Justin Baldoni is suing his “It Ends With Us” co-star Blake Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, for defamation, the latest lawsuit in a messy court battle tied to the hit movie’s behind-the-scenes drama and botched promotional campaign.
In the 179-page complaint, filed Thursday in the Southern District of New York, Baldoni is seeking at least $400 million in damages, alleging that Lively — with the help of her husband and publicist — took over the movie and premiere from Baldoni’s production company, Wayfarer, destroyed Baldoni and his team’s “personal and professional reputations and livelihood, and aimed to drive Plaintiffs out of business entirely.”
“This is a battle she will not win and will certainly regret,” Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman wrote in a statement Thursday.
“Ms. Lively will never again be allowed to continue to exploit actual victims of real harassment solely for her personal reputation gain at the expense of those without power,” he wrote.
A representative for Lively didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In August, Lively faced backlash from domestic violence survivors and other fans of the Colleen Hoover novel for her lighthearted promotion of “It Ends With Us,” which Baldoni directed. She told viewers in one promo video to “grab your friends, wear your florals, and head out to see” the movie depicting intimate partner violence.
Months later, Lively alleged that the negative attention toward her wasn’t completely organic. In a complaint the actress filed Dec. 20 through the California Civil Rights Department and which The New York Times detailed in a story, she accused Baldoni of sexually harassing her on set, then hiring a crisis PR firm to coordinate a smear campaign against her to silence her.
“I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted,” Lively said in a statement after filing the CRD complaint.
On Dec. 31, she filed a lawsuit against Baldoni in the Southern District of New York with much of the same allegations.
Danielle Rhoades Ha, senior vice president of external communications for the Times, called Baldoni’s latest lawsuit “meritless and recycled from the equally baseless claims in the suit that was filed against The Times” in a statement Thursday.
In the Times suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court the same day Lively sued Baldoni, the actor wrote that he’s seeking at least $250 million in damages after the Times allegedly “relied almost entirely on Lively’s unverified and self-serving narrative, lifting it nearly verbatim while disregarding an abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims and exposed her true motives.”
The Times’s SVP had said the outlet plans to “vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”
Attorneys for Lively, who wasn’t named as a defendant in the Times lawsuit, also downplayed Baldoni’s allegations.
“Nothing in this lawsuit changes anything about the claims advanced in Ms. Lively’s California Civil Rights Department Complaint, nor her federal complaint,” they said in a December statement.
“While we will not litigate this matter in the press, we do encourage people to read Ms. Lively’s complaint in its entirety. We look forward to addressing each and every one of Wayfarer’s allegations in court,” they said.