Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel has entered the discourse surrounding the ongoing lawsuit between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, siding with Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds.
During an appearance at a taping of the Freakonomics Radio Live show this past week (via Deadline), Emanuel said that he was a “ride or die” for Lively and Reynolds and that he’s known for them for over a decade and they are good people.
“I’ve known Ryan and Blake for over a decade,” Emanuel said. “They’re really incredible people,” he added. “In Hollywood, they have been incredibly successful. People work with them, they’ve never had any bad mojo out there or treated people badly. They are charitable — we help them with their foundation — they’ve given tons of money away.”
Emanuel also revealed that it was he who decided to drop Baldoni from WME, formerly known as William Morris Endeavor, in December 2021.
“I fired him,” said Emanuel, while also saying that Lively and her concerns at the time of her and Baldoni’s interactions on the set of It Ends With Us were not properly treated. “She felt that she was not being protected. She complained and then these people tried to go after her. They should stop. They’re still trying to do it, they should stop.”
Lively’s initial complaint alleges that Baldoni created a hostile work environment
All of this stems from a formal complaint that Lively made against Baldoni in December. 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 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.”
