Blake Lively‘s lawyers have responded to Justin Baldoni‘s $250 million lawsuit that the filmmaker and actor filed earlier this week, saying the entire thing is built upon a false premise.
What did Blake Lively’s lawyers say?
Speaking to Deadline in a statement following Baldoni’s lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday, Lively’s Manatt, Phelps & Phillips attorneys and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP firm said that “nothing in this lawsuit changes anything about the claims advanced in Ms. Lively’s California Civil Rights Department Complaint, nor her federal complaint.”
The lawyers went on to claim that the entire suit is based on the “false premise” that Lively’s complaint is fake and that they won’t continue to litigate matters in the media.
“This lawsuit is based on the obviously false premise that Ms. Lively’s administrative complaint against Wayfarer and others was a ruse based on a choice ‘not to file a lawsuit against Baldoni, Wayfarer,’ and that ‘litigation was never her ultimate goal,” Lively’s attorneys said in a statement. “As demonstrated by the federal complaint filed by Ms. Lively earlier today, that frame of reference for the Wayfarer lawsuit is false. While we will not litigate this matter in the press, we do encourage people to read Ms. Lively’s complaint in its entirety. We look forward to addressing each and every one of Wayfarer’s allegations in court.”
Baldoni’s lawsuit was filed just ahead of the new year and alleges that Lively’s public relations team began pushing an “unverified and self-serving narrative” against Baldoni while using “cherry-picked and altered communications stripped of necessary context” to paint him in a bad light. The lawsuit sees Baldoni seeking at least $250 million while claiming fraud and breach of contract as well as libel.
“In this vicious smear campaign fully orchestrated by Blake Lively and her team, the New York Times cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful ‘untouchable’ Hollywood elites, disregarding journalistic practices and ethics once befitting of the revered publication by using doctored and manipulated texts and intentionally omitting texts which dispute their chosen PR narrative,” Bryan Freedman, a lawyer for Baldoni and his public relations team, said in a statement.
“In doing so, they pre-determined the outcome of their story, and aided and abetted their own devastating PR smear campaign designed to revitalize Lively’s self-induced floundering public image and counter the organic groundswell of criticism amongst the online public. The irony is rich.”
Lively’s complaint alleges that Baldoni created a hostile work environment
The lawsuit stems from a formal complaint that Blake Lively made against Baldoni last month. In it, she states that things got so bad during the filming of It Ends With Us that an all-hands-on-deck meeting was called in response to her claims of a hostile work environment. During the meeting, Lively asked that Baldoni stop showing her nude videos or images of women, that he stop mentioning his pornography addiction to her, that Baldoni stop discussing sexual experiences in front of her, and that he also stop mentioning Lively’s weight.
The complaint also claims that an agreement was made between production company Wayfarer Studios and the cast, in which the promotion of the movie would focus “more on [Lively’s character’s] strength and resilience as opposed to describing the film as a story about domestic violence.” However, Lively claims that Baldoni would renege on that and instead spoke in interviews about the film’s serious story.
Lively also claimed that Baldoni and his PR manager, Melissa Nathan, discussed ways in which to start a social media campaign to harm her reputation. The filing by Lively includes 22 pages of texts between Baldoni’s publicist and Nathan, in which they discuss wanting to have Lively “buried.”
