Justin Baldoni’s Lawyer Says Blake Lively’s Sexual Harassment Allegations Are False

EXCLUSIVE: With yet another week of trials in the ever-increasing melee of opprobrium between It ends with us With Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, the court of public opinion has proven to be as much a field of operations as state and federal cases.

A front that Bryan Freedman is not ready to concede to any rival.

“After my clients filed a comprehensive complaint containing nearly 200 pages of undeniable facts and documentary evidence that crushed their false claims of a smear campaign by providing falsified communications to the New York TimesBlake and his legal team have only one heinous pivot left, and that is to double down on the sickeningly false sexual allegations against Mr. Baldoni,” the hard-hitting, media-savvy lawyer told Deadline.

Liner Freedman co-founder Taitelman + Cooley LLP was responding Saturday to the Jan. 16 response from Lively’s attorneys Manatt, Phelps & Phillips and Willkie Farr & Gallagher to Baldoni’s long-awaited lawsuit last week against her co-star, her husband Ryan Reynolds, publicist Leslie Sloane and her VisionPR shingle. A sort of match point with Lively’s New York lawsuit against Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios, CEO Jamey Heath, financier Steve Sarowitz and PR heads Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel for sexual harassment on IEWU and a post-production smear campaign, the $400 million research effort Joan the Virgin the vet goes after Lively, Reynolds and Sloane for defamation and extortion.

Just hours after the Baldoni team of lawyers led by Freedman entered its case into the docket, Lively’s team exclusively and brusquely told Deadline: “This latest lawsuit from Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and his associates is another chapter in the abuser’s handbook. » They added: “In short, while the victim focuses on the abuse, the abuser focuses on the victim. The strategy of attacking the woman is desperate, it does not refute the evidence in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and it will fail.

These were fighting words that Freedman, often pugilistic, could not leave unanswered.

As he also told me today:

The simple fact that Ms. Lively feels she can publicly destroy Mr. Baldoni’s reputation in an effort to devastate his future career and then deprive him or his team of their own ability to defend themselves against her is absurd. Mr. Baldoni never publicly attempted to denounce Ms. Lively for her numerous wrongdoings during filming. He kindly addressed all of her concerns during filming in the correct way despite not agreeing at all, he himself was committed to doing things differently and keeping the peace as she specifically admitted as much in her own trial. We will not only continue to defend our clients against Blake’s power, privilege and lies, but we will now fight even harder for the voiceless in the DV community who suffer unjustly as she continues to assert her own interests and selfishness. vendetta in the media.

Based on the 2016 novel by Colleen Hoover, It ends with us focused on domestic violence across generations and the relationship between Lively’s grieving florist character and co-star/director Baldoni’s enraged neurosurgeon. A box office success last summer for Sony with nearly $400 million collected on the big screen before moving to Netflix, It ends with us was surrounded by rumors of problems between its leads, with Lively and Baldoni not doing any press together for the film before its August premiere.

The now very public airing of this alleged dirty laundry began when Lively filed a detailed sexual harassment and retaliation complaint against Baldoni and others with the California Department of Civil Rights on December 20. New York Times, who Baldoni is now suing for $250 million, published a lengthy article titled “We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine,” filled with text messages and emails from Baldoni public relations managers in the event of a crisis. Baldoni and Freedman said that New York Times the story was staged, full of cherry-picked information. The Gray Lady said its journalists were fair, reported thoroughly and did their job.

With all the What You Did to Me allegations and the revival of I Didn’t Do Nothing to You, You Did Me Dirty, that A-listers supported Lively and recently dumped Baldoni and their various partners, The Publicists and expensive lawyers have been battling it out for almost a month in a phalanx of filings and declarations, the commercial side of show business should not be neglected here. This whole affair is personal for the wallet as well as for the reputation. Baldoni complains that his film was stolen from him by Lively, with help from Reynolds, and now the duo and their accusations have left his career DOA. Lively says she was subjected to harassment and abuse on set and dragged through the digital mud by an attack mounted by Nathan and Abel that severely damaged her brand.

At this – amid all the “astroturfing” accusations from Team Baldoni against Lively and Reynolds who allegedly berated Baldoni during a charged meeting a year ago – an important aspect of Lively and of his NYE ​​trial has slipped out of the spotlight somewhat. Although not focused on the alleged militarization and unleashing of a “digital army” against Lively, the case may reveal the heart of the confrontation and why the confrontation took place. Green Lantern-The star couple waited months to go public with their disagreement with Baldoni.

In both the Dec. 20 CRD filing and the federal lawsuit 11 days later, Lively’s lawyers note how the fallout from caustic online criticism of her was “harming her businesses.” Like her multiplatform husband, Lively has long had a number of lucrative revenue streams from branded merchandise and sponsorship deals.

The ramifications of Livley’s hair care line failing in 2024, in relative terms, as onslaughts of negative posts about her abounded on social media, must certainly play a role, contractually or otherwise.

“Following the August 2024 launch of Ms. Lively’s hair care line, Blake Brown, which she spent seven years creating, the brand’s Instagram account was flooded with harassing and derogatory comments, many posted by user accounts that had no followers or followers. prior messages (suggesting inauthenticity) and which had no relation to the brand’s products,” Lively’s lawsuit states.

“The retaliatory campaign against Ms. Lively also harmed her businesses,” the unspecified damages suit continues. “The long-planned launch of her hair care line, Blake Brown – a date set more than a year before the date chosen (and not by Ms. Lively) for the film’s release – was caught in the crossfire. negative against Ms. Lively Initially, before the “social manipulation” campaign began, Ms. Lively was informed that Blake Brown was Target’s largest hair care launch ever based on internal sales projections. sudden and unexpected negative media campaign launched against Ms. Lively caused retail sales of Blake Brown products to drop by 56% to 78%. This dramatic decline was completely at odds with the high satisfaction scores Blake Brown products received in extensive pre-launch consumer testing or their success. initial after launch.

On top of all that, Freedman — after alerting Reynolds to his client and friend Megyn Kelly’s show, which discussed the slag against Baldoni that appeared in last summer’s mega-hit. Deadpool and Wolverine – sent an evidence preservation letter on January 7 via FedEx to Disney CEO Bob Iger and Marvel Chairman Kevin Feige. Full of speculation about whether the Shawn Levy-directed movie “Merc with a Mouth” mocked Baldoni with his intentionally deplorable Nicepool character, the correspondence also promised further lawsuits. In another brand ambush, it also circulated unsubstantiated notions of “complaints of sexual or other harassment filed against Ryan Reynolds by anyone.”

This low blow aside, it’s unclear when the character of Nicepool, who is not part of dead Pool lore, was designed and put into the $1 billion+ winning supesflick.

However, with Deadpool and Wolverine filming at the same time as the first part of It ends with us‘Before the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes that shut down Hollywood for several months, all indications are that Nicepool was a late addition to the R-rated Disney film, studio sources tell me. At the same time, these same sources assert Deadpool and Wolverine Production was very smooth, with Reynolds and Levy frequently making last-minute changes and additions.

With more cases and perhaps even lawsuits to come in the Lively v. Baldoni battle, Freedman himself was hit hard with his home decimated in the fire that ravaged Pacific Palisades earlier this month. Lively’s team had no response to Freedman’s latest statement today when contacted by Deadline. If they respond, this post will be updated.