It Ends in a Lawsuit
Blake Lively Sues Justin Baldoni
The movie “It Ends With Us” is based on the bestselling novel written by Colleen Hoover. The book is a romance drama and battles themes of domestic violence and abuse. The adaptation stars Blake Lively who plays Lily Bloom and Justin Baldoni who plays Ryle Kincaid. Rumors of a rift between Lively and Baldoni began forming during the movie’s press tours when Lively avoided mentioning Baldoni in interviews. Sources told TMZ there was a dispute about creative control of the film and that Baldoni fat-shamed Lively by saying he wanted to avoid lifting her in scenes so he would not get injured. The two were never photographed together while promoting “It Ends With Us.” Baldoni hired a crisis PR manager, Melissa Nathan, as rumors began to grow. According to text messages published in The New York Times, Nathan and Baldoni planned a full social takedown by creating theories and stories about how horrible Lively is to work with. Lively’s 80-page complaint was mainly text messages between Baldoni, his publicist, and his crisis PR manager. Baldoni’s ex-publicist Stephanie Jones is the one who revealed the messages. The texts give detailed walk-throughs of how to coordinate a social media take down against Lively. However, a number of celebrities have come out in support of Lively including her cast members in “It Ends With Us.”
“In the days leading up to the film’s release, Mr. Baldoni abruptly pivoted away from the film’s marketing plan in the types of publicity activities in which she had previously participated,” Lively said in her complaint filed against Wayfarer Studios LLC. “What the public did not know was that Mr. Baldoni and his team did so in an effort to explain why many of the film’s cast and crew had unfollowed Mr. Baldoni on social media and were not appearing with him in public. To that end, he and his team used domestic violence survivor content to protect his public image as described in further detail below.”
Leading up to the film premiere, Lively was facing backlash about the way she chose to market the film. Fans were not happy with Lively’s upbeat tone and the way she promoted the movie as a light-hearted romantic comedy. They believed she was trying to disconnect the movie from its true purpose, which was bringing awareness to domestic violence. Comments were praising Baldoni’s way of promoting the movie while dragging Lively. She also faced backlash for launching her haircare line Black Brown at the same time of the film. However, it was later revealed the two were never supposed to launch at the same time but the writer strike and production delays pushed back the movie premiere.
In the lawsuit published by The New York Times, “Baldoni wants to feel like she can be buried alive,” Abel said in a text message, which was an alleged reference to Lively. Nathan responded “Of course - but you know when we send over documents we can't send over the work we will or could do because that could get us in a lot of trouble. We can’t write, we will destroy her.” She then sent another, which text “Imagine if a document saying all the things that he wants ends up in the wrong hands. You know we can bury anyone but I can’t write that to him. It will be very tough.” Abel sent a text saying she was having “reckless thoughts of wanting to plant pieces this week about how horrible Blake is to work with.” Three days later, Baldoni allegedly sent the publicist a screenshot of a Twitter thread accusing another female celebrity of bullying women, saying “This is what we would need.”
Since then, Baldoni has fired back in response to Lively countersuing $400 million. He is accusing Lively and her team of civil extortion, defamation, false light invasion of privacy, breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, intentional interference with contractual relations, intentional interference with prospective economic advantage and negligent interference with prospective economic advantage. Baldoni’s 179-page lawsuit includes text messages and threads between him and Lively. In the nine text messages included, Baldoni says Lively and her team deleted the other messages.
“It is clear based on our own all out willingness to provide all complete text messages, emails, video footage and other documentary evidence that was shared between the parties in real time,” Bryan Freedman Baldoni’s lawyer said. “This is a battle she will not win and will certainly regret.”
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