Blake Lively stars as Lily Bloom in the film adaptation of Colleen Hoover's book It Ends With Us.
Blake Lively stars as Lily Bloom in the film adaptation of Colleen Hoover's book It Ends With Us.
A new lawsuit filed by Justin Baldoni has shed new light on claims by Blake Lively that her former co-star was trying to sabotage her career.
Lively has filed a lawsuit in New York against the actor and his publicity team, alleging sexual harassment on the set of thefilm It Ends With Us, claiming there was a scheme to “destroy” her reputation.
Baldoni, meanwhile, has filed his own lawsuit against the New York Times, which first reported Lively’s legal complaint, accusing journalists of working with the actress to destroy his career, as well as revealing new evidence in an attempt to contradict the actress’ shocking allegations.
One of the most wild claims included by Lively in her lawsuit was an allegation that the director “repeatedly entered her makeup trailer uninvited while she was undressed, including when she was breastfeeding”.
Now, text messages between the feuding stars have been made public that shed new light on the claims.
On June 2, 2023, Lively started a text exchange with director and co-star Baldoni where she blamed her assistant for not getting her an updated batch of script pages.
US actress Blake Lively attends the LACMA Art+Film Gala at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in Los Angeles, California, on November 2, 2024. Photo / Etienne LAURENT, AFP
“She didn’t realise they were new,” Lively wrote. “New pages can always be sent to me as well please.”
Lively then followed up with another text shortly thereafter. “I’m just pumping in my trailer if you wanna work out our lines.”
Baldoni responded: “Copy. Eating with crew and will head that way.”
Elsewhere, it was previously revealed that a volatile meeting took place between Lively’s husband Ryan Reynolds and Baldoni at their penthouse apartment in New York.
Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni in It Ends with Us (2024). Photo / Sony Pictures
And according to Baldoni’s suit, Reynolds accused Baldoni of “fat-shaming” his wife. The suit also claims that Reynolds put pressure on Baldoni’s agent to drop him during the Deadpool & Wolverine premiere in July.
The agency has denied they were pressured by Reynolds.
Baldoni’s lawsuit goes on to allege that the New York Times relied on “cherry picked” and altered communications “stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead”.
In the bombshell New York Times article, it had also been alleged that Lively had objected to sex scenes that Baldoni had planned to add to the script because she believed they were “gratuitous”.
However, new text exchanges have now offered an alternate version of events.
In one text message sent by Lively before production she appeared to suggest that she had no immediate desire to meet the movie’s intimacy co-ordinator.
“I feel good. I can meet her when we start :) thank you though!” reads one text exposed in the lawsuit.
There is also mention made of notes from the intimacy co-ordinator that included their suggestion that the character played by Baldoni “chooses not to orgasm after he satisfied Lily [Lively’s character]”.
Justin Baldoni hired his own crisis PR expert at the height of It Ends With Us promotions. Photo / Getty Images
According to the complaint, “Lively personalises this and replied: ‘I’d be mortified if that happened to me',” to which Baldoni, following Lively’s lead replied: “I’m not sure about you but those have been some of the most beautiful moments with [my wife] and I.”
In a statement, the New York Times told BBC News its report 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.
“We published their [Baldoni and his team’s] full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well.”
