In Lively’s sexual harassment lawsuit against Baldoni, she also says he “had spoken to her dead father” and made “gross” comments about other costars; his lawyers call the suit an attempt to “fix her negative reputation.”
Following the widespread controversy surrounding the release of It Ends With Us this past summer, Blake Lively has now hit her costar and director Justin Baldoni with a lawsuit, detailing allegations of sexual harassment along with claims that he and his team participated in a smear campaign to destroy her reputation.
Among the bombshell allegations presented in the lawsuit filed by Lively, which was obtained by TMZ, were claims regarding Baldoni’s alleged “criticisms” about Lively’s appearance.
His team has denied the allegations.
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Baldoni’s Alleged “Outburst” and Criticisms Regarding Lively’s Appearance
It Ends With Us, which is an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel of the same name, centers on Lily Bloom (Lively), a woman grappling with domestic abuse at the hands of her husband, Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni). Filming began in May 2023 just a few months after Lively, 37, welcomed her fourth child with Ryan Reynolds.
In the lawsuit, Lively claims that throughout filming Baldoni “was objectifying” her “as a sex object,” but at the same time, allegedly “went out of his way to message criticisms of her age and weight.” The actress alleged that Baldoni, 40, “cried” in his dressing room over Lively’s appearance on the second day of filming.
“Mr. Baldoni made the rest of the cast and crew wait for hours while he cried in Ms. Lively’s dressing room, claiming social media commentators were saying that Ms. Lively looked old and unattractive based on paparazzi photos from the set,” the lawsuit claims. “She tried to reassure him that she should look authentic in the scenes depicted in the photos, which were just after her character had been abused by her fictional husband, rather than ‘hot.'”
However, Lively alleges that Baldoni “appeared focused” on her “sexual appeal above all else,” with the lawsuit claiming that the actor/director’s “lengthy outburst caused a delay in shooting, forcing an emotional scene to be shot haphazardly.”
Lively claims that Baldoni “routinely degraded” her over her weight, with the lawsuit referencing previous reports that the former felt that she was being fat-shamed by the latter after he allegedly spoke to his trainer about how much she weighed. At the time, sources told TMZ that Baldoni claimed that he had a history of back problems and didn’t want to injure himself before lifting Lively for a scene.
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However, according to the lawsuit “no such scene” was in the film.
“Ms. Lively was humiliated to learn that Mr. Baldoni secretly called her fitness trainer, without her knowledge or permission, and implied that he wanted her to lose weight in two weeks,” the documents allege. “Mr. Baldoni told the trainer that he had asked because he was concerned about having to pick Ms. Lively up in a scene for the movie, but there was no such scene.”
Another alleged instance in which Lively claims Baldoni “was shaming her for her body and weight” was when she came down with strep through while filming.
According to Lively, Baldoni gave her a “gift” by referring to “an expert he had on retainer to help her with probiotics and to combat the sickness.”
“When Ms. Lively went to fill out the privacy forms, she saw the expert was not what Mr. Baldoni had represented her to be, but was instead a weight-loss specialist,” she alleges in the lawsuit.
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Baldoni Claimed He Could “Speak to the Dead”
Elsewhere in the lawsuit, Lively alleges that Baldoni “engaged in other behaviors that were shocking and emotional distressing,” saying that he “claimed he could speak to the dead, and on several occasions told her that he had spoken to her dead father.”
Lively — whose father Ernie passed away in 2021 — described Baldoni’s alleged behavior claiming that he had a “personal relationship” with her “recently deceased” father as “off putting and violative.”
Complaints By Other Female Costars
Lively also claims that Baldoni “objectified” her and other women on set by “commenting on or criticizing their bodies as sex objects,” allegedly “often referred” to women as “sexy.”
She says she “felt embarrassed” “witnessing” Baldoni’s “commentary” toward women on set. As described in the lawsuit, Lively claims Baldoni once told a female cast member that “her leather pants looked ‘sexy’ when she arrived on set,” which made the woman “uncomfortable.” Lively also alleges that Baldoni made inappropriate comments on her outfit on a day in which she was wearing a “low-cut dress to facilitate breast feeding.”
According to the lawsuit, another cast member filed a sexual harassment complaint against Baldoni, claiming he made “gross” and “unwanted comment[s] towards her and others.”
The lawsuit also alleges that another actress “made a complaint” regarding Baldoni’s purported comments about her “appearance.” While Baldoni “expressly acknowledged her concerns,” per the suit, and claimed he would “adjust accordingly,” the female later allegedly told Lively that “outside of anything in a scene, I actually cannot talk to Justin at all.”
Lively claims that “Baldoni later expressed suspicion regarding [her] friendship with this actress, as if they were colluding against him.”
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“Social Manipulation” Campaign
According to the lawsuit, an “all hands” meeting took place in January 2024 before filming resumed following the actors and writers strikes to “address the hostile work environment.” Among those in attendance were Baldoni, Lively, and her husband Reynolds.
Per the suit, the group discussed Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios’ CEO and the film’s producer Jamey Heath’s “inappropriate conduct” that allegedly occurred on set, with the parties allegedly agreeing to demands including “no more showing nude videos or images of women” to Lively, no further mention of Baldoni or Heath’s “pornography addiction,” no more “personal experiences with sex” or “descriptions of their own genitalia,” no further “inquiries” about Lively’s weight to her trainer, and no more comments about Baldoni “speaking to” Lively’s deceased father.
Other topics detailed in the demands addressed sexual, nude or intimate scenes, including “no more improvising” kissing, or “adding of sex scenes, oral sex or on camera climaxing by BL outside the scope of the script BL approved when signing onto the project.”
The lawsuit also details what was described as a “social manipulation” campaign launched to “destroy” Lively’s reputation, which was documented via emails and text messages — reportedly obtained via subpoena — allegedly between Baldoni, his publicist and his crisis management team.
In one such text, Baldoni’s publicist claimed he “wants to feel like [Lively] can be buried,” with another member of his team later replying that they “can’t write that we will destroy her.”
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The lawsuit claims that Baldoni retaliated by “battering her image, harming her businesses, and causing her and her family severe emotional harm” with their “attack” on her reputation.
As for why she filed the lawsuit, Lively said in a statement to TMZ: “I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted.”
Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, fired back at the lawsuit in a statement, calling all of the claims “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media.”
Freedman said Wayfarer Studios “did nothing proactive nor retaliated” against Lively, slamming the lawsuit as “another desperate attempt to ‘fix’ her negative reputation.”
He also addresses Lively’s alleged behavior on set, claiming that her “demands and threats” included “threatening to not showing up to set, threatening to not promote the film, ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met.”
At the time of the It Ends With Us’ August release, Lively received criticism over the way she promoted the film versus Baldoni.
Lively leaned into fashionable red carpet moments and participated in prank videos … while Baldoni focused more on how the movie depicts domestic violence, bringing more awareness to the issue. According to the lawsuit, Lively followed the agreed-upon marketing plan.
While It Ends With Us received mixed reviews from critics, it was considered a box-office success.
On Saturday, sources told Deadline that Baldoni had been dropped by his agency WME. Lively is also represented by the agency.
