Justin Baldoni Vs. Blake Lively Feud Explained: Lively, Reynolds Say They’ve Received ‘Violent’ Messages
Timeline
Attorneys submitted a letter on behalf of Lively and Reynolds asking a new, more extensive protective order be imposed that would shield “personal, sensitive or proprietary information” from the public after claiming they and their allies have been victimized since the legal battle began. The letter goes on to say that it is "inevitable" that the release of more discovery in the case will further violate their privacy, expose them to threats and create "a climate of possible witness intimidation."
Lawyers for Lively filed an amended complaint that included new accusations Baldoni’s behavior made at least two additional, unnamed female cast members uncomfortable and that both of those women brought their complaints to Lively, who documented them in writing and reported them to higher-ups on the film (the complaint references Baldoni’s “unwelcome behavior” but does not specify exactly what he is accused of doing).
The suit claims Baldoni was made aware of at least one of the additional cast members' concerns and responded to her in writing at the time, promising "adjustments would be made”—but alleges he instead launched a PR campaign to discredit any future claims made against him.
Forbes reached out to Baldoni’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, for comment on the new complaint Wednesday.
Baldoni and Lively’s letter to the judge, filed in New York federal court on Thursday, said mediation or reaching a settlement would be “inappropriate” and “premature” for this case, suggesting their legal feud could eventually head to trial.
Hoover, who deactivated her Instagram account as the legal battle between Lively and Baldoni continued to play out, has wiped any photos with Lively or Baldoni from her account. Most posts related to the film at all have been deleted, including an post supporting Lively that went up shortly after she filed her initial lawsuit against Baldoni: "@blakelively, you have been nothing but honest, kind, supportive and patient since the day we met. Thank you for being exactly the human that you are. Never change. Never wilt," she wrote.
During promotion for the “It Ends With Us” film, Hoover appeared to take Lively’s side when a clear rift emerged among the film’s cast and crew. Lively refused to promote the movie alongside Baldoni and the pair were never interviewed or photographed together during its highly publicized press tour, Hoover and most of Lively's co-stars, including Jenny Slate, Brandon Sklenar and Isabela Ferrer, appeared at her side rather than Baldoni’s. Hoover still follows Lively on Instagram, but does not follow Baldoni.
A three-year-old video interview of Blake Lively admitting to Forbes she’s ruffled feathers in the film industry by attempting to have more “authorship” over her projects has gone viral. In a resurfaced interview from the 2022 Forbes Power Women's Summit, Lively said just following direction as an actress "wasn't fulfilling for me" and that she's received backlash for stepping in and trying to be part of costume design, writing and other aspects of a project. She said she's had writers, producers and directors "welcome that and invite that," and others who resented her for stepping on toes. She also said she hasn’t always upfront with her plans to step in to other parts of a project when she was hired as an actress, and that she “wouldn't reveal that I actually need to have authorship in order to feel fulfilled... Sometimes that might have felt like a rug pull.”
Filmmaker Judd Apatow joked about "It Ends With Us" at the 77th Annual Directors Guild of America (DGA) Awards Saturday night, calling it "such a terrible movie" and referencing the Baldoni-Lively lawsuits. "I loved Wicked. I saw it four times in the first four days," Apatow added. "It was the highest-grossing movie musical of all time. Do you know that? Usually to make that much money, you have to sue Blake Lively."
Comedian Chelsea Handler, who hosted the Critics’ Choice Awards, also poked fun at the legal battle, which has played out dramatically in the media over the last six weeks. Handler thanked the pair for providing a "distraction" from heavier headlines: “I want to personally extend my gratitude to Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively... I'm grateful. I think we're all grateful. And I think we're good. I think everybody in this room, no matter whose side you're on, we can all agree to accept that there's probably not going to be a sequel. It ends with us, guys."
Baldoni’s lawyer suggested in an interview with TMZ he could call on Taylor Swift—a close friend of Blake Lively’s who may have been alluded to in Baldoni’s lawsuit against the actress—to testify once the case goes to trial. After TMZ’s Harvey Levin asked about deposing Swift, Freedman didn’t rule out the idea, calling it a “game time decision” and adding he would seek testimony from anyone who may have relevant information (Freedman also said Swift was present alongside Baldoni, Lively and Ryan Reynolds at a meeting about Lively’s proposed script edits to “It Ends With Us” that is referenced in Baldoni’s lawsuit, though the suit only refers to the alleged attendee as “Taylor” with no last name).
Jed Wallace, owner of the crisis PR firm Street Relations, sued Lively in Texas federal court for defamation, alleging she falsely claimed in a civil rights complaint and her lawsuit that Wallace participated in an alleged smear campaign against the actress at the behest of Baldoni’s public relations team, which he says caused him “millions of dollars in reputational harm.”
“A Simple Favor 2,” Lively's latest film, will open at the SXSW Film and TV Festival next month, Director Paul Feig said, after rumors the film had been shelved, partially due to the Lively/Baldoni legal battle.
New York federal judge Lewis J. Liman told lawyers for Lively and Baldoni that he would move up the trial date, set for March 2026, if the case continued to be “litigated in the press.” Liman ordered both sides to adhere to the New York Rules of Professional Conduct, which stops lawyers from making public comments that have a “substantial likelihood” of tainting a jury, but stopped short of sanctioning Baldoni’s attorney, Freedman, despite claims from Lively’s team that he has gotten close to defaming her and has made “extrajudicial statements” about her and her character.
Baldoni’s team published a website dedicated to supporting his lawsuit against Lively and Reynolds that links to to an amended complaint filed on Jan. 31 and contains a timeline of events outlining what he says happened on the set of “It Ends With Us,” including corresponding text messages, emails and a statement Baldoni has said he was pressured into releasing by Reynolds and Lively that would have seen him take the blame for the "troubled production" of the movie (he refused to put out the statement). In addition to the statement, Baldoni released a text message exchange with Lively that showed she chose not to meet with the on-set intimacy coordinator he hired, leaving him to relay uncomfortable information from the meeting on his own.
Lawyers for Lively and Reynolds said in a letter to Liman that they plan to move to dismiss the lawsuit filed against them at a pre-trial conference scheduled for Monday, Feb. 3.
The Hollywood Reporter cited unnamed sources in reporting Baldoni has "lost three jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars” since Lively first filed suit against him in December and that an in-the-works "Pac-Man" movie project he was set to direct is now in jeopardy.
Liman told Lively and Baldoni's lawyers to prepare for a March 9, 2026 trial date and set a pretrial conference to discuss, among other things, complaints from Lively's team about the conduct of Baldoni's lawyer. Lively's lawyers have claimed Freedman is trying to paint potential jurors by creating a website to release communication between the two actors and documents from set, and accused him of making an "endless stream of defamatory and extrajudicial media statements."
The Daily Mail first published a nearly seven-minute voice note it says Baldoni sent to Lively at 2 a.m. during the filming of "It Ends With Us," in which he allegedly apologizes for not being open enough to script changes she made, admits he is a “a very flawed man” and makes a reference to her breastfeeding her then-newborn child.
Baldoni’s legal team countered Lively’s claims that he acted inappropriately while filming a slow dancing scene for the film by releasing a 10-minute video from set that includes three takes of the same scene, which Baldoni's team says is the entirety of the footage shot for that scene, during which Lively alleged in a lawsuit Baldoni “leaned forward and slowly dragged his lips from her ear and down her neck as he said, ‘it smells so good.'” The footage shows a similar interaction, where Baldoni is seen nuzzling Lively’s neck, and she says, "I’m probably getting spray-tan on you," to which he responds, "It smells good." Lively's team says the footage fully corroborates her account, and “any woman who has been inappropriately touched in the workplace will recognize Ms. Lively’s discomfort.” Baldoni’s lawyers said the footage proves both actors clearly behaved "well within the scope of the scene and with mutual respect and professionalism.”
Baldoni filed a federal lawsuit in New York against Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, her publicist Leslie Sloane and Sloane's firm Vision PR alleging his co-star "tormented" him, his family and his partners, falsely accused him of sexual harassment and used him as a "scapegoat" to dodge the negative press surrounding. He also pushed back on claims he sexually harassed her, instead claiming she "calculatingly devised" fake stories to destroy his reputation and livelihood, seized control of the film he was directing and set out to damage his career and Wayfarer Studios "if they did not bend to her incessant demands” (Here’s more on Baldoni’s lawsuit).
Deadline reported Baldoni's former publicist Stephanie Jones, who sued the actor and a handful of others for defamation and breach of contract in December, has issued subpoenas to WhatsApp, Signal, website hosts Hostinger and Name Cheap, digital publishing platform AnyFlip and chatbot company Gab AI in attempts to discover who may have been behind posts and websites aimed at harming Lively and Baldoni’s reputations.
Feig, who directed Lively's upcoming film "A Simple Favor 2," responded to viral rumors the film had been shelved "indefinitely," partially due to the Lively/Baldoni legal battle, calling it "total BS" and confirming the film "is finished and coming out soon."
In an interview with Baldoni’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, TMZ founder Harvey Levin said about the co-stars’ competing accusations about online campaigns to damage one another’s reputation: “Both sides tried to skew this story. We've been on the recipient end of that ... It has happened on both sides in the Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni war. Both sides.” Freedman responded by saying, “That’s good to know.” (In recent days, Freedman has denied Lively’s allegations that she faced a smear campaign by Baldoni’s PR team, claiming Lively’s team was instead working to smear Baldoni.)
Freedman appeared on Megyn Kelly’s YouTube show to discuss Baldoni’s plans to sue Lively “into oblivion” and pushed back on several of the actresses’ allegations, accusing Lively of not reading the source material for the film, refuting claims she was sexually harassed and accusing her of orchestrating her own smear campaign against Baldoni. The interview also included newly released sound from a voice note from Baldoni explaining that he was "sent to the basement" of the film's premiere because Lively "didn't want me anywhere near her or the rest of the cast” (Here’s more on what Freedman said on Kelly’s show.)
Freedman told NBC’s "Today" he "absolutely" plans to file suit against Lively after she alleged she was subjected to "sexually inappropriate behavior" by Baldoni on the set of their 2024 film, but wouldn't say exactly what the countersuit would allege, though denied Lively’s claim that Baldoni and his team launched a smear campaign against the actress.
Glaser, the first solo female to ever host the Golden Globes, warned viwers in advance that she wouldn't be poking fun of Baldoni and Lively while on stage. “I think the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni thing is such a hot-button thing right now that even a mere mention of it will seem like I could be on the wrong side of things, even though I would never be,” Glaser told Yahoo Entertainment. “I also don’t want to give (Baldoni’s) name any — I’m mad I even know his name, to be honest with you, so I don’t need to say it anymore.”
Baldoni filed a $250 million libel lawsuit against The New York Times for the paper's reporting on Lively's allegations, accusing the outlet of having "cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful 'untouchable' Hollywood elites"—Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds (on Jan. 31, Baldoni added defamation allegations against the Times to his sweeping lawsuit against Lively and Reynolds, and his attorney said he would drop the original suit against the paper).
Lively formally filed a lawsuit in New York federal court against Baldoni, his publicist, Wayfarer Studios and other defendants for "retaliating against her for reporting sexual harassment and workplace safety concerns."
Baldoni was sued by his ex-publicist, Stephanie Jones, over an alleged conspiracy to discredit her and steal her clients.
Vital Voices, a nonprofit that focuses on empowering women, rescinded an award it gave to Baldoni, who has made a career expressing his support of women’s stories and co-hosted a podcast about masculinity called "Man Enough," which his co-host pulled out of the same day.
Baldoni was reportedly dropped by his talent agency.
Lively filed a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department claiming Baldoni invaded her privacy by "entering her makeup trailer uninvited while she was undressed," pressured her to lose weight four months after giving birth and coordinated a PR campaign with a crisis firm "designed to 'destroy' Ms. Lively's reputation."
What Did Justin Baldoni Say In A Supposed Voice Note To Blake Lively?
The message, which was obtained by the Daily Mail and has since gone viral on TikTok, appears to be Baldoni apologizing for his reception to changes Lively proposed for a scene in "It Ends With Us." Baldoni says his reaction to the changes "fell short" and thanked her for telling him how she was feeling about his response, according to the newspaper. "I f***ed up, that is a fail on my part," he appears to say. "One thing you should know about me is that I am willing to apologize when I fail... I am a very flawed man, as my wife will attest." Baldoni then appears to talk for almost another five minutes, in which he says there is “nothing more exciting to me” than working with Lively. The message does not specifically say which scene Baldoni is referring to but his lawsuit against Lively mentions tension over a rooftop scene in the film that Lively rewrote and presented to Baldoni as her own work before telling media outlets that her husband, Reynolds, actually wrote it.
Key Background
Baldoni directed and co-starred with Lively in “It Ends With Us,” the movie adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling book of the same name, which released last August. Rumors of a rift developing between Lively and Baldoni during post-production began to emerge around the movie’s release, and were further fueled during the film's press tour when Lively appeared to avoid mention of Baldoni in interviews. Speculation emerged that there were disputes over creative control and sources told TMZ Baldoni had "fat-shamed" Lively by inquiring about her weight, telling an on-set trainer he wanted to avoid injury while lifting the actress in the movie. Baldoni and Lively were never photographed together while promoting “It Ends With Us.” As rumors of a feud grew, Baldoni hired Melissa Nathan, a crisis PR manager who represented Johnny Depp in his defamation case against ex-wife Amber Heard. According to texts published by The New York Times, Nathan suggested plans including “full social take downs” by creating “threads of theories” and planting pieces in the media of “how horrible Blake is to work with.” Lively said the alleged smear campaign had caused “severe emotional distress” for her and her family, prompting her to back out of hosting the “Saturday Night Live” season 50 premiere.
How Were These Text Messages From Baldoni Released?
Lively's initial complaint included excerpts from thousands of pages of text messages and emails, which were the main focus of the Times article at the center of Baldoni's lawsuit. The text messages were largely between Baldoni, his publicist Jennifer Abel and crisis management expert Melissa Nathan, and were obtained through a civil subpoena, Lively's complaint said. A lawsuit filed by Baldoni's ex-publicist Stephanie Jones, the founder of the Jonesworks publicity firm, days later revealed she was the source of the text messages, which were obtained from Abel’s work phone. In her own lawsuit against Baldoni, Jones claimed Abel was fired for conspiring to steal clients from her firm and Jones later had Abel’s company-issued phone “forensically preserved and examined in detail.” Lively's team then obtained the texts through a subpoena against Jonesworks. The texts show discussions on how to coordinate a social media campaign against Lively, and how Baldoni wanted to feel like Lively "can be buried” under negative media. The messages show the trio talking about the “shift on social” against Lively, and reveal that Baldoni was aware of the negative messaging against her. Messages from Baldoni also show him encouraging the P.R. team, flagging social media posts for them to use and, in one case, suggesting “flipping the narrative” on a positive story about Lively and Reynolds, according to The Times. In other messages, he reiterates that the campaign needs to be untraceable.
Surprising Fact
Around the time of the “It Ends With Us” premiere, Lively was the subject of intense criticism online targeting how she promoted the film, the opportune release of her haircare line and other behaviors. In one promotional video, Lively encourages the audience to "grab your friends, wear your florals and head out to see (the movie)." Fans instantly criticized Lively's upbeat tone and claimed she was attempting to promote the movie as a lighthearted love story, cheapening the movie's serious take on domestic abuse. Comments on the video attacked Lively—"shame on you and your PR team for turning a blind eye," one said—but praised Baldoni for how he handled promotion. Lively was also criticized for seeming to promote her newly launched hair-care line, Blake Brown, off the back of the film, but it was later revealed that the two were never supposed to launch at the same time. Production delays caused by Hollywood strikes in 2023 pushed the premiere of “It Ends With Us,” then coinciding with the predetermined launch date of the brand. At the same time, Lively was freshly criticized for her reaction to an interviewer in a resurfaced 2016 clip. Lively’s lawsuits claim the public’s attacks were part of the smear campaign she says was orchestrated against her.
Tangent
A number of celebrities have come out to support Lively since she filed her initial complaint, including Hoover, Lively’s “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” co-stars and actress Amber Heard, who claimed to be a victim of a similar social media takedown. Hoover, who The Times reported also refused to do press with Baldoni, posted to Instagram after Lively first made her allegations to call her "nothing but honest, kind, supportive and patient." America Ferrera, Alexis Bledel and Amber Tamblyn, who starred alongside Lively in her 2005 breakout role in "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," slammed the “vindictive effort ensued to discredit her voice” and Heard said she has seen similar social media campaigns "firsthand and up close,” calling it "horrifying and destructive.” Actresses Kate Beckinsale and Abigail Breslin shared their own stories of harassment and retaliation in the wake of Lively's lawsuit, and director Paul Feig posted that Lively "did not deserve any of this smear campaign.” Lively's "It Ends with Us" costar Brandon Sklenar posted a link to the initial New York Times story and Jenny Slate, another co-star in the film, said she stands by her "loyal friend." Amy Schumer posted a story on Instagram that said, “I believe Blake.” Political influencer Candace Owens posted in support of Baldoni after he was stripped of his Vital Voices award, writing that he should "have his day in court" before such drastic measures are taken.
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