Blake Lively is pursuing legal proceedings against her It Ends With Us co-star and director, Justin Baldoni.
After months of rumors regarding a conflict between the Gossip Girl actress and the Jane the Virgin star, Lively initiated legal action against Baldoni for sexual harassment, claiming that he fostered a toxic work atmosphere on the set of It Ends With Us and subsequently engaged in a campaign against her. (Baldoni has since rejected these allegations.)
In the papers acquired by TMZ, Lively reveals that the atmosphere on the It Ends With Us set became so unpleasant that a meeting—which included her husband Ryan Reynolds, among others—was held to discuss Baldoni’s conduct.
TMZ reports, referencing the lawsuit, that the matters discussed in the meeting included “no further displaying of nude videos or images of women to Blake,” along with a prohibition on discussing Baldoni’s purported past “pornography addiction” or “sexual conquests.”
Additional subjects, according to the outlet, involved “no additional references to the cast and crew’s private parts, no further questions about Blake’s weight, and no more discussions regarding Blake’s deceased father.” Lively’s father Ernie Lively died in 2021.
According to the lawsuit, TMZ noted that the meeting also covered that no new sex scenes would be included “beyond the limits of the script” Lively consented to when joining the film.
Due to differing opinions on how to market the film—derived from Colleen Hoover’s book concerning a woman enduring domestic abuse—the lawsuit alleges that Baldoni engaged in a “social manipulation” effort to “ruin” Lively’s reputation, adversely affecting her business and inflicting “severe emotional distress” on her family.
Nonetheless, Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman has responded to Lively’s lawsuit, asserting that it seeks to “repair her bad reputation” while emphasizing that it’s “untrue, outrageous, and purposely sensational to cause public harm.”
Freedman further claimed that, behind the scenes, Lively was “issuing threats of not appearing on set, threatening to refrain from promoting the film, ultimately contributing to its downfall during release.”
