Blake Lively has issued another lawsuit against co-star Justin Baldoni for ‘severe and serious emotional distress’.
In December, Lively filed a legal complaint against her It Ends With Us co-star Baldoni, with the Gossip Girl star accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment and of instigating a ‘social manipulation’ campaign against her.
The 37-year-old also alleged that Baldoni had attempted to add ‘improvised gratuitous sexual content and/or scenes involving nudity into the film’ as well as making comments about her appearance – with the complaint alleging that he had ‘cried for hours in her dressing room’ because she didn’t look ‘hot’.
Shortly after the release of the complaint, the 40-year-old actor and director’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, responded to the claims made by Lively, calling them ‘categorically false’.
Freedman also addressed rumors that Baldoni was planning a countersue, telling Deadline that it would ‘shock everyone who has been manipulated into believing a demonstrably false narrative’.
And now as we enter into 2025, it has been revealed that the Green Lantern star has filed another lawsuit – however, this time Lively is claiming ‘punitive’ and ‘compensatory’ damages for the ‘severe and serious emotional distress’ and she’d allegedly experienced as a result of the defendants.
The formal complaint was made on New Year’s Eve (December 31), with Lively claiming Baldoni had worked with his publicist Jennifer Abel and crisis PR Melissa Nathan to ‘destroy’ her reputation.
Wayfarer Studios, the company Baldoni co-owns, were also named in the lawsuit.
Lively’s lawyers told The Daily Mail: “Earlier today, Ms. Lively filed a federal complaint against Wayfarer Studios and others in the Southern District of New York.
“Ms. Lively previously sent her California Civil Rights Department Complaint in response to the retaliatory campaign Wayfarer launched against her for reporting sexual harassment and workplace safety concerns. Unfortunately, Ms. Lively’s decision to speak out has resulted in further retaliation and attacks.
“As alleged in Ms. Lively’s federal Complaint, Wayfarer and its associates have violated federal and California state law by retaliating against her for reporting sexual harassment and workplace safety concerns. Now, the defendants will answer for their conduct in federal court.
“Ms. Lively has brought this litigation in New York, where much of the relevant activities described in the Complaint took place, but we reserve the right to pursue further action in other venues and jurisdictions as appropriate under the law.”
Baldoni has since also filed a lawsuit of his own against The New York Times for libel and false light invasion of privacy.
He is one of ten plaintiffs in a $250 million lawsuit against the publication, which claims The New York Times had ‘cherry-picked’ and ‘altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead’.
Freedman told Variety that the publication had ‘cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful ‘untouchable’ Hollywood elites, disregarding journalistic practices and ethics once befitting of the revered publication by using doctored and manipulated texts and intentionally omitting texts which dispute their chosen PR narrative’.
In response, a New York Times spokesperson said: “The role of an independent news organization is to follow the facts where they lead. Our story was meticulously and responsibly reported. It 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.
“To date, Wayfarer Studios, Mr. Baldoni, the other subjects of the article and their representatives have not pointed to a single error. We published their full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well.
“We plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”
UNILAD has reached out to Lively and Baldoni’s representatives for comment, while also reaching out to Abel, Nathan, Wayfarer Studios and The New York Times for further comment.
