The email, sent in December 2023, is described by Justin Baldoni as him ‘waving the white flag’ and giving co-star Blake Lively ‘98 per cent’ of what she wants. ‘By now we all know what she is capable of,’ he complains.
Baldoni, the actor, director and producer of the hit film It Ends With Us, was responding to a string of demands from his – much more powerful and famous – co-star for changes to his script.
At that point they had been working on the domestic violence drama, based on a best-selling Colleen Hoover novel, for around seven months before having to take a break due to the actors’ union strike.
They were only a few days away from resuming filming.
One of Lively’s requests was to rewrite a scene in which the pair – lovers in the movie – are overcome with lust as they remove food from an oven. Tellingly, Baldoni writes in the email to colleagues: ‘She has removed kissing – which is fine in the end. The last thing I want to do is kiss this woman.’
It’s a rare and previously unreported personal swipe from Baldoni and shows just how quickly, dismally and irretrievably their working relationship spilled over into enmity.
It would be another year before the full scale of that enmity would be revealed to the world when, just before Christmas 2024, Lively, who made her name in the 1990s TV series Gossip Girl and is married to actor Ryan Reynolds, filed a legal complaint against Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios. She alleged she’d been caused ‘severe emotional distress’ by Baldoni’s behaviour during the making of the film, which amounted to sexual harassment.
She also went on to claim that he had ordered a PR campaign to destroy her image.
Justin Baldoni directed and co-starred alongside Blake Lively in the film It Ends With Us. Lively filed a legal complaint against Baldoni, alleging he’d been caused ‘severe emotional distress’ by Baldoni’s behaviour during filming that amounted to sexual harrassment
Weeks later, in January this year, Baldoni, 41, countersued with a number of lawsuits, claiming defamation and asking for $400 million in damages from both Lively and Reynolds.
He also sued the The New York Times over an article it published about the debacle under the title ‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside A Hollywood Smear Machine.
Baldoni’s complaints included that he had his name taken off the movie and was banned from the red carpet at its premiere.
The Lively v Baldoni case left Hollywood agog, and still keeps giving (and costing) today, as it slowly winds its way to a courtroom showdown, scheduled for March next year.
Lively, 38, is seeking damages of $161 million, yet I’m told all sides have spent more than $100 million on legal advice, and counting.
Baldoni’s side suffered a substantial blow in June, when his countersuit was dismissed by a judge.
But now he is hitting back, with a ‘last stand’ push to get Lively’s initial lawsuit thrown out in its entirety, which would bring the affair to a close. He has also added a cool-headed lawyer to the legal team: Alexandra Shapiro, recently in court for Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, whose approach is somewhat different to that of litigator Bryan ‘Pitbull’ Freedman, who has a reputation for making incendiary public statements.
Their new argument is that the case amounts to nothing more than an expensive ‘ego fit’ and doesn’t belong in court.
Baldoni with wife Emily at the It Ends With Us premiere in New York last year
In support of the motion are a trove of never-seen-before documents, which include snippets from a number of depositions – sworn witness statements – made by Baldoni and others this summer.
They contain much novel information, including a suggestion that Reynolds went to war with one of his co-stars, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, while making a film back in 2021.
Baldoni says that he was told by a female colleague – most likely at the agency WME, which represented Lively, Reynolds, The Rock and Baldoni at that time – that Reynolds, who is known for his ‘Mr Nice Guy’ image, had ‘terrorised’ Johnson while making the movie Red Notice.
He adds that this same colleague alleged Lively also had a history of falling out with co-workers on films – implying that the ‘hostile takeover’ of It Ends With Us could be seen as part of a pattern of behaviour on the part of both husband and wife.
In his deposition, Baldoni said of the unnamed woman: ‘I think she represented The Rock, and she had said on that call that Mr Reynolds had terrorised The Rock or something to that extent…
‘I don’t remember the details but they wouldn’t do press together.
‘It was a lot of gossip, but that’s why I remember laughing because it kind of felt like, “Oh, don’t worry. It will be fine. The movie’s going to come out, and it will be awesome… Everybody’s had a bad experience with her.” It was like that kind of call.’
Another exhibit includes footage of an improvised kiss that Lively planted upon Baldoni during filming in May 2023.
Baldoni countersued, claiming defamation and asking for $400 million in damages from both Lively and husband Ryan Reynolds (pictured)
Improvised kissing – without an intimacy co-ordinator on hand –was one of the things Lively had complained Baldoni had subjected her to, in a 17-point list of grievances against her co-star, which she submitted in November 2023.
A further piece of video evidence sees Lively talking about how ‘sexy’ her high-heeled shoes are – an effort by the Baldoni side to show that the ‘sexiness’ of outfits and scenes was something that was natural to discuss, in the context of a movie about a tainted love affair, and not sexual harassment or objectification.
Until September, Baldoni was represented solely by Bryan Freedman. Freedman was behind the setting up of a website where the curious could read hundreds of statements, letters and emails from his client, which went live rather sensationally this spring.
One of his strategies was to attack Lively and Reynolds, who have four children together, over their behaviour to Baldoni, himself a married father of two.
New hiring Shapiro, however, seems to have made a handbrake turn in terms of tone and direction. The contention is now that it is more a war about reputations than wrongdoing and ‘it does not belong in court’.
In fact they say that the whole mess is Lively’s own fault, and that the backlash was generated by her behaviour on the press tour for the film.
Lively notably told women to ‘grab your florals’ and head out to see the film about domestic violence, which was seen as being in rather bad taste. She also promoted her alcoholic drinks company, Betty Buzz, via a cocktail stand at the premiere.
The filing contends: ‘That Lively’s reputation may have suffered is a result of her own ill-advised public statements and actions.
Hugh Jackman, Tony Vinciquerra, Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds and Tom Rothman, Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Motion Picture Group at the film’s premiere
‘This is a dispute about Hollywood reputations, not genuine legal wrongs.’ The motion to dismiss cleverly uses Judge Liman’s earlier ruling in a case brought by Real Housewife Leah McSweeney against the TV network Bravo, last year.
McSweeney had claimed that a comment about her boob job was gender discrimination and demonstrated a hostile workplace.
Similarly, Lively complained that Baldoni had made inappropriate comments about her weight when she’d recently had a baby.
The judge, who is also presiding over Baldoni v Lively, dismissed McSweeney’s claim and said that it was just a ‘petty slight’.
In similar language, Baldoni’s team writes: ‘During the initial stages of filming, she voiced objections to certain on-the-set behaviour she did not like.
‘That behaviour – involving no more than miscommunications and awkward comments – falls well below the threshold for any claim of sexual harassment or other legal wrong, especially in the context of collaborating to make a sensual and provocative, sexually-charged film. Regardless, Lively’s concerns were heard and fully accommodated.
‘It is undisputed that whatever she claimed to have experienced ceased. Filming continued during all future stages entirely without incident.
‘Months then went by. But as the film was edited and moved towards its premiere, something else happened: Lively asserted control of the film and took aggressive steps to minimise Justin Baldoni’s role.
Lively, pictured at the 2024 LACMA Art+Film Gala, ‘asserted control of the film’, writes Baldoni’s team
‘Even though Baldoni had conceived, directed and co-starred in the film, and it had been produced and co-financed by his production company, Wayfarer Studios, Lively took all the credit.
‘At the same time, Lively and her actor husband Ryan Reynolds disparaged Baldoni to their famous, high-powered friends in Hollywood, and to Baldoni’s talent agency.
‘As the film’s premiere approached, Lively became increasingly hostile: she excluded Baldoni from marketing materials, press, and promotions for the film, snubbed him on social media, urged Sony to eliminate his “a film by” credit, and even tried to exclude him from the premiere.’
This activity, they say, is what led to Baldoni seeking the help of a crisis management public relations firm in August last year – not out of a desire to smear her but to protect himself.
It’s fair to say neither have had their feet up since It Ends With Us was released. Lively’s movie, Another Simple Favour, hit screens this year but was actually filmed beforehand.
The filing continues that aided by two of the world’s largest litigation firms, Lively now seeks to ‘create causes of action where none exist’ and that she ‘cannot show the behaviour she disliked was caused by her sex or gender, a basic prerequisite for her “sexual harassment” claims’.
The lawyers say that there is a large gap in time between her complaints (in November 2023) and Baldoni hiring PR specialists The Agency Group (in August 2024), meaning that his doing so was not a retaliation to her initial complaints.
They deny that Baldoni had his PRs undertake a smear campaign.
One exhibit sees Jamey Heath, the CEO of Wayfarer Studios, describe his recollections of the now-famous meeting at Reynolds and Lively’s penthouse in New York in May last year.
A meeting was called after word reached Reynolds that Baldoni had asked how much Lively weighed, as he had to lift her for a scene and had a back complaint.
He describes Reynolds ‘belittling’ him and treating him like ‘a coward’. ‘It may have been the hardest thing I have ever witnessed, someone talking to another person with such belittlement,’ he says.
The events of that meeting were also later described by a very emotional Baldoni, in texts to a friend.
The text sees a shaken Baldoni, who is a devout member of the Baha’i faith, asking for ‘prayers’.
One text runs: ‘Last night was one of the hardest nights of my life. It’s hard to describe what happened exactly. The only way to describe it was an ambush. Ryan was talking to me like a five-year-old and scolding me.’
He adds: ‘Things were taken completely out of context.
‘The word creepy and abuse were used in reference to me in my behaviour.
‘What I wanted to say, and do, was run and blow this whole movie up because I feel this was so unjust, and yet the only path forward was to acknowledge her and Ryan’s feelings and apologise and take the wrath of an angry husband – yeah, I couldn’t even do that correctly.’
He goes on: ‘I felt abandoned by God in that moment.
‘We were told that this was the worst experience of her life and others have witnessed this behaviour, and the behaviour on our set was creepy.
‘I was emotionally paralysed, which is something I haven’t experienced in years.’
He says that after the meeting he spoke to his therapist for an hour and adds that he has ‘never felt so alone’.
With just five months to go until all parties head to court, everyone must be hoping that the hell of It Ends With Us can finally end.
