The latest lawsuit is a haunted new twist.

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There’s a new twist in the dispute between actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, and it says a lot more about our society than it does about them.

Last month, Lively filed a legal complaint that claimed Baldoni and film producer Jamey Heath not only sexually harassed her on the set of their blockbuster hit It Ends With Us, but that they, along with their production company Wayfarer, hired a crisis public relations firm to smear her reputation this past summer after the film’s release. The New York Times reported on the details of the allegations made in the complaint, which include messages from the crisis PR representatives asserting they could easily “bury” Lively. Baldoni and Heath deny any wrongdoing.

The response to the story was gigantic—in part because the smear campaign against Lively was successful even beyond the scope of what the crisis PR firm could have hoped to accomplish. As one of the crisis PR reps who orchestrated the campaign put it in a message, uncovered via subpoena, the amount of bashing Lively was subjected to online was “actually sad because it just shows you have people really want to hate on women.”

Baldoni, known previously for his role on the CW’s Jane the Virgin, was dropped by his talent agency. He had branded himself as a feminist—and after the Times’ report, an honor he received in December at a star-studded event for men who “elevate women” and “promote gender equality” was rescinded. His female co-host on a podcast called “Man Enough” quit the show.

The documentation seemed incontrovertible, with far-reaching implications. It showed, as the Times put it, “an additional playbook for waging a largely undetectable smear campaign in the digital era.”

The new twist is that Baldoni, Wayfarer, and crisis communications representatives have now sued the Times for libel for its reporting, claiming some $250 million in damages. Baldoni and Wayfarer don’t dispute that they hired a crisis PR firm, but say they did so out of “a legitimate need for public relations protection” from Lively herself, as they feared she was on the brink of taking some interactions out of context, or of blowing them out of proportion. What happened on set, they argue, wasn’t actually sexual harassment, and Lively’s claims that it was are simply false. In fact, the lawsuit implies, she was just a diva. (And supposedly, they’re going to sue Lively soon, too.)

Baldoni and Wayfarer’s version of events, as detailed in the new lawsuit, is a funhouse mirror of Lively’s. In her telling, sexual harassment is clear. In theirs, the interactions were professional, or simply personal, but not in any way inappropriate. And so this is where we are, in 2025, post-#MeToo, three decades after the Anita Hill hearings: still quibbling over what sexual harassment even is.

Lively says that Baldoni showed her a video of his nude wife giving birth, something she found shocking and wildly inappropriate. Baldoni says he did so in the context of discussing a birth scene in the film, and that the video is not pornographic but rather “deeply personal with no sexual overtone.” His wife, Baldoni’s suit says, condoned his showing it. In Lively’s telling, Baldoni conveyed his wife’s consent by saying, “She isn’t weird about this stuff,” which Lively understandably took to imply that it might be weird for her to not welcome it.

Lively also alleges that when filming a scene without sound, Baldoni went off-script and out of character and ran his lips over her neck, telling her she smelled good; she says he also barged into her dressing room when she was breastfeeding. Lively says Baldoni and Heath talked about their past addictions to pornography, which made her extremely uncomfortable. When she tried to shut it down by saying she had never seen porn, she alleges Baldoni announced that claim to a larger group, compounding her discomfort.

Baldoni’s lawsuit doesn’t respond in detail to every allegation, but says that Lively often nursed in meetings and other professional settings and in fact invited him into her trailer while she was pumping. But Lively is far from the only villain in Baldoni’s and his colleagues’ telling. The New York Times itself, they say, has squandered its reputation as “Times reporters have ever more frequently veered spectacularly from their own journalistic guidelines.” When partisans deride the Times as “fake news”—a rallying cry for Donald Trump and his followers—they do so, the Baldoni suit says, “with some justification.”

This is perhaps the most fascinating element: A self-styled male feminist (Baldoni) defending himself by saying that the woman is lying and his actions weren’t harassment, and then referencing the words of an incoming president who is notorious for being accused of sexual abuse many times over—and who was found liable for it by a jury.

It’s totally possible that Baldoni and his co-defendants (and co-plaintiffs) are correct that Lively is a diva who made unreasonable demands and ostracized him. But even if Baldoni’s version of events are true, it’s a bit rich that a male feminist—who claims he made this movie simply to help raise awareness about domestic violence and help survivors—would refuse to take a hard look at the acts that are not in dispute, including showing a video of his wife giving birth to a work colleague. Lively has given birth to four children; she doesn’t need to watch an unsolicited video of her co-star’s nude wife to know what it entails. And shouldn’t a feminist know that nursing in meetings, of one’s own free will, is different from offering carte blanche consent for your co-star to bust in while pumps are attached to your nipples?

A movie set is obviously a different setting than a standard workplace—no one is acting out giving birth at an investment bank as part of the job—but that doesn’t mean there are no appropriate boundaries. Baldoni’s argument is in part that none of it constituted harassment. But sexual harassment isn’t just come-ons and ass-grabbing; it’s creating a sexually charged or sexually hostile workplace environment that makes it impossible for women to do their jobs fully and freely. Talking about porn, for example, is not just sexualized, although that’s inappropriate at work, too—it reminds women that many men are used to seeing us as little more than sexual receptacles. And that dehumanization may not be sadistic, but it is certainly antithetical to workplace gender equality.

That’s not to say there aren’t sadists out there. After Lively’s story came out in the Times, actor Kate Beckinsale spoke out about the abuse she has suffered on sets—so many times over, she said on Instagram, she has “47 million” stories she could share. One particularly disturbing incident, she said, involved an unsafe fight scene, where she learned that “there’s a certain kind of actor who gets kind of a thrill out of legally being able to harm a woman during a fight sequence.” For another film, she said, a publicist made her do a photoshoot the day after having a miscarriage. She was forced (twice) to go on diets so extreme she stopped menstruating; on one set, a crew member felt her up, and when she complained about being sexually assaulted, she was told, “No you weren’t.”

“I’m grateful to Blake Lively for highlighting the fact that this is not an archaic problem that no one’s facing,” Beckinsale said. “This is continuing, and then when it does happen, a machine goes into place to absolutely destroy you.”

Perhaps that is the greatest lesson of this story: Not all people who behave badly are monsters. Not all bad guys realize they’re the villains. And too often, the men who see women as vulnerable creatures to be saved are the same ones incapable of realizing they’re taking part in the broader constellation of misogyny that puts us at risk. But when a woman pushes back—and asserts that certain conduct isn’t appropriate or welcomed—that action still becomes the greatest threat of all. Blake Lively’s simple resolution to improve workplace misogyny poked at a power structure so entrenched that even a man who wants to be seen as a male feminist would readily hire a crisis PR campaign to smear her into submission.

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