Blake Lively: Behind Her Lawsuit Against Justin Baldoni
Perhaps you’ve heard Blake Lively sued Justin Baldoni, her co-star and director in the romantic drama It Ends with Us based on the 2016 novel by Colleen Hoover. The issue is messy and there’s a lot to unpack since both camps have allegations against the other.
January 2024
The first scenes were shot in May 2023. Filming resumed in January 2024 after the writer’s strike in the U.S. The movie’s original release date of February 9, 2024, was pushed back to June 21, 2024, then to its eventual release date of August 9, 2024.
August 13, 2024
Fans speculated that the main leads were feuding since Blake Lively posed with all her co-stars for photos, apart from Justin Baldoni. They even did press interviews separately. Hawk-eyed fans also saw that Lively, Hoover, and other cast members have unfollowed Baldoni on social media, although he still follows them.
Lively also felt “fat-shamed” during filming for one scene when Baldoni asked her how much she weighed, months after giving birth to her fourth child. Baldoni, on his part, reasoned out it was because he had a back injury and didn’t want to trigger it.
August 26, 2024
Lively faced backlash over how she promoted the film, as fans called her out for being “tone deaf” since she did not discuss the major theme of the film, which is domestic violence. Per Daily Mail, Lively was also blasted online after she hosted an interview with her co-stars Isabela Ferrer, Jenny Slate and author Colleen Hoover but discussed other topics instead of using the chance and the platform to raise awareness about domestic violence.
Past interviews also started resurfacing, with Lively being rude to interviewers. Her alcohol brand, Betty Booze, was also served during the afterparty, which social media users called out. That’s because many feel that a film about domestic violence should not team up with an alcohol company since, according to the World Health Organization (via Alcohol Help), “roughly 55% of domestic abuse perpetrators were drinking alcohol prior to assault.”
December 21, 2024
Blake Lively accused Justin Baldoni of sexual harassment and an alleged effort to destroy her reputation. Per The Hollywood Reporter, the cast had a meeting to discuss Lively’s claims of a hostile environment during the shooting of It Ends with Us.
The demands addressed in that meeting included “Not showing nude videos or images of women to Lively; no more mentions of Baldoni’s alleged previous ‘pornography addiction’; no more discussions about sexual experiences in front of Lively and others; no further mentions of cast and crew’s genitalia; and no more inquiries about Lively’s weight, no more adding of sex scenes, oral sex or on camera climaxing by BL outside the scope of the script BL approved when signing onto the project.”
December 22, 2024
Justin Baldoni was reportedly dropped by the agency, WME who still represents Lively, per Deadline.
A Case of He Said vs. She Said
The New York Times reported about the smear campaign Baldoni allegedly planned against Blake Lively. In one of the text messages between Jennifer Abel who works in publicity for Baldoni’s studio Wayfarer, and Melissa Nathan, a PR crisis expert, Abel wrote, “I think you guys need to be tough and show the strength of what you guys can do in these scenarios. He wants to feel like she can be buried.” He, meaning Baldoni and she, meaning Lively.
Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, debunked Lively’s allegations. Per E! News, “It is shameful that Ms. Lively and her representatives would make such serious and categorically false accusations against Mr. Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and its representatives.”
He added that it is “yet another desperate attempt to ‘fix’ her negative reputation which was garnered from her own remarks and actions during the campaign for the film; interviews and press activities that were observed publicly, in real-time and unedited, which allowed for the internet to generate their own views and opinions.”
