Blake Lively referred to Justin Baldoni as a “doofus director” and a “clown”, according to newly unsealed court documents from the actress’s legal case.
The pair starred together in It Ends With Us, but Lively sued Baldoni in December 2024, accusing him of sexual harassment and waging a smear campaign against her. Baldoni strongly denies the claims and is defending the lawsuit, which names him and his production company, Wayfarer Studios, which was behind It Ends With Us.
Text messages from 2023 between Lively and people close to her appear to show that Lively called Baldoni a “rabid pig”, while her friend Taylor Swift suggested Baldoni knew the lawsuit was coming “because he’s gotten out his tiny violin”.
Baldoni’s $400m (£295m) counter-suit was dismissed by a judge last June.
Lively’s case is set to go to trial in May.
The newly unsealed documents show both Lively and Baldoni venting to friends and colleagues about filming It Ends With Us and the subsequent press tour, ahead of the film’s August 2024 release.
In the messages, Lively referred to Baldoni as “this doofus director of my movie” and described him as “a clown” who “thinks he’s a writer now”.
In their filing earlier this week, Lively’s team did not deny the language she had used but said the text messages were missing context.
They referred the court to the “complete” text exchange, including subsequent messages from Lively to Baldoni which said “we all benefit” from her relationship with Swift and her husband Ryan Reynolds, and “you will too, I can promise you”.
Sigrid McCawley, a member of Lively’s legal team, said in a statement to the BBC that the newly unsealed evidence “shows the concerns of Ms Lively and others were documented in real-time as early as Spring 2023, and Wayfarer understood them as ‘sexual harassment’ concerns.”
McCawley’s statement continued, “The evidence also documents how Wayfarer refused to investigate, but instead attempted to ‘bury ‘ Ms Lively and others who spoke up through retaliation.”
Baldoni’s legal team has not responded to the BBC’s request for comment, but Bryan Feldman, a lawyer for Baldoni and Wayfarer, told CNN, “the evidence does not support the claims as a matter of law.
A simple read of the newly released message exchanges makes the truth abundantly clear. We remain confident in the legal process and clearing the names of all of the Justin Baldoni parties.”
The messages also show Lively saying of Baldoni: “Despite his repeated disturbing behaviour and acts, I still feel bad for him.
“To be reminded multiple times daily that he’s smearing me for… asking him not to sexually or emotionally harass me? For making his movie better? For calling in all the favours to turn out all the biggest musicians and entertainers to contribute to making his movie better? For leading a marketing campaign for free?”
She continued: “I literally don’t know a single thing I’ve done that he can smear me about. Ryan [Reynolds] says [Baldoni] should be writing me apology and thank you letters every day. And instead he chooses to make a monster outta me.
“But what’s my crime. I’ve only ever stayed focused on the work and given him every opportunity to make it better. And he just keeps behaving like a rabid pig.”
The messages also appear to show Lively texted Baldoni’s former The Man Enough Podcast co-host, Liz Plank in May 2023, and told her that “today I came home and cried” following an “SOS set visit”.
Plank responded by saying that she “thought maybe things had gotten better”, and that it was “astounding they have gotten away with so much”. It is unclear who “they” refers to.
The documents note that Plank recalled working on Baldoni’s set as “truly one of the worst days of [her] life”.
Later that year, Lively also sent texts to actress and co-star Jenny Slate, and said she was “dreading” going back to set and “getting hits of the experience in really upsetting ways”.
In her deposition, Slate also alleged misconduct on the set of the film, with court documents revealing that she had made complaints against Baldoni and producer Jamey Heath during the course of filming It Ends With Us.
Heath is the CEO of Wayfarer Studios.
Similarly, texts sent by Baldoni also suggest friction between him and Lively.
In February 2024, Baldoni told Heath that he was concerned that Lively would use the allegations she had made against him as leverage.
He wrote: “She had the nuclear bomb. If she doesn’t promote the movie she can leak that I’m a bad person or that she felt unsafe with me and ‘all the stuff’ she has on me. Then she’s the victim.”
Her legal filing accuses Baldoni and Heath of “repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behaviour”, in addition to a hostile working environment.
The text messages were unsealed on Tuesday before a summary judgment hearing in Lively’s ongoing lawsuit that is scheduled for 22 January.
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