Justin Baldoni’s Lawyer Says Blake Lively’s Sexual Harassment Claims Are False

Exclusive: With another week of more lawsuits in the ever-growing chaotic battle And it ends with us Stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni prove that the court of public opinion is as much a field of action as state and federal cases.

A front that Brian Friedman is unwilling to cede to any competitor.

“After my client filed a comprehensive lawsuit containing nearly 200 pages of undeniable facts and documentary evidence that crushed their false claims of a smear campaign by providing fabricated communications to… New York TimesBlake and her legal team have only one heinous pivot left to do: double down on the disgusting false sexual accusations against Mr. Baldoni.

The Liner Freedman co-founder Taitelman + Cooley LLP was responding Saturday to the Jan. 16 response from Lively's lawyers Manatt, Phelps & Phillips and Willkie Farr & Gallagher's lawyers to Baldoni's long-awaited lawsuit filed last week against his co-star, hubby Ryan Reynolds, publicist Leslie Sloan and her VisionPR panels. A counterpoint of sorts to the legal action Lively took at NYE against Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, CEO Jamey Heath, financier Steve Sarowitz, and PR heads Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel for sexual harassment on IEWU and a post-production smear campaign, which seeks to move $4,000 million before Jane the Virgin The vet is pursuing Lively, Reynolds, and Sloan for defamation and extortion.

A few hours after Baldoni's team of lawyers, led by Friedman, put their file on the docket, Lively's team exclusively and bluntly told Deadline: “This latest lawsuit from Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and its partners is another chapter in the abusive playbook.” They added: “In short, While the victim focuses on the abuse, the abuser focuses on the victim. “The strategy of attacking the woman is desperate, does not refute the evidence in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and will fail.”

Those were fighting words that Friedman, often a boxer, could not leave unanswered.

And as he said to me today:

The mere fact that Ms. Lively feels she can publicly destroy Mr. Baldoni's reputation in an attempt to destroy his future career and then deprive him or his team of their ability to defend themselves against her is unconscionable. Mr. Baldoni never publicly tried to call out Ms. Lively for her many mistakes during filming, he graciously handled all of her concerns during filming in the right way despite the fact that he completely disagreed, and he himself was committed to doing things differently and keeping the peace as she specifically admitted. In her lawsuit. Not only will we continue to defend our clients against Blake's power, privilege, and all of her lies, but we will now fight even harder for the voiceless in the domestic violence community who suffer unfairly as she continues to press on with her selfishness and self-serving. Revenge in the media.

Based on Colleen Hoover's 2016 novel, And it ends with us The film focused on intergenerational domestic violence and on the relationship between Lively's grieving florist character and his rage-filled co-star/director Baldoni. The Sony film was a box office hit last summer with nearly $400 million on the big screen before moving to Netflix. And it ends with us It was surrounded by rumors of problems between its leads, as Lively and Baldoni did not do press for the film together before its premiere in August.

The public airing of that alleged dirty laundry began when Lively filed a detailed complaint of sexual harassment and retaliation against Baldoni and others with the California Department of Civil Rights on December 20. new york times, Baldoni, who is now suing for $250 million, ran a wide-ranging “We Can Bury Anyone” story: Inside the Hollywood smear machine, filled with text messages and emails from Crisis Crisis PR staff. Baldoni and Friedman said the New York Times story was a process of preparation filled with carefully selected information. The Gray Lady said its journalists were fair, reported in-depth and did their jobs.

With all the “What You Did to Me” allegations, the re-joining of “I Didn't Do Nothing to You-You-Stained-Me” backed by celebrity Lively, and WME recently getting rid of Baldoni and their various associates, the publicists and expensive lawyers have been throwing each other's backs. Some for the past month or so in a phalanx of filings and statements, the business side of show business should not be overlooked here. This whole issue is as personal in the pocket as it is in the reputation. Baldoni complains that his film was stolen from him by Lively with the help of Reynolds, and now the duo and their accusations have left his career DOA. Lively says she was harassed and abused during filming and was dragged through the digital mud by an attack by Nathan and Abel that seriously damaged her brand.

Moreover, amid all the accusations of “underhanded promotion” by Baldoni's team against Lively and Reynolds allegedly berating Baldoni in a fraught meeting a year ago, an important aspect of Lively's initial CRD complaint and the lawsuit she filed in New York has somewhat slipped out of the loop. Light. Although there is no focus on the supposed arming and launching of a “digital army” against Lively, the matter may reveal the essence of the conflict and why Green Lantern The couple waited months to bring their feud with Baldoni public.

In both the Dec. 20 CRD filing and the federal lawsuit 11 days later, Lively's lawyers noted how the fallout from online vitriol directed at her personally was “harming her business.” Like her multi-platform husband, Lively has long enjoyed a number of lucrative revenue streams from brand products and endorsement deals.

The fallout from Lively's 2024 hair care line is rocking, relatively speaking, as the onslaught of negative social media posts about her must certainly play a role, contractually or otherwise.

“After launching Ms. Lively’s hair care line, Blake Brown, in August 2024, which she spent seven years building, the brand’s Instagram account was flooded with harassing and insulting comments, including many posted by user accounts with neither followers nor previous posts ( indicating inauthenticity), which are not related to the brand’s products,” Lively’s lawsuit states.

“The retaliation campaign against Ms. Lively also harmed her businesses,” the unspecified damages lawsuit continues. “The long-planned launch of her hair care line, Blake Brown — a date that was set more than a year in advance (and not by Ms. Lively) for the film’s release — was caught in the crossfire of a negative environment against Ms. Lively. Initially, before the “social manipulation” campaign began, Ms. Lively was informed that Blake Brown was Target's largest hair care launch ever based on internal sales forecasts, and the sudden and unexpected negative media campaign against Ms. Lively led to a decline in retail sales of Blake's products Brown by 56% to 78% This significant decline was in stark contrast to the high satisfaction scores Blake Brown products received in critical pre-launch consumer tests or their initial post-launch success.

In addition to all of this, Friedman, after alerting Reynolds to his friend and client Megyn Kelly's exposé of anti-Baldoni malice that appeared in last summer's hit Deadpool Wolverinesent an evidence preservation letter on January 7 via FedEx to Disney CEO Bob Iger and Marvel President Kevin Feige. Filled with speculation about whether Shawn Levy's “Merc with a Mouth” was parodying Baldoni with his intentionally unfortunate character in Nicepool, the correspondence also promised more lawsuits. In another brand ambush, it also put forward unfounded notions about “complaints of sexual or other harassment made against Ryan Reynolds by anyone.”

Aside from that low blow, it's unclear exactly when Naceball's character, of which she is not a part, appeared dead pool This knowledge has been designed and put into revenues of $1 billion and more.

However, with Deadpool Wolverine Filming at the same time as the first part And it ends with us' Before the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes shut down Hollywood for months, all signs pointed to Nicepool being a late addition to Disney's R-rated picture, studio sources told me. At the same time, those same sources say Deadpool Wolverine It was a very smooth production with Reynolds and Levy frequently making last-minute changes and additions.

With more filings and perhaps even lawsuits coming in the Lively vs. Baldoni, Brian Friedman took a hard hit with his home destroyed in the fire that swept through the Pacific Palisades area earlier this month. Lively's team had no response to Friedman's latest statement today when contacted by Deadline. If they respond, this post will be updated.