Blake Lively vs Justin Baldoni: $400M lawsuit drama unfolds
Blake Lively has accused Justin Baldoni of harassment on the set of "It Ends With Us," and now she has received a response. The actor and film director is suing not only her but also her husband, demanding a substantial sum.
Justin Baldoni has filed a lawsuit for defamation and extortion against Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, seeking $400 million. The actress and her legal team responded by accusing Baldoni of using tactics from a "perpetrator's playbook."
Lively claims that Baldoni is attempting to divert attention from the allegations of sexual harassment and repression she made in December. Her lawyers emphasize that this is a classic strategy: denial, attacking, and reversing the roles of the victim and perpetrator. "In short, while the victim focuses on the abuse, the abuser focuses on the victim. The strategy of attacking the woman is desperate, it does not refute the evidence in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and it will fail," the statement said.
Baldoni, along with Wayfarer Studios, claims that he is the real victim in this entire situation. In the lawsuit, he accuses Lively and Reynolds of trying to take over the film "It Ends With Us." He reveals that the couple and Taylor Swift pressured him to accept a rewritten script for the film. Thus, Taylor Swift, a longtime friend of Blake Lively, has been drawn into the ongoing scandal.
The conflict between the stars has been ongoing since December when Lively filed a complaint with the California Department of Civil Rights. At the same time, the "New York Times" published an extensive report describing how Baldoni treated Lively on the film set.
He allegedly harassed her, showed pornographic materials, and forced her to perform improvised, intimate scenes that were unnecessary on set, among other things. The list of accusations is long. Journalists also presented evidence that Baldoni, knowing Lively might sue him, organized and financed a smear campaign against his "colleague" from the set.
Baldoni and his legal team filed a defamation lawsuit against the "New York Times" for $250 million in response to the allegations. He also announced that he would sue Blake, which has now come to fruition. Both sides aim for a court trial, but the case may be settled out of court.
