Justin Baldoni, facing sexual harassment allegations from Blake Lively, recently launched a website to defend himself.
On the site, he shared an amended $400 million defamation lawsuit against Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, as well as a timeline of events connected to the case.
One of the key documents featured on the website allegedly reveals that Lively and Reynolds wanted Baldoni to issue a statement through his production company, Wayfarer, to help reduce the negative attention Lively was receiving.
This backlash was based on online claims that Lively was insensitive to the film’s handling of domestic violence and that she exhibited “mean girl” behavior, according to NBC News.
Lively has claimed that Baldoni’s team contributed to damaging her reputation, an accusation that Baldoni’s lawyer has denied.
The document shared on Baldoni’s website includes a statement dated August 12, 2024. The statement reads:
*“It Ends With Us was a troubled production, and we take full accountability for it. We are deeply sorry for any upset caused privately and publicly.”*
The statement continues, expressing apologies for any negativity aimed at the cast, including Lively, and clarifying that it was a shared decision to promote the film separately.
It adds:
*“We’ve always said that we’re not perfect and, even unintentionally, if we make mistakes, we will own them. We accept full responsibility, and we’re learning and growing from this experience. We thank everyone for their patience as we continue to improve.”*
Baldoni’s court filings, which were posted on his website, argue that he and his team didn’t believe this statement would have the desired effect.
According to the filings, his representatives felt the statement was vague and suggested guilt without providing any concrete explanations. They also believed that if the goal was to ease the negative online attention surrounding Lively, the statement would likely have the opposite result.
Baldoni’s legal team rejected the demand to issue the statement, saying they would not take responsibility for issues that didn’t exist. They also shared handwritten notes from a meeting between Baldoni and the film’s intimacy coordinator. These notes, which Baldoni claims were shown to Lively during script meetings, discussed explicit scenes involving her character.
The document notes that these conversations ideally should have taken place directly between Lively and the intimacy coordinator, but Lively reportedly refused to meet with her, leaving Baldoni to relay the information personally.
In December 2024, Lively filed a lawsuit against Baldoni, accusing him of sexual harassment, retaliation, emotional distress, privacy invasion, and lost wages. Baldoni has denied these claims and filed his own $400 million lawsuit against Lively, Reynolds, and their publicist, Leslie Sloan.
The legal drama intensified when Baldoni’s amended lawsuit accused Lively of leaking her sexual harassment complaint to The New York Times before it was officially filed.
Baldoni’s legal team claims they discovered that the article on Lively’s complaint was written before its official release, citing a ‘message-embed-generator’ with a 2024 date embedded in the article’s HTML source code.
In response, The New York Times denied these accusations, stating that their reporting was based on accurate information and that the date found in the HTML was due to Google software, not early access to the complaint.
The film at the center of this feud, *It Ends With Us*, was released in August 2024 and became a box office hit. The movie, based on Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel, features Lively as Lily Bloom, a florist who falls for an abusive neurosurgeon, played by Baldoni.
Despite the legal battles, both the film and its performances have garnered praise, with the cast and crew maintaining that they handled the production with professionalism, despite the controversies.