Blake Lively Fighting Justin Baldoni’s Plan to Release Videos to Public
Blake Lively is firing back at Justin Baldoni’s plan to launch a website with videos amid their ongoing legal battle, In Touch can exclusively report.
Blake Lively demanded a federal judge stop Justin Baldoni from launching a website with “all correspondence” as part of his effort to defend himself against her claims of sexual harassment, In Touch can exclusively report.
On Monday, January 27, Blake, 37, and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, wrote a letter to the judge presiding over the actress’ lawsuit against Justin, 41, and his company, Wayfarer Studios.
Blake accused the It Ends With Us director and his production partner Jamey Heath of sexual harassment on the set of the 2024 film. Blake claims Justin hired a PR team to smear her in retaliation after she raised her issues.
Justin and Jamey denied the claims and accused Blake of using bullying tactics to seize control of their film.
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Justin accused her of being the one to smear his reputation. Justin sued Blake and Ryan, 48, for defamation and civil extortion. He accused Blake of working with The New York Times to publish a one-sided story about the actress’ complaint.
A spokesperson for The New York Times said, “Our story was meticulously and responsibly reported.”
The spokesperson said the outlet had reviewed “thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and email that we quote accurately and at length in the article.”
Last week, Justin promised to launch a website with “correspondence” with Blake to back up his defense. “Justin Baldoni and team have nothing to hide,” the director’s lawyer Bryan Freedman said.
“Justin and team have the right to defend themselves with the truth and this is what we will be continuing to show with the upcoming website containing all correspondence as well as relevant videos that directly quash her claims,” Bryan added.
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Bryan also released footage of Blake and Justin behind the scenes as part of an effort to prove Blake’s claims of sexual harassment during the specific scene were untrue. Blake’s team claimed the video proved her point that she was harassed. Recently, Blake pleaded with the court to issue a protective order prohibiting Bryan from making “improper” public statements about the case. The couple said they had problems with statements Bryan was making in the media about the case.
Over the weekend, Bryan released a statement opposing Blake’s request for a protective order.
In their newly filed letter, Ryan and Blake’s lawyers once again accused Bryan of “misconduct” and slammed him over the statement released this weekend.
They claimed the statement from over the weekend was “inflammatory” and contained “multiple false and defamatory” statements and “character attacks” against Blake.
The letter read, “[Bryan] also falsely asserted that the Lively-Reynolds parties had raised concerns about his unethical and unprofessional behavior only because [Blake] is fearful of the truth.”
Blake’s team said they opposed the website being launched by Justin. They wrote, “The planned website will release what [Bryan] self-servingly proclaims will be ‘full unedited WhatsApp, text and email exchanges between [Blake] and [Justin],’ although neither the media nor public will have any way of knowing which communications [Bryan] has selectively omitted from disclosure, including communications that Mr. Freedman and his clients may have deleted.”
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Her lawyer continued, “This website presumably also will not include communications that Mr. Freedman and his clients have had with their hand-selected media outlets and social media influencers during the past month, including certain of his current or former media and social media clients, who either have hosted [Bryan] on air or parroted his narrative online.6 Any such website, therefore, will be incomplete, biased and prejudicial by design.”
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Blake’s team said, “[Bryan] is entitled, of course, to defend his client, but the law does not privilege the publication of knowingly false statements about [Blake] (or any other third party) to the press.” Blake said she also has texts and messages with Justin that she has yet to release.
Her lawyer said, “Those rules are crystal clear: once a party is in litigation in a pending matter, it is unethical and improper for an attorney to use the press to attack the character of an opposing party or witness, including by releasing evidence that is subject to discovery.”
“The endless stream of defamatory and extrajudicial media statements must end. It will not stop without this court’s intervention. [Justin and his studio’s] efforts are being financed by a billionaire who has pledged to spend $100 million to ruin the lives of [Blake] and her family,” her lawyer said.
Blake pleaded with a hearing to address the matter before the judge.