Blake Lively had taken an unprecedented action against her recent co-star, Justin Baldoni.
After months of speculation about a feud between the actor and the actress – who starred this year in the film It Ends With Us – Lively filed a sexual harassment lawsuit this week against Baldoni.
According to documents obtained by TMZ, Lively claims Baldoni created a hostile work environment on the set of the aforementioned book adaptation — and later engaged in a campaign against his co-star
Specifically, the docs allege that Baldoni caused Lively “serious emotional distress” as a result of his behavior… which included “showing Blake nude videos or images of women,” along with discussing Baldoni’s past “addiction” or sexual conquests . “
At one point, the lawsuit states, Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, even attended a meeting between those involved in the film to address these issues.
Other issues, according to TMZ, included “no further reference to the cast and crew’s genitalia, no further inquiry into Blake’s weight, and no further reference to Blake’s dead father.”
(Lively’s dad died in 2021.)
Citing the lawsuit, TMZ reported that the aforementioned meeting also emphasized that “there is no more sex, oral sex, or on-camera climax additions by BL outside of the scope of the script approved by BL when the project was signed.”
As previously reported, there was alleged disagreement over the final cut of It Ends With Us (on which Lively served as a producer), along with disagreements over how the film would be released.
Lively alleges that Baldoni and others in his camp then engaged in a “social manipulation” campaign to “ruin” Lively’s reputation.
The lawsuit even includes text messages from Baldoni’s publicist to the studio’s publicist saying Baldoni “wanted to feel [Ms. Lively] can be buried and “We cannot write that we will destroy her.”
Baldoni and Lively never appeared on the red carpet together during the promotion of It Ends With Us and never sat down for interviews together.
Baldoni’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, hit back at Lively’s lawsuit, claiming it’s an attempt to “correct her negative reputation” and noting that it’s “false, outrageous and intentionally malicious with the intent to publicly hurt her.”
Before the film’s release, Baldoni told Variety – when asked about It Starts With Us, a possible sequel to the film based on a book of the same title – that he and the production studio had not “even begun to think about so far ahead. I try to stay in the present as much as I can.”
We’ll just go ahead now, though, and make the following not-so-bold prediction:
If a sequel does move on, will move on not starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.
