Lively-Baldoni battle goes legal

Both stars have been party to a rapid exchange of lawsuits

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni have each filed lawsuits aimed at each other on Tuesday. The lawsuits are the latest instalment of the volcanic litigation explosion both stars have become embroiled in since the release of their summer blockbuster It Ends With Us.

According to reports by Variety, Lively alleges sexual harassment on set and has backed up her December civil complaint with a legal case against Baldoni. Baldoni, meanwhile, has cried foul about a smear campaign aimed at derailing his career and destroying his reputation. He has lobbed a $250 million lawsuit at The New York Times for reporting Lively's complaints against him.

Whilst the rapid exchange of lawsuits has clouded facts and made it all but impossible for an impartial bystander to come to a solid conclusion of who can be believed and who is to be blamed, here is the summary of who has set what, when, and why.

What Lively alleges

As outlined by a BBC report, Lively sued Baldoni and his publicity team on Tuesday. As with her earlier civil complaint against her former co-star filed in December, Lively alleges sexual harassment on the set of their summer blockbuster and a scheme to "destroy" her reputation. Whilst Lively's case does not specify a monetary amount, what is clear is that she has asked for compensatory damages, including "lost wages" and money for "mental pain and anguish.

Lively's legal case against Baldoni contains many of the same accusations she had outlined in her civil complaint. Her lawsuit accuses Baldoni and his team of attacking her public image following a meeting to address "repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behaviour". In the meeting, Lively is said to have laid out 30 demands relating to alleged misconduct to ensure they could continue to produce It Ends With Us, which included not describing genitalia on set and not adding any intimate scenes beyond the ones Lively had previously approved.

In addition, following a summer of stories where Lively was portrayed as someone who turned a blind eye to the domestic violence issues raised in It Ends With Us, Lively's legal team have further accused Baldoni and his film studio Wayfarer of leading a "multi-tiered plan" to wreck her reputation, which included social media manipulation and using friendly journalists to further certain narratives.

Baldoni's retaliatory response

In response, Baldoni has sued The New York Times for reporting Lively's initial legal complaint, claiming libel and fraud as he accuses journalists of working with her to damage his reputation and ignoring his evidence which refuted her claims.

Baldoni's legal team maintains that Lively's allegations are false. Despite these protestations, following the New York Times report outlining Lively's complaints against him, Baldoni was dropped by his talent agency, WME. However, according to The Hollywood Reporter, both Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds have released a statement insisting that the married stars did not pressure WME to drop Baldoni.

Baldoni's lawsuit asks for a jury trial and damages of $250m. In addition, his lawyer, Byran Freedman has told CBS News that the newspaper "aided and abetted" a "smear campaign designed to revitalise Lively's... floundering public image". As part of his lawsuit, Baldoni maintains that his team was not given enough time to respond to a "bombshell" story and that communications were later "stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead".

Part of the New York Times report in question read that Baldoni had "repeatedly entered [Lively's] makeup trailer uninvited while she was undressed, including when she was breastfeeding", a claim that Baldoni has denied. As per Variety, that discrepancy is one of many highlighted in his scathing lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday afternoon in Los Angeles Superior Court. The publication reports that Baldoni is among a group of 10 plaintiffs that also includes publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel who are suing the newspaper for libel and invasion of privacy.

Newspaper's defence

The newspaper, meanwhile, continues to deny Baldoni's allegations, stating that its original story was "meticulously and responsibly reported" and "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". In a statement to the BBC, the newspaper also added, "We published their [Baldoni and his team's] full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well."

It Ends With Us, based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Colleen Hoover, was released in August 2024. The film saw Lively play a woman in a relationship with a charming but abusive boyfriend, played by Baldoni. The legal battle between both stars of the film appears to be heavily under way with no conclusion visible for the foreseeable near future.