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Everything you need to know about Justin Baldoni’s $400 million lawsuit against Blake Lively

Following the release of unseen footage from behind the scenes of It Ends With Us, let’s look at everything you need to know about Justin Baldoni’s $400 million lawsuit against Blake Lively.

In December 2024, the actress filed an 80-page legal complaint against her It Ends with Us co-star for sexual harassment, claiming he caused her “severe emotional distress.”

The 37-year-old also alleged that out of fear of the allegations coming out, Justin engaged in a “social manipulation” campaign to “destroy” her reputation.

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni It Ends With Us

Justin has strenuously denied her claims and sued the New York Times for its bombshell article detailing Blake’s allegation.

The actor has claimed that the newspaper published an article “rife with inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and omissions” that relied on Blake’s “self-serving narrative.”

On Thursday, January 16, the 40-year-old actor-director’s lawyers filed a $400 million complaint on behalf of Justin Baldoni, producer Jamey Heath, publicist Jennifer Abel, and crisis publicist Melissa Nathan, alleging that Blake Lively took actions to take control of the popular film.

Following Justin’s $400 million lawsuit, the actor’s team released unedited footage of a dance scene from the film.

The actor’s legal team have claimed the footage was released with the intention of disproving Blake’s claims that “he made her uncomfortable by nuzzling her neck and telling her, ‘it smells good.'”

Justin’s lawyers released a statement alongside the video that said: “Ms Lively’s complaint alleges that during a scene Mr Baldoni and Ms Lively were filming for a slow dance montage, Mr Baldoni was behaving inappropriately.”

Blake Lively It Ends With Us

“The following videos captured on May 23, 2023, clearly refute Ms Lively’s characterisation of his behaviour. The scene in question was designed to show the two characters falling in love and longing to be close to one another.”

“Both actors are clearly behaving well within the scope of the scene and with mutual respect and professionalism. These are all three takes filmed of the sequence.”

In the clip, the pair can be heard chatting about their partners and joking about Justin’s nose blocking their kisses.

Justin Baldoni in It Ends With Us

Following the clip’s release, Blake’s team quickly issued a statement: “Justin Baldoni and his lawyer may hope that this latest stunt will get ahead of the damaging evidence against him, but the video itself is damning.”

“The video shows Mr Baldoni repeatedly leaning in toward Ms Lively, attempting to kiss her, kissing her forehead, rubbing his face and mouth against her neck, flicking her lip with his thumb, caressing her, telling her how good she smells, and talking with her out of character.”

“Every frame of the released footage corroborates, to the letter, what Ms. Lively described in Paragraph 48 of her Complaint,” the statement continued.

Blake’s lawyers added: “Every moment of this was improvised by Mr Baldoni with no discussion or consent in advance and no intimacy coordinator present. Mr Baldoni was not only Ms Lively’s co-star, but the director, the head of studio and Ms Lively’s boss.”

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni in It Ends With Us

They continued: “Any woman who has been inappropriately touched in the workplace will recognise Ms Lively’s discomfort,” and claimed the tactic was “an unethical attempt to manipulate the public.”

The release of the footage followed Justin Baldoni’s filing of a $400 million lawsuit.

The lawsuit he is bringing is based on allegations of civil extortion, defamation, invasion of privacy, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, intentional interference with contractual relations, intentional interference with prospective economic advantage, and negligent interference with economic advantage.

In a statement, Justin Baldoni’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, said: “This lawsuit is a legal action based on an overwhelming amount of untampered evidence detailing Blake Lively and her team’s duplicitous attempt to destroy Justin Baldoni, his team and their respective companies by disseminating grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and doctored information to the media.”

Justin Baldoni in It Ends With Us

“It is clear, based on our own all-out willingness to provide all complete text messages, emails, video footage and other documentary evidence that was shared between the parties in real-time, that this is a battle she will not win and will certainly regret. Blake Lively was either severely misled by her team or intentionally and knowingly misrepresented the truth.”

“Let’s not forget, Ms. Lively and her team attempted to bulldoze reputations and livelihoods for heinously selfish reasons through their own dangerous manipulation of the media before even taking any actual legal action.”

“We know the truth, and now the public does too, Justin and his team have nothing to hide, documents do not lie.”

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni in It Ends With Us

According to Justin Baldoni’s lawsuit, Blake emailed him a revised version of a scene involving their two characters on a rooftop.

According to Justin, he only showed “very moderate resistance” to her changes, but Blake was “seemingly wounded” by his response and sought the assistance of Reynolds and a “megacelebrity friend” to get what she wanted.

When word of the lawsuit leaked, the “megacelebrity” was generally believed to be Blake’s best friend, Taylor Swift.

Blake Lively and Taylor Swift

After Justin texted the actress that he “liked her pages and hadn’t needed Reynolds and her megacelebrity friend to pressure him,” he allegedly received a reply in which Blake referred to Ryan and Taylor as “her dragons.”

The suit asserted: “The message could not have been clearer. Baldoni was not just dealing with Lively. He was also facing Lively’s ‘dragons,’ two of the most influential and wealthy celebrities in the world, who were not afraid to make things very difficult for him.”

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni in It Ends With Us

Another shock bombshell revealed in the suit was that Blake allegedly never bothered to read the novel, even after principal production started.

She allegedly “came as no surprise to her worried colleagues, given that, even well into production, Lively had not even read the book,” according to his insistence that she had a “fundamental lack of understanding” of the original material.

According to Justin, Blake “even tried to ‘Google’ the colour of her character’s hair instead of picking up the book.”

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni in It Ends With Us

According to Justin’s recent lawsuit, Blake once allegedly apologised on set for the odour of her body makeup and spray tan.

After replying, “It smells good,” Justin proceeded to act, slow dancing like he thought his character would with his partner—a behaviour that necessitates some physical contact, according to the lawsuit.

This account contradicts Blake’s sexual harassment complaint, which accused him of dragging his kisses from her ear and down her neck while saying, “It smells so good,” without any support from the character or the script.

In the meantime, Justin claimed in his recent court document that Blake “took them out of character again and began to joke about Baldoni’s nose, which he laughed off and joked in turn, even as Lively joked that he should get plastic surgery.”

“Lively’s comment about Baldoni’s nose is also captured on camera,” Justin said, characterising Blake’s account of the interaction as “a documented and knowingly fabricated lie.”

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni | IT ENDS WITH US

In her suit against Justin, Blake claimed that the director and co-star had engaged in “improvised physical intimacy” during sequences without getting her consent.

He has now reversed the roles in his complaint, claiming that the actress was the one who “engaged in unchoreographed kissing scenes” while in character.

As a “professional actor,” Justin is “accustomed” to adapting to “variations” in scenes “without needing “permission” while in character,” according to his legal statement.

The suit asserted: “While Lively now takes issue with any innocuous improvisation Baldoni, as Ryle, may have allegedly initiated while in character, Baldoni treated their relationship on camera as professional; each playing their part, each doing their job.”

“If no one was supposed to improvise, Baldoni would have no way of knowing based on Lively’s own actions. Lively demonstrated, again and again, that this was a normal and acceptable part of filming romantic scenes.”

Blake Lively in It Ends With Us

According to Justin, he collaborated with the domestic abuse charity No More and promised to give the group one per cent of the movie’s earnings.

In his latest lawsuit, he claimed that Blake “refused the opportunity to meet with No More, despite playing the lead role in a movie centred on themes of survival and resilience in the face of domestic abuse.”

Justin’s new lawsuit criticises Blake’s marketing strategy for the movie, including her choice to cross-promote with her alcohol business, Betty Booze, which is named after her daughter.

Blake Lively and Brandon Sklenar in It Ends With Us

The lawsuit further alleged: “Reynolds and Lively drafted a statement and demanded that Baldoni, Wayfarer, and Heath issue that statement, requiring them to apologise to the public and fall on their sword, despite having done nothing wrong – or else the ‘gloves would come off.’”

They allegedly made the demand through William Morris Endeavour, their talent agency, which also handled Justin until his abrupt termination following Blake’s initial sexual harassment accusation against him.

“Multiple WME executives acknowledged that in their experience, Lively and Reynolds’ threats were not to be taken lightly, though admitting to false, vague, and unspecified ‘mistakes’ would be tantamount to admitting to career-ending misconduct.”

“Baldoni, Wayfarer, and Heath refused to apologise for sins they had never committed. They took a stand, knowing full well that Lively and Reynolds would bring the full might of their celebrity artillery against them. And that is precisely what happened.”

Blake Lively in It Ends With Us

In his latest lawsuit, Justin accused Blake of “inducing the other cast members to shun Baldoni, in an early attempt to give fans the impression that Baldoni had committed an egregious sin, something so egregious that no one wanted to even take photos with him or have him around.”

The lawsuit puts forward a theory that Blake “was leaving what she had earlier referred to as “’crumbs,’ a social media strategy she had learned from a close celebrity friend: to give fans just enough to allow them to come to their own conclusions, thereby launching an army of detectives that, on information and belief, Lively hoped would turn against Baldoni.”

In the suit, Justin shared photos of him and his family “being held” in a basement during the New York premiere of It Ends With Us.

One photo shows Justin, his wife, Emily Baldoni and various other family members sitting around a red table in a windowless space, surrounded by boxes of popcorn and bottles of Coke and water.

Another photo shows Justin and his guests posing against pallets of Dasani water bottles and Coke bottles.

The photos were shared to support Justin’s claims that Blake used “threats and extortion” to “relegate” her colleagues to “sit out their own premiere” in the basement.

 

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Justin has alleged he and his guests were “ushered” inside and were subsequently “held” in the room where the photos were taken to “avoid even a chance of interaction with Lively or her guests” once she arrived on the red carpet.

“They were confined to a makeshift holding area surrounded by concession stand stock, with only fold-out tables and chairs arranged in a square,” the suit claims.

“Surrounded by close friends, family, soda bottles, and a lot of love, the irony of being held in a basement on what was arguably one of the most important nights of Baldoni’s career thus far, was not lost on anyone.”

 

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The lawsuit also accused Blake of excluding Justin from the “official celebrity after-party” for the film, despite the fact that it was an event “ultimately paid for by Sony and Wayfarer.”

As a result, Baldoni had to quickly organise and fund a separate after-party for himself and the Wayfarer team,” the lawsuit alleged, “forcing the company to cover the costs for two events—one for Lively and everyone else, and one for Baldoni and Wayfarer’s own friends, family, crew, and team.”

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