Blake Lively – rich, beautiful and successful, with an adored movie star husband in Ryan Reynolds, powerful friends including Taylor Swift and a stellar acting career, can consider herself lucky to the point of invincibility.
However, since December 31, he has been on the receiving end of a jolting lesson in Newton’s third law, which holds that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
Her move to incinerate the reputation and career of Justin Baldoni, her co-star in the hit movie It Ends With Us, through a civil complaint filed just before Christmas accusing him of sexual harassment on set, has led to a media firestorm. which has engulfed her – and Reynolds – in painful ways they clearly never saw coming.
That’s indicated by the fact that for two weeks now, spooked by a global wave of hostility toward the 37-year-old actress who made her name on the TV series Gossip Girl, all comments have been disabled on the couple’s respective To Instagram Accounts.
Even the author who wrote the book on which the film is based has gone so far as to shut down his Instagram this week, such is the abuse leveled at Lively.
Lively and Reynolds, 48, could have been expected to go to the Golden Globes on Jan. 7, since their movie Deadpool & Wolverine was up for grabs. But they didn’t attend and, perhaps to lessen his embarrassment, neither did his co-star and friend Hugh Jackman. Everyone interested will certainly stay home on Oscar night on March 2 as well.
‘Can you imagine Blake walking a red carpet at this point? says a Hollywood publicist. “No one would be crazy enough to let that happen.”
The twists and turns of this bitter Hollywood feud have become steadily more sensational, and more damaging to animated films, as January has unfolded.
Blake Lively at the premiere with USA in New York with her husband Ryan Reynolds last year
The film The Heart of the Feud, based on Colleen Hoover’s 2016 bestseller, was released in August and was a box office hit. It follows Lily Bloom, a florist played by Lively, who falls in love with a charming but abusive neurosurgeon played by Baldoni, who also directed the film.
Initial rumors of a fallout between the co-stars surfaced over the summer after they appeared to avoid each other during the film’s promotional tour and have since exploded into a full-scale war after Lively’s lawsuit dropped on December 23.
This included claims that Baldoni, 41, entered Lively’s trailer while she was topless, showed her pornographic photos and a graphic video of his wife giving birth, repeatedly discussed her ‘addiction to pornography,’ described her own genitals and He even bit and sucked on Lively’s lips. During an improvised kissing scene for which Baldoni insisted on doing multiple takes.
This week, Justin Baldoni’s team released a video of raw footage of him and Lively doing three takes of a scene of their characters flirting in a bar, which had led to Lively’s sexual harassment allegations.
Both sides say the video vindicates their account, but most people agree that what is shown appears to be a far cry from the “predatory” behavior the anime complained about.
Meanwhile, Baldoni’s claim, that animated “stole” the movie from him, erased his credit, banished him to the basement on opening night, since she wouldn’t allow him to be in the same room as her and cook up a story about The Creepy behavior to cover up what he had done is to be widely believed on social media. Thousands of mean girl memes proliferate. To put it bluntly, Blake has been cancelled.
Raw footage from filming ends with us released by Justin Baldoni’s legal team this week, showing the actor animated in a scene during which he claims he was sexually harassed.
Now it can be revealed that Lively needs to prepare for more of the same – and worse. Multiple sources connected to the lawsuit confirm that Baldoni’s team is building an entire website about the case that will be open to the public.
When it goes live soon, it will include numerous snippets of raw footage from the film, including anything that ‘speaks to’ Lively’s original complaint about her co-star. As Baldoni’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, says, “We have all the receipts, and more.”
This could extend to footage from a scene Lively has complained about where her character is giving birth. She said she was “pressured” to simulate “complete nudity”; Baldoni’s team says she was covered in protection and a hospital gown.
The website will also include full WhatsApp exchanges, unedited email text, text between Lively and Baldoni, such as a message in which she invites him to come and run through lines in her trailer, saying she was ‘pumping’ ( expressing breast milk, she would. Not much had her fourth child at the time of filming).
This could call into question her claim that Baldoni had entered her trailer on multiple occasions while she was breastfeeding, causing her distress.
It is unheard of for one side to present such a trove of evidence to the public, independent of court filings. The move has been described as “super aggressive” by one legal analyst and will cause outrage among Lively’s team.
The twists and turns of this bitter Hollywood dispute have steadily become more sensational – and more damaging to animated – here at a gala screening in London in August
However, as we will see, it is in the playbook of Baldoni’s attack dog lawyer, Bryan Freedman, who has a reputation for fighting hard, his critics would say dirty, and for fighting in the court of public opinion rather than in front of a judge. He has called Lively’s legal proceedings “unethical” and “shameful.”
As you might expect, there are signs of desperation on the other side for things to calm down.
Lively retains four attorneys at two firms: Michael J Gottlieb and Kristin Bender at Willkie Farr & Gallagher, and Stephanie, Roeser and Catherine Rose Noble at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. They say they previously issued a ‘cease and desist’ notice for alleged harassment by Baldoni’s team in December.
They have now asked to try to stop Freedman from releasing images and information to the media, saying it harasses people and violates rules of professional conduct regarding publicity of the trial.
The request issued this week says that Freedman’s public statements not only continue the retaliation campaign that was the subject of Ms. Lively’s first cease and desist, but contain numerous new false statements about Ms. Lively and others. It is believed that it was Reynolds who pushed for the application over concerns for his wife’s careers and well-being.
Lively’s lawyers submitted a letter directly to Freedman at his office, as well as to the Wayfarer film company, which produced the film. The document, dated Monday, January 20, deplores the release of unedited footage from the film and criticizes plans to release ‘All Correspondence and Videos’.
Her lawyers say: ‘As Ms. Lively’s lawyer has repeatedly attempted to advise Mr. Freedman, federal litigation must be conducted in court and in accordance with the relevant rules of professional conduct. “His conduct threatens and will materially harm both the lively case and the Wayfarer case by restraining the jury pool, because his statements are deliberately intended to undermine the “character, credibility and reputation” of numerous relevant parties.”
A source close to the litigation says: ‘Attempts to gag Freedman only make it look worse for Blake. He’s pressing ahead with plans to put literally all the evidence on a website for the Court of Public Opinion. It’s never been done before.
The question of the evidence, and whether it has been tampered with, is at the heart of the first legal action in this dispute and led to the New York Times printing a 4,000-word article titled ‘Inside a Hollywood smear machine’ in a few hours of The Animated Lawsuit being filed.
The article, which is now the subject of a defamation complaint from Baldoni’s team, alleged that his PRS Melissa Nathan and Jen Abel conspired to create a global smear campaign against Livel by using a film about domestic violence to promote their alcohol brands and telling viewers to ‘grab their flowers’ to see her.
He cited a text message from his publicist Nathan that said, “We can bury anyone.” Now it seems that the initiative has returned to the Baldoni camp.
A source says: ‘It seems like a massive miscalculation to launch a lawsuit when the evidence will come back and show the other side.
“It is believed that Blake’s team may decide to settle in to get her out with dignity.”
For now, Lively’s team insists they want to go to court and no settlement discussions have been opened. They say: ‘While they (Baldoni’s team) focus on misleading media narratives, we are focused on the legal process. “We continue our efforts to hold Baldoni and his associates to answer in court, under oath, rather than through manufactured media stunts.”
Baldoni’s lawyer responds: ‘Before filing her lawsuit in court, Ms. Lively went to the New York Times in an effort to publicly destroy Justin Baldoni. When Baldoni exercises his right to publicly defend himself by presenting real facts and evidence, to Ms. Lively and the team, this instantly becomes morally and ethically wrong.
‘Ms. Lively wants very different standards to be applied to her, but fortunately, truth and authenticity apply to everyone and can never be wrong. Looking at the video and the evidence to come, I can understand why Ms. Lively would now not want this to play out in public.
You can see why, when profiled in The Hollywood Reporter last year, Freedman characterized himself as a “street fighter.”
Suffice it to say that it doesn’t look like this flagship show fight that will end soon.
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