Blake Lively's lawyers slam 'more attacks' from Justin Baldoni's team after 'smear campaign'
Blake Lively's lawyers have called out “more attacks” from Justin Baldoni's legal team over “a retaliatory smear campaign”.
On December 20, Lively, 37, who starred in Baldoni’s film It Ends with Us, filed a complaint against Baldoni and others including his producing partners and publicists, alleging sexual harassment and a retaliatory smear campaign to tarnish her reputation.
"This is not a ‘feud’ arising from ‘creative differences’ or a ‘he said/she said’ situation,” Lively’s legal team said in a statement.
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Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman called the claims “false, outrageous and intentionally salacious".
On New Year’s Eve, the actor-director also filed a $250m lawsuit against the New York Times over the newspaper’s December 2021 article about the Lively complaint, alleging it was the actress "who engaged in a calculated smear campaign".
This week, Lively’s legal team claimed in a statement that her “serious claims of sexual harassment and retaliation” are “backed by concrete facts.”
“This is not a ‘feud’ arising from ‘creative differences’ or a ‘he said/she said’ situation,” her lawyers' statement read.
“As alleged in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and as we will prove in litigation, Wayfarer [Studios] and its associates engaged in unlawful, retaliatory astroturfing against Ms. Lively for simply trying to protect herself and others on a film set.
“And their response to the lawsuit has been to launch more attacks against Ms. Lively since her filing.”
The statement continued: “Sexual harassment and retaliation are illegal in every workplace and in every industry.
“A classic tactic to distract from allegations of this type of misconduct is to ‘blame the victim’ by suggesting that they invited the conduct, brought it on themselves, misunderstood the intentions, or even lied," the team wrote.
"Another classic tactic is to reverse the victim and offender, and suggest that the offender is actually the victim. These concepts normalise and trivialise allegations of serious misconduct."
“Most importantly, media statements are not a defense to Ms. Lively’s legal claims," Lively’s legal team wrote. "We will continue to prosecute her claims in federal court, where the rule of law determines who prevails, not hyperbole and threats."
In the initial December 20 filing, Lively claimed Baldoni - who directed, produced and starred in It Ends with Us - exhibited "disturbing" and “unprofessional” behaviour on set that led to a "hostile work environment".
Lively's complaint includes accusations that Baldoni and another producer entered her trailer “uninvited” while she was undressed or “vulnerable,” alleges Baldoni “suddenly” pressured her to “simulate full nudity” in a birth scene and “improvised physical intimacy that had not been rehearsed, choreographed or discussed with Ms. Lively, with no intimacy coordinator involved."
Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, told People magazine in a statement the complaint was filed to "fix her negative reputation".
On December 21, the New York Times published an article titled, “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine”, about Lively's complaint, which included alleged texts between Baldoni and his publicists.
In a $250 million lawsuit filed against the New York Times for libel, among other claims, Baldoni's legal team claimed that the outlet “cherry-picked and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead".
The same day, Lively’s lawyers filed a federal complaint against Wayfarer Studios, Baldoni and other parties in the Southern District of New York.
Freedman claimed the Times "cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful untouchable Hollywood elites," meaning Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds.
"While their side embraces partial truths, we embrace the full truth — and have all of the communications to back it.”
A spokesperson for the Times responded, saying, "Our story was meticulously and responsibly reported," and that the outlet plans to "vigorously" defend against Baldoni's lawsuit.
On January 2, Lively's lawyers said "nothing" in Baldoni's lawsuit "changes anything about the claims advanced in" Lively's original complaint.
"While we will not litigate this matter in the press, we do encourage people to read Ms. Lively’s complaint in its entirety," her legal team said.
Freedman said Baldoni's team plans to countersue Lively.
In August, Lively and other cast members refused to join Baldoni for promotional appearances for the film It Ends With Us.
The production company behind the movie is owned by the billionaire founder of payroll software firm Paylocity, Steve Sarowitz.
Lively alleges in a complaint leaked in mid-December and again in a lawsuit filed on New Year’s Eve, Sarowitz said to an unspecified audience “that he was prepared to spend $100 million to ruin the lives of Ms. Lively and her family.”
When asked to comment, Sarowitz’s lawyer Freedman confirmed that his client is prepared to spend whatever necessary to defend Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and himself.
Lively claims in the lawsuit against Wayfarer, Baldoni, Sarowitz and associates that Baldoni (who also directed the film) sexually harassed her on set, and that he and the Wayfarer team then worked to tank her public reputation after she spoke up about the mistreatment.
She names Sarowitz a handful of times in the filing and accuses him of bankrolling the smear campaign.
In his first public statement about the legal battle, Sarowitz emailed Forbes that “the actual harassment and smear campaign both occurred and continues to occur against us,” calling Lively’s accusations “vicious lies about my business partners.”
Sarowitz is worth an estimated $2.5 billion.
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