Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni clash over harassment lawsuit
Blake Lively has accused Justin Baldoni of harassment on the "It Ends With Us" set, and now she has received a response. The actor and film director is suing her and her husband, demanding a substantial sum.
Justin Baldoni has filed a lawsuit against Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds for defamation and extortion, seeking $400 million CAD. The actress and her legal team responded by accusing Baldoni of using tactics from a "perpetrator's playbook."
Lively claims that Baldoni is trying to divert attention from the allegations of sexual harassment and oppression she made in December. Her lawyers emphasize that this is a classic strategy: deny, attack, and reverse 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 whole story. 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 forced him to accept a rewritten script for the film. Thus, a new figure, Swift, who has been friends with Blake Lively for years, emerged in 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 accusations. The list of allegations 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.
In response to the allegations, Baldoni and his legal team filed a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times for CAD 250 million. He also announced that he would sue Blake, which has now materialized. Both sides aim for a court trial, but it is possible that the case will be settled out of court.
