Actor and director Justin Baldoni and the company he co-founded, Wayfarer Studios, have sued his It Ends With Us co-star Blake Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds, along with publicist Leslie Sloane, for $400 million in damages.
The suit, filed Thursday in the federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges civil extortion, defamation and a slew of contract-related claims about the film It Ends With Us, which premiered in August.
The lawsuit is the latest development in what has become a legal battle following the production and release of the film. In December, Lively filed a complaint to California's Civil Rights Department alleging that she had faced sexual harassment and other unwanted behavior from both Baldoni and Wayfarer CEO Jamey Heath, who also served as executive producer of It Ends With Us, on the set of the film. She followed up with a lawsuit, alleging that despite written agreements that the behavior would stop and she would not be retaliated against, Baldoni and the studio hired a crisis PR firm that launched a "smear campaign" against her image, planting content on social media and in the press "designed to eviscerate Ms. Lively's credibility." Wayfarer CEO Jamey Heath, It Ends With Us Movie LLC and publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel were all named as defendants in that case, and are plaintiffs in the suit filed Thursday.
Baldoni, along with his and Heath's publicists and a contractor, have denied any harassment or wrongdoing and instead paint the conflict as a creative struggle for control of the film between its two lead actors. That denial comes in a lawsuit they've filed against The New York Times, which reported on Lively's allegations in December. In a statement to NPR, The New York Times stood by their story, calling it "meticulously and responsibly reported."
"It was based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article," reads the statement. The New York Times confirmed to NPR that they "plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit."
The lawsuit filed Thursday by Baldoni, Wayfarer and their publicists reiterates the argument that the conflict with Lively emerged from a creative struggle, describing how what allegedly began as a positive working relationship between Lively and Baldoni took a turn throughout the production process of It Ends With Us. The complaint alleges that little by little, Lively leveraged her star power to push for creative input beyond what is usually granted to an actor, including by taking over wardrobe decisions, rewriting scenes, creating her own cut of the film and eventually demanding that Baldoni be excluded from promotional materials and events.
The lawsuit vehemently denies that Baldoni, Wayfarer CEO Heath or anyone else on-set engaged in sexual harassment or any other inappropriate behavior towards Lively or her team. Instead, it alleges that Lively and Reynolds led a string of "extortionate threats" to tarnish Baldoni's image.
"This lawsuit is a legal action based on an overwhelming amount of untampered evidence detailing Blake Lively and her team's duplicitous attempt to destroy Justin Baldoni, his team and their respective companies by disseminating grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and doctored information to the media," Wayfarer's attorney, Bryan Freedman, said in a statement shared with NPR. "It is clear based on our own all out willingness to provide all complete text messages, emails, video footage and other documentary evidence that was shared between the parties in real time, that this is a battle she will not win and will certainly regret."
In addition to Lively and Reynolds, the complaint names Lively's publicist, Leslie Sloane, and the public relations firm Vision PR – which represents both Reynolds and Lively – as co-defendants. When NPR requested comment on the allegations presented in Wayfarer's lawsuit, Vision PR shared a statement on behalf of Lively's legal team that reiterated her initial allegations and added that Lively was not alone: "The evidence will show that the cast and others had their own negative experiences with Mr. Baldoni and Wayfarer," they wrote.
"This latest lawsuit from Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and its associates is another chapter in the abuser playbook. This is an age-old story: A woman speaks up with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation and the abuser attempts to turn the tables on the victim. This is what experts call DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim Offender," they wrote. "Wayfarer has opted to use the resources of its billionaire co-founder to issue media statements, launch meritless lawsuits, and threaten litigation to overwhelm the public's ability to understand that what they are doing is retaliation against sexual harassment allegations."
Trouble on-set
A significant section of the lawsuit filed Thursday focuses on a document Lively included in her own complaint: a list of 30 demands for the set after the cast and crew returned following the 2023 strikes in Hollywood. These included:
- "no more personal, physical touching of, or sexual comments by Mr. Baldoni or Mr. Heath to be tolerated by BL and/or any of her employees, as well as any female cast or crew without their express consent,"
- "no more improvising of kissing,"
- "an intimacy coordinator must be on set for all scenes involving nudity and/or simulated sex"
In Thursday's lawsuit, Baldoni and his co-plaintiffs argue that the production team never received or agreed to this list; Instead, they allege they signed on to a 17-point list of demands that, according to the suit, "was not open for negotiation," even though the studio disagreed with the implication that inappropriate behavior had occurred on-set and attempted to make edits. They argue in the lawsuit, for example, that an intimacy coordinator was already required on set.
"Wayfarer would have to sign the document as-is, despite the falsity of its insinuations," reads the lawsuit. "The alternative was to lose millions of dollars, cost hundreds of people their jobs after they had been out of work for months, and destroy their relationship with Sony."
The lawsuit claims that the list of demands marked the beginning of "a carefully constructed paper trail to destroy Wayfarer, Heath, Baldoni — and the Film."
According to the suit, Lively's husband, Ryan Reynolds, was not contracted or hired to work on the film, but became central to the production conflicts. In an interview with E! News, Lively shared that Reynolds rewrote a pivotal scene of the film — which, according to Wayfarer's lawsuit filed Thursday, was news to other producers, as Reynolds did not have Wayfarer's authorization. The lawsuit also describes a "traumatic" incident in which Reynolds allegedly berated Baldoni in front of Lively, Heath, and others involved in the film, and alleges that Reynolds called Baldoni a "sexual predator" and pressured talent agency William Morris Endeavor (WME) to drop Baldoni as a client. NPR has reached out to WME for comment and has not received a response. Though Vision PR provided NPR with a statement on behalf of Lively's legal team, it does not provide any further information about these allegations about Reynolds.
The "smear campaign" that followed
After the film's completion, Wayfarer alleges that the studio and Baldoni hired a crisis PR firm not to launch a "smear campaign" against Lively, as she claimed in her own lawsuit, but "to be ready in case Reynolds and Lively unleash their wrath on them."
Lively previously alleged that a marketing plan created by the film's distributor, Sony, encouraged the cast to focus on the upbeat themes of the movie, and that Baldoni and his team privately pivoted from that strategy to focus on narratives of abuse as a way to deflect against brewing speculation about a rift in the cast. In their lawsuit Thursday, Wayfarer alleges that Baldoni never agreed with that marketing plan and that he and Heath continually pushed to re-center the topic of domestic violence. NPR has reached out to Sony for comment and has not received a response.
Wayfarer's lawsuit contends that the sexual harassment and "smear campaign" claims are an attack from not only Lively and Reynolds, but also from the studio's own former publicist, Stephanie Jones of Jonesworks LLC (who is not listed as a co-defendant). The lawsuit argues that Jones was in an embattled working relationship with Wayfarer and Baldoni by the time It Ends With Us was released, and that due to a personal and professional conflict with her then-employee Jennifer Abel, she turned over private communications between Abel, Melissa Nathan and Wayfarer to Lively's team as "revenge." Jones has filed her own lawsuit in a New York state court against Abel, Nathan, Baldoni, Wayfarer and several unnamed individuals.
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