EXCLUSIVE: Hours after Justin Baldoni filed a $400 million defamation and extortion lawsuit against Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds today, the It Ends With Us star and her legal team have clapped back – hard.
“This latest lawsuit from Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and its associates is another chapter in the abuser playbook,” said Lively’s Manatt, Phelps & Phillips attorneys and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP this evening in a statement provided to Deadline.
“This is an age-old story: A woman speaks up with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation and the abuser attempts to turn the tables on the victim. This is what experts call DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim Offender.”
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“Their response to sexual harassment allegations: she wanted it, it’s her fault” the lawyers add of Baldoni and gang’s federal filing in New York on Thursday morning.
“Their justification for why this happened to her: look what she was wearing,” Lively’s team go on to say in a some deft narrative reclamation of their own after Baldoni’s 179-page omnibus drop in the court docket. “In short, while the victim focuses on the abuse, the abuser focuses on the victim. The strategy of attacking the woman is desperate, it does not refute the evidence in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and it will fail.
Read the full statement from Blake Lively’s defense team in response to Justin Baldoni’s $400M defamation lawsuit below
Of course, as made evident today and over the past few weeks, Baldoni, his Wayferer Studios CEO Janey Heath, Crisis PR chief Melissa Nathan (who worked for Johnny Depp during his very down and dirty and ultimately successful legal battles with ex-wife and Aquaman star Amber Heard) and publicist Jennifer Abel insist they are the real victims here.
“At bottom, this is not a case about celebrities sniping at each other in the press,” proclaims Baldoni’s jury seeking complaint filed today in New York federal court against Lively, Reynolds, their publicist Leslie Sloane and her VisionPR firm, with cameos by Deadpool & Wolverine, the L.A. wildfires, an uncredited Taylor Swift, the New York Times and more. As there has been since this all spewed out into the public sphere last month, there’s a lot of the dark arts of Hollywood PR revealed too — to no one’s reward.
Baldoni’s legal action Thursday is the latest in an ever-growing line of filings, agency pink slippings and lawsuits on what may have occurred on It Ends With Us and the alleged smear campaign that followed commenced by Lively’s December 20 sexual harassment and retaliation complaint with California’s Civil Rights Department. Since then, the NYT ran a very detailed ‘We Can Bury Anyone: Inside A Hollywood Smear Machine’ story on December 21 and Baldoni and gang sued the Gray Lady in LA for defamation and $250 million on December 31, with Lively suing her co-star and cohorts the same day with most of what was in her CRD complaint.
(L-R) Ryan Reynolds as Nicepool in Deadpool & Wolverine, Justin Baldoni Disney/Arnold Turner/Getty Images for Wayfarer Studios
Add to that, Stephanie Jones, the founder of Baldoni’s former PR firm and the ex-employer of publicist Jennifer Abel, launched her own lawsuit against her ex-client and ex-staffer. As well, amongst, subpoenas, attorney media appearances and more, Baldoni’s team sent an evidence preservation letter on January 7, just before the fires exploded in LA, to Disney CEO Bob Iger and Marvel boss Kevin Feige over the Jane the Virgin vet’s feelings that Reynolds mocked him and bullied him with the Nicepool character featured in Deadpool & Wolverine.
Or as today’s I-didn’t-smear-you-you-smeared-me filing states, it’s messy.
“This is a case about two of the most powerful stars in the world deploying their enormous power to steal an entire film right out of the hands of its director and production studio,” the text message and email illustrated 179-page filing from Los Angeles-based attorney Bryan Freedman and NYC’s Meister Seelig & Fein PLLC. “Then, when Lively and Reynolds’ efforts failed to win them the acclaim they believed they so richly deserved, they turned their fury on their chosen scapegoat,” plaintiffs Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios, PR team Nathan and Abel, and others claim. “Tolerating a year and a half of their behavior while remaining polite and professional at every turn offered Badoni and Wayfarer no protection.”
(L-R) Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni in 2024’s It Ends With Us Sony Pictures
Baldoni and fellow plaintiffs want a jury trial – as does Lively in her own federal filing of last month. They might get it, if all this isn’t settled in some legal firm’s boardroom over the next few months – which feels unlikely at this juncture.
There’s also going to be more pox on the PR houses as no one is going to want to see themselves so allegedly attacked or so allegedly exposed again. Then again, Hell, the federal court might even link or meld Lively’s NYE lawsuit with Baldoni’s of today for expediency’s sake – but you can bet there still will be more.
Read the full statement from Blake Lively’s legal team today below:
This latest lawsuit from Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and its associates is another chapter in the abuser playbook. This is an age-old story: A woman speaks up with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation and the abuser attempts to turn the tables on the victim. This is what experts call DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim Offender.
Wayfarer has opted to use the resources of its billionaire co-founder to issue media statements, launch meritless lawsuits, and threaten litigation to overwhelm the public’s ability to understand that what they are doing is retaliation against sexual harassment allegations.
They are trying to shift the narrative to Ms. Lively by falsely claiming that she seized creative control and alienated the cast from Mr. Baldoni. The evidence will show that the cast and others had their own negative experiences with Mr. Baldoni and Wayfarer. The evidence will also show that Sony asked Ms. Lively to oversee Sony’s cut of the film, which they then selected for distribution and was a resounding success.
Their response to sexual harassment allegations: she wanted it, it’s her fault. Their justification for why this happened to her: look what she was wearing. In short, while the victim focuses on the abuse, the abuser focuses on the victim. The strategy of attacking the woman is desperate, it does not refute the evidence in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and it will fail.
Blake Lively Accuses Justin Baldoni Of
