EXCLUSIVE: With another week of more lawsuits in the escalating battle between the two It ends with us Starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, the court of public opinion has proven to be as much a field as the state and federal case files.
A front that Bryan Freedman does not want to concede to any rival.
More from Deadline
“After my clients filed a lengthy lawsuit, chock full of nearly 200 pages of undeniable facts and evidence, which suppressed their false allegations of a smear campaign by providing falsified communications to the New York TimesBlake and her legal team have only one heinous pivot left, and that is to double down on the abhorrent false sexual allegations against Mr. Baldoni,” the tough-as-nails and media-savvy attorney told Deadline.
The co-founder of Liner Freedman Taitelman + Cooley LLP responded Saturday to the Jan. 16 response from Lively’s Manatt, Phelps & Phillips and Willkie Farr & Gallagher attorneys to Baldoni’s highly anticipated lawsuit last week against his co-star, hubby Ryan Reynolds, publicist Leslie Sloane and her VisionPR shingle. Sort of a match point for Lively’s NYE legal action against Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios, CEO Jamey Heath, financier Steve Sarowitz and PR chiefs Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel for sexual harassment on IEWU and a post-production smear campaign, the $400 million action from the Jane the Virgin vet goes after Lively, Reynolds and Sloane for defamation and extortion.
A few hours after the Freedman-led Baldoni team of lawyers put their docket on the docket, Lively’s team exclusively and brusquely told Deadline: “This latest lawsuit from Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and associates is a new chapter in the abuse manual. They added: “Basically, while the victim focuses on the abuse, the abuser focuses on the victim. The strategy to attack the woman is desperate, it does not rebut the evidence in Ms. Lively’s complaint and will fail.”
Those were fighting words that the often boxing Freedman couldn’t leave without an answer.
Attorney Bryan Freedman
As he also said to me today:
The simple fact that Ms. Lively thinks she can publicly destroy Mr. Baldoni’s reputation in an attempt to destroy his future career and then deny him or his team the ability to defend themselves against her is ridiculous. Mr. Baldoni never publicly attempted to call out Ms. Lively for her own many misdeeds during filming. He graciously addressed all her concerns appropriately during filming, despite the fact that he completely disagreed. He himself was determined to do things differently and keep the peace, as she specifically admitted in her own lawsuit. Not only will we continue to defend our clients against Blake’s power, privilege, and lies, but we will now fight even harder for the voiceless in the DV community who are suffering unjustly as she continues her own selfish and self-serving actions. revenge in the media.
Based on the 2016 novel by Colleen Hoover, It ends with us focused on intergenerational domestic violence and the relationship between Lively’s grieving florist character and co-star/director Baldoni’s angry neurosurgeon. A blockbuster hit last summer for Sony that grossed nearly $400 million on the big screen before heading to Netflix, It ends with us was surrounded by rumors of trouble between the leads, with Lively and Baldoni doing no press for the film together before its August premiere.
L-R: Blake Lively in Justin Baldoni It ends with us
The now very public airing of that alleged dirty laundry began when Lively filed a detailed sexual harassment and retaliation complaint against Baldoni and others with the California Division of Civil Rights on December 20. NYT, who is now suing Baldoni for $250 million, wrote an extensive “We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine” story, full of text messages and emails from Baldoni’s Crisis PR people. Baldoni and Freedman said this NYT story was a setup, full of cherry-picked information. The Gray Lady has said its journalists were fair, reported in depth and did their jobs.
With all the what-you-did-to-me accusations and the I-didn’t-do-anything-to-you-you-stained-me response that A-lister supported Lively and that WME recently dumped Baldoni and their various partners, publicists and expensive lawyers have attacked each other in a phalanx of documents and statements over the past month, the business aspect of show business should not be overlooked here. This whole thing is as much personal to pockets as it is to reputations. Baldoni complains that his film was stolen from him by Lively, with the help of Reynolds, and now the duo and their accusations have left his career DOA. Lively says she was harassed and abused on set and dragged through the digital mud in an attack engineered by Nathan and Abel that severely damaged her brand.
Additionally—amid all the accusations of “astroturfing” by Team Baldoni against Lively and Reynolds’ alleged berating of Baldoni during an accused meeting a year ago—an important aspect of Lively’s initial CRD complaint and her NYE lawsuit has been somewhat out of the spotlight disappeared. While the issue does not focus on the alleged weaponization and unleashing of a “digital army” against Lively, the case may reveal the core of the clash and why the Green LanternThe starring couple waited months before going public with their dispute with Baldoni.
In both the December 20 CRD filing and the federal lawsuit eleven days later, Lively’s attorneys note how the fallout from the online biting criticism of her personally “damaged her businesses.” Like her multi-platform husband, Lively has long had a number of lucrative revenue streams from branded products and endorsement deals.
The fallout from the failure of Livley’s hair care line in 2024, in relative terms, as the deluge of negative social media posts about hair abounded, must surely play a role, contractual or otherwise.
“Following the August 2024 launch of Ms. Lively’s hair care line, Blake Brown, which she worked on for seven years, the brand’s Instagram account was flooded with harassing and derogatory comments, including many posted by user accounts that had no followers and no prior communications (suggesting inauthenticity) and that did not relate to the brand’s products,” Lively’s lawsuits say.
“The campaign of retaliation against Ms. Lively also damaged her businesses,” the unspecified damages suit continues. “The long-planned launch of her Blake Brown hair care line – a date set more than a year before the date selected (not by Ms. Lively) for the film’s release – became caught in the film’s crossfire. negative environment against Mrs. Lively. Initially, before the “social engineering” campaign began, Ms. Lively was told that Blake Brown was Target’s biggest hair care launch ever. Based on internal sales projections, the sudden and unexpected negative media campaign against Ms. Lively has reduced retail sales of Blake Brown products by 56% to 78%. This dramatic decline was completely at odds with the high satisfaction scores that Blake Brown products achieved during the significant consumer testing conducted prior to launch or their initial success post-launch.”
L-R Ryan Reynolds as Nicepool Deadpool and WolverineJustin Baldoni
On top of that, Freedman — after alerting Reynolds to client and friend Megyn Kelly’s show discussing snails against Baldoni that appeared in last summer’s megahit Deadpool and Wolverine – sent an evidence retention letter to Disney CEO Bob Iger and Marvel President Kevin Feige via FedEx on January 7. Full of speculation about whether the Shawn Levy-helmed “Merc with a Mouth” film was mocking Baldoni’s deliberately deplorable Nicepool character, the correspondence also promised more lawsuits. In another ambush, it also spread unsubstantiated ideas about “complaints of sexual or other harassment filed against Ryan Reynolds by anyone.”
That low blow aside, it’s unclear when exactly the Nicepool character will appear Deadpool lore, was created and put into the $1 billion and counting super flick.
However, with Deadpool and Wolverine at the same time as the first part of filming It ends with usproduction before the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes that shut down Hollywood for several months all point to Nicepool being a late addition to the R-rated Disney film, studio sources tell me. At the same time, the same sources say Deadpool and Wolverine was a very fluid production with Reynolds and Levy frequently making last-minute changes and additions.
With more filings and perhaps even lawsuits in the battle between Lively and Baldoni, Freedman himself suffered a major blow when his home was decimated by the fire that ripped through Pacific Palisades earlier this month. Lively’s team did not respond to Freedman’s latest statement today when contacted by Deadline. If they respond, this post will be updated.
The best of Deadline
Sign up for the Deadline newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.