Actor Justin Baldoni’s lawyer refuted that his client’s It Ends With Us co-star Blake Lively was the target of a planned smear campaign, telling NBC that the accusations made against the actress in the New York Times piece harmed people’s careers.
In an exclusive interview that was partially broadcast on Nightly News on Thursday and featured additional clips on The TODAY Show on Friday, lawyer Bryan Freedman said that they failed to do their research. They did nothing to confirm whether the story was true, accurate, and verifiable; if they had conducted even a rudimentary investigation, they would have discovered the truth.
The Times indicated in a statement on December 31 that it intends to fight the lawsuit robustly.
According to a statement from the publication’s spokeswoman, an independent journalistic organization’s job is to follow the facts where they lead. The coverage of our story was responsible and thorough. The text conversations and emails that we accurately and extensively quote in the story were among the thousands of pages of actual records that served as its foundation.
The Times claimed in a statement to NBC News that Baldoni’s lawsuit contains many errors, ranging from the word count to the manner in which the publication requested feedback.
Days before to the interview, Baldoni, his publicists, and a number of other people had sued the Times for libel for its article titled We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine, which was published on December 21.
The August theatrical release of It Ends With Us, an adaptation of the well-known Colleen Hoover book, amassed a sizable TikTok fan base. Baldoni plays Lily Bloom’s violent romantic partner, Ryle Kincaid, while Lively plays the lead, Lily Bloom. Baldoni directed and modified the project as well.
On December 20, Lively filed a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department, alleging that Baldoni had sexually harassed her while filming It Ends With Us and had retaliated against her after she had voiced concerns about his behavior on set. While they were marketing the movie this summer, she claimed that Baldoni engaged a crisis publicity business to launch a social manipulation effort to disparage her. A lawsuit frequently starts with such a file with the state.
The Times, which broke the story initially, has maintained its reporting.
Lively is not named as a defendant in Baldoni s suit, which was filed with 9 other plaintiffs, including Baldoni s Wayfarer Studios, producer Jamey Heath, who was also accused by Lively of sexual harassment, and Baldoni s publicists, Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan. They are requesting damages of $250 million.
Lively filed a federal complaint against Baldoni in the Southern District of New York on the same day that Baldoni filed his lawsuit against the Times. She alleges that Baldoni, the film s production company Wayfarer Studios and others engaged in a carefully crafted, coordinated, and resourced retaliatory scheme to silence her, and others, from speaking out.
Freedman contended that the Times report had a detrimental effect on Baldoni and his publicity team. The talent agency William Morris Endeavor dropped Baldoni as a client after Lively s filing, Ari Emanuel, chief executive of the agency s parent company, Endeavor, told the Times.
William Morris Endeavor denied that it was pressured to drop Baldoni as a client. In a statement to People Magazine, a spokesperson for WME said: “In Baldoni s filing there is a claim that Reynolds pressured Baldoni s agent at the ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ premiere. According to the statement released on January 1, this is untrue.
In the weeks since Lively s complaint was filed, many in Hollywood including the actors union SAG-AFTRA and Sony Pictures Entertainment, the studio behind It Ends With Us have signaled their support for Lively.
Freedman said he believes the support for Lively is because she and her husband, actor Ryan Reynolds, have a tremendous amount of power, and Justin is a no one to them.
When asked about how the alleged feud between Baldoni and Lively began, Freedman said the two got along famously until there was some discord when Lively, a producer on the film, asked to review the daily shoots.
And Justin allows her to do that for a while, and then she says, Who else has access to it? And then you start to see the two other producers have access to it, and that s when the communications between the two of them, you know, completely stop, he said. And that s when you start to see these things become allegations. And all of a sudden, you start to see this, you know, this return to work agreement.
Pressed further about the alleged sexual comments and bad behavior on set, Freedman said I m sure there were things that made her [Lively] feel uncomfortable.
I think in every kind of a situation where you re shooting on a set, there are things that make people feel uncomfortable, he said. The question really, in this case is, does it rise to the level of sexual harassment, right?
Freedman claimed that the evidence in his clients suit against the Times refutes Lively s lawsuit allegations.
You know, Justin Baldoni from the moment, from the get go, said, I don t want to do anything negative toward her [Lively], said Freedman. I don t want to hurt her. This isn t about shaming her. This isn t about hurting her. This is about protecting the film. This is about protecting what we ve done, what we put five years of hard work in. That s what this is about.
Throughout the interview with NBC, Freedman said he will rely on documents to defend his clients.
Documents don t lie, he said. Documents tell the truth. Documents aren t interested in whether or not they re going to get their next movie, whether they re going to be hired again in Hollywood, whether they have to kowtow to power couples. Documents don t worry about any of those things. What documents are their truth tellers, and that s what we re going to allege. We re going to allege things through documents.
When asked why people should believe Baldoni, who has built a brand focused on supporting women, in the allegations against Lively, Freedman told NBC News, I m not asking anyone to not believe anyone. I am more than willing to take every single text message that exists out there, lay them out, put them on a website for the world to see, have them see the truth and determine the truth for themselves.
In their 87-page lawsuit, lawyers for Baldoni and the other plaintiffs argue that the Times relied on cherry-picked and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead.
For example, The Times story reported on a text exchange in which Nathan and Abel discuss a Daily Mail story titled Is Blake Lively set to be CANCELLED? The texts between the publicists appear to show Nathan complimenting Abel, writing you really outdid yourself with this piece. Nathan replied: That s why you hired me right? I m the best.
But according to Baldoni s suit, additional texts between the two show Nathan saying she was not involved with the story s publication. Damn this is unfair because it s also not me, she wrote. Everything now looks like it s me. The Times also omitted an emoji of an upside-down smiling face, which the suit says is commonly used to convey irony, sarcasm, joking, or a sense of goofiness or silliness.
However, in legal documents, emoji don’t always appear in legal text, according to a Times spokesperson. Other inaccuracies include things like the story’s word count, which is approximately 3,000 words not 4,000 words as the lawsuit claims.
“To address some inaccuracies in the lawsuit, when seeking comments from Mr. Baldoni and others who would be mentioned in the article, The Times shared the information that we intended to publish, including references to specific text messages and documents, asked them to identify any inaccuracies, provide additional context and speak with our team,” the spokesperson wrote in the statement.
Baldoni, Wayfarer and the other subjects chose not to have any conversations with The Times or address any of the specific text messages or documents and instead emailed a joint response, which was published in full. Baldoni and his team also did not ask for an extension to address the details of the story, according to a Times spokesperson.(Also, they sent their response to The Times at 11:16pm ET Dec 20th, not at 2:16am ET Dec 21st as the complaint says, the Times said in its statement).
Attorneys for Lively said this week that the star 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, the attorneys said. Now, the defendants will answer for their conduct in federal court.
In response to Baldoni s suit, Lively s attorneys said, This lawsuit is based on the obviously false premise that Ms. Lively s administrative complaint against Wayfarer and others was a ruse based on a choice not to file a lawsuit against Baldoni, Wayfarer, and that litigation was never her ultimate goal.
While we will not litigate this matter in the press, we do encourage people to read Ms. Lively s complaint in its entirety. We look forward to addressing each and every one of Wayfarer s allegations in court,” Lively s lawyers said.
Freedman claims that the suit against the Times is the first of many his client plans to file. Freedman indicated there are more bad actors and others they plan to take legal action against, although they did not specify everyone they plan to bring legal action against. Additionally, when asked if Baldoni plans to sue Lively, Freedman said Absolutely we re working on it now.
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