his Wayfarer Studios responded just after that meeting with a note that while they saw things differently than Lively, “Wayfarer, Sony and Production respectfully acknowledge that [Lively] has concerns regarding safety, professionalism and workplace culture.”
While Lively had yet to actually file a suit of her own, though one was dropped today too, Abel’s old Joneswork boss Stephanie Jones has already sued her ex-employee, Baldoni and TAG boss Nathan in a defamation action of her own. This came just days afters Abel pointed a finger at Jones in a now delated Facebook posting for the internal communications in and around Baldoni getting to Lively’s lawyers and the NYT for its piece timed to the actress’ confidential CCR filing.
As Lively has garnered support from fellow Hollywood A-listers, Baldoni saw their mutual agency WME pink slip him on December 21. As remarkable as it may sound, the agency wasn’t leaned on by either superstar Reynolds, who is also signed to WME, nor Lively to cut Baldoni loose, I hear.
Point of fact, the agency gave Baldoni another kick out the door in reaction to today’s lawsuit.
“In Baldoni’s filing there is a claim that Reynolds pressured Baldoni’s agent at the Deadpool & Wolverine premiere, a WME spokesperson said in a statement tonight. “This is not true. Baldoni’s former representative was not at the Deadpool & Wolverine premiere nor was there any pressure from Reynolds or Lively at any time to drop Baldoni as a client.”
Still, adding insult to injury, the self-declared “feminist” also had an ally of woman award rescinded, among other consequences of Lively’s very public checkmate.
In addition, the name of New York Post staff writer Sara Nathan, sister to Crisis PR boss Melissa Nathan, has appeared in the filings around this matter, with allegations raised about her role in reporting the It Ends With Us dramas. The Murdoch owned paper has bluntly rejected them and their implications.
“It’s unreasonable that Sara Nathan keeps getting dragged into these filings, a NY Post spokesperson said to Deadline on this. “She’s only done her job — get both sides’ points of view and report them. The Post’s standard is to work with publicists, fact check, and be accurate. Further, the two articles in question are not negative toward Blake Lively, so the idea that there’s some sort of collusion here doesn’t make any sense. It is deeply unfair and unwarranted that Sara’s reputation is getting dirtied by all this mud-slinging.”