Inside the bare-knuckle legal brawl between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni

U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman had seen enough.

After a continuous volley of highly charged accusations turned the legal battle between actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni into a public spectacle, Liman admonished the attorneys for both sides. He pointedly reminded them to abide by the New York rule that bars lawyers from making public comments outside the court that could prejudice the proceedings.

“You’ve got a lot in front of the court that gives ... the public plenty to feast upon,” Liman said at a hearing held in federal district court in Manhattan last week. “There will come a time, unless this case is settled, that a jury will speak.”

For many, the extraordinary Lively-Baldoni saga has highlighted not only the dark arts of Hollywood publicity but also the role of high-profile celebrity attorneys and the increasingly aggressive tactics they use to defend their clients.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Neville Johnson, a veteran entertainment litigator. “It’s just clear the pleadings in this case have been intended for an audience beyond the court, namely the public, and that’s what sets it apart from a traditional libel case or others of that nature.”

Aggressive legal tactics

Hollywood’s publicity machine has always been cutthroat. In the early days of the studio system, moguls helped seed negative (and) flattering stories about celebrities, both creating scandals and suppressing them.

The 1957 noir film “Sweet Smell of Success” features an unscrupulous press agent, said to be based on gossip columnist Walter Winchell, who took pleasure in destroying careers.

The run-up to the Academy Awards is frequently mired in nasty campaigns aimed at toppling the chances of a front-running movie or actor.

Still, even by Hollywood standards, the Lively-Baldoni dispute stands out.

“Do I think that this case has broken the unwritten rule of peeling back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz? Yes,” said veteran Hollywood publicist and former gossip columnist R. Couri Hay, who got his start working for Andy Warhol. “I feel like I’m watching an episode of the [Real] Housewives.”

The legal drama erupted late last year when Lively accused Baldoni, her co-star and the director of the movie “It Ends With Us,” along with his team, of orchestrating a smear campaign against her after she reported on-set sexual harassment, according to a complaint filed with the California Civil Rights Department, first reported by the New York Times.

The complaint, the precursor to her lawsuit, was replete with private messages between Baldoni and his publicists, allegedly strategizing her purported takedown, including the now-infamous missive: “You know we can bury anyone.”

Baldoni later countersued for $400 million, claiming defamation and extortion in his lawsuit, which also accuses Lively and her husband, actor Ryan Reynolds, of a “concerted campaign of extortion to extract concessions and creative control” over the film.

The competing narratives curdled into recriminations, denials and multiple lawsuits and countersuits involving Reynolds, Baldoni’s production company, journalists and celebrity publicists.

Lawyers for both sides have made provocative comments, divulged private communications and made public a slew of documents while defending their clients. Baldoni’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, also has appeared in television interviews and on podcasts.

Earlier this month, Baldoni took the unusual step of launching a website with documents pertaining to the $400-million defamation and extortion lawsuit he filed against Lively, her publicist and Reynolds. It included a 168-page compendium, called a “timeline of relevant events,” allegedly filled with text messages, emails and other documents from between 2019 and 2025 intended to refute Lively’s portrayal of Baldoni’s alleged behavior.

The document disclosure was a “bold” and “aggressive” tactic, said attorney Benjamin Chew, who helped defend Johnny Depp in his defamation case against his ex-wife Amber Heard.

“I think it is very impressive,” Chew said during an appearance on the podcast “Law&Crime Sidebar With Jesse Weber.” “Usually, you would not do something like that before a hearing. … It’s a novel approach, a bold approach.”

A month earlier, Freedman and Baldoni’s production company, Wayfarer Studios, provided behind-the-scenes footage from their film to the Daily Mail, according to the British tabloid. The 10-minute excerpt showed the leading actors slow dancing and making small talk while wearing microphones.

Lively’s representatives dismissed the move, saying it only “corroborates” her allegations and calling the video drop “manufactured media stunts.”

Those claims were echoed in a recent court filing when Lively accused Baldoni and his legal team of engaging in a “harassing and retaliatory media campaign” and making inflammatory statements attacking her character.

The actor’s legal team said in a statement that Baldoni’s suit was an effort “to launch more attacks against Ms. Lively.” They added: “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.”

Freedman did not respond to requests for comment.

During Monday’s hearing, he accused Lively’s attorney, Michael Gottlieb, of trying to impose a “gag order” preventing him from talking to the media. Baldoni, he said, was the one who had suffered harm to his reputation.

“This has not been a one-way street,” he said in court. “My client is devastated financially and emotionally.”

WME dropped Baldoni as a client soon after Lively filed her claims against him.

Trouble on the set

“It Ends With Us,” adapted from romance novelist Colleen Hoover’s popular book that explored themes of domestic abuse and violence, was a box-office hit, grossing more than $350 million in ticket sales.

Despite the film’s success, tensions between the stars were apparent even before the movie’s release.

Stories of a rift surfaced during the New York premiere when Lively, Hoover and much of the main cast did not take photos or appear to interact with Baldoni on the red carpet. Baldoni would later say he and his family were “held” in a basement during the premiere, according to the countersuit Baldoni, Wayfarer and others filed against Lively, Reynolds and her publicists.

During the film’s promotional campaign, the actor told moviegoers to “grab your friends, wear your florals and head out to see it,” which was seen as at odds with the movie’s sensitive subject matter. It was one of several apparent missteps prompting a backlash among fans.

For his part, Baldoni, a self-identified feminist, focused on the film’s themes of domestic violence in press interviews.

In her lawsuit, Lively painted an entirely different picture. She alleged that during production, Baldoni discussed his past pornography addiction and sexual encounters and that he improvised kisses while filming. She said that he entered her trailer while she was undressed and breastfeeding her baby. He has dismissed the claims as baseless.

While preparing to resume filming following the Hollywood labor strikes, Wayfarer agreed to provide a full-time intimacy coordinator, among other on-set protections she requested, and pledged not to retaliate against Lively, according to the lawsuit.

Despite a pledge not to retaliate against her, Lively further alleged that Baldoni hired a PR firm to undermine her reputation in retaliation for coming forward about her alleged treatment during filming.

Freedman denied Lively’s allegations, calling them “false, outrageous and intentionally salacious.”

Less than a week after the film’s premiere, Baldoni said that Lively and Reynolds wanted him to put out a statement, that they prepared, in which he and the studio would take “accountability” for the “troubled production” of the movie and the “negativity” aimed at the actress while she promoted the film, according to his lawsuit. The draft statement was among the documents posted on Baldoni’s Lawsuit Info website.

Baldoni also sued the New York Times for defamation, seeking $250 million in damages. He accused the newspaper of publishing a “false and defamatory article” about the actress’ allegations against him. The complaint, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, said that the article relied on Lively’s “unverified and self-serving narrative.”

The New York Times has denied Baldoni’s allegations and said it stands by its reporting.

Various publicists also have waded into the litigation.

California

The question sending shockwaves through Hollywood: How did Blake Lively get those damaging texts?

In a Dec. 24 lawsuit, the founder of a publicity firm that represented actor Justin Baldoni effectively outed herself as the source of texts. She disavows involvement.

Dec. 29, 2024

Stephanie Jones, a publicist who had earlier represented Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios, sued Baldoni and his crisis PR team, including publicist Jennifer Abel, alleging in December that they perpetrated a scheme to tarnish her credibility. Freedman has disputed the claim, saying “a simple reading of the text messages confirm that Stephanie Jones ... brutally retaliated against Jennifer Abel.”

And Jed Wallace, the owner of Street Relations, a crisis mitigation firm, last week sued Lively in federal court in Texas for defamation, saying he has suffered “millions of dollars in reputational harm” by suggesting he was involved in the alleged retaliation scheme. Lively’s legal team called the lawsuit a “publicity stunt” intended to “sue [her] ‘into oblivion’ for speaking out against sexual harassment and retaliation.”

Amid the widening legal battle, various negative stories have appeared in tabloids and social media.

“Blake Lively branded a ‘nightmare to work with’ by A-list star in unearthed clip amid Justin Baldoni drama,” headlined the Daily Mail.

The British paper also excavated Baldoni’s 2013 wedding video in which he is alleged to have apologized to his new wife for his “faults, shortcomings, insecurities and my ego.”

“This is a case of legal teams going full throttle with aggressive tactics for the purposes of securing public opinion in their client’s case,” said Molly McPherson, a crisis communications expert.

McPherson said social media has shifted the paradigm of using public relations as a tactic for legal gain.

“Now lawyers are acting like publicists trying to PR their legal case,” she said. “That’s what has changed.”