Blake Lively files official federal charges against Justin Baldoni, looks forward to her day in court
Blake Lively officially filed a sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit against her “Breaking Up” co-star Justin Baldoni on Tuesday, according to documents obtained by Fox News Digital.
Lively, 37, originally filed a complaint against Baldoni with the California Department of Civil Rights on Dec. 21, accusing Baldoni (who also directed the film) of sexual harassment while working on the drama.
She also claimed that after she raised her concerns, he, along with a crisis PR team, orchestrated a retaliatory campaign aimed at destroying her career.
Blake Lively has accused Justin Baldoni of sexual harassment in a federal lawsuit filed on Tuesday, December 31. (Getty Images)
Lively’s federal lawsuit was announced Tuesday shortly after Baldoni filed his A $250 million defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, which he claimed published an article “full of inaccuracies, misrepresentations and omissions.”
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“Nothing in this lawsuit changes anything about the allegations made in Ms. Lively’s California Department of Civil Rights lawsuit, or her federal lawsuit, filed earlier today,” Lively’s representatives told Fox News Digital.
Lively filed a lawsuit against Baldoni in December following rumors of an altercation on the set of “It Ends With Us.” (Getty Images)
“This lawsuit is based on the patently false premise that Ms. Lively’s administrative action against Wayfarer et al was a fraud based on her choice ‘not to file a lawsuit against Baldoni, Wayfarer’ and that ‘litigation was never her ultimate goal.’ As demonstrated by the federal lawsuit Ms. Lively filed earlier today, the frame of reference for the Wayfarer lawsuit is false. While we will not discuss this matter in print, we encourage people to read Ms. Lively’s complaint in its entirety. We look forward to addressing each of Wayfarer’s allegations at court.”
The “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” actress. she alleged in her federal filing that Baldoni, the film production company Wayfarer Studios and several associates engaged in a “carefully designed, coordinated and financed revenge scheme to silence her and others from speaking out.”
Lively claimed that Baldoni, along with a crisis PR firm, created a “multi-layered plan” to destroy her reputation after she (along with her husband Ryan Reynolds) dealt with “repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behavior” by Baldoni and the producer Jamey Heath (who is named in the lawsuit).
Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively seen on the set of ‘It Ends with Us’ on January 12, 2024. (Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
She also alleged that Baldoni and Heath “discussed their personal sexual experiences and past addiction to pornography” on set, according to the documents.
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Representatives for Baldoni did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. He previously told the Times that Lively’s initial claims were “completely false, outrageous and deliberately maligned with the intention of publicly hurting and questioning the narrative in the media”.
Baldoni filed a $250 million defamation suit against the New York Times after they published a story titled ‘We Can Bury Anyone:’ Inside the Hollywood Defamation Machine,’ which said private e-mails and text messages showed “a picture of running largely undetectable defamation campaigns in the digital era” about Lively.
However, Baldoni and other plaintiffs, including Hollywood PR gurus, claim that the Times article “deliberately omitted parts of the messaging and other information that contradicted the actress’ version of events.” They claim the Times defamed them in the process, omitting critical context from communications that dispute many of Lively’s claims.
Baldoni not only starred in the film adaptation of the novel, but also directed the film. (Getty Images)
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“The article’s central thesis, contained in a libelous headline designed to immediately mislead the reader, is that the prosecutors orchestrated a vindictive public relations campaign against Lively for speaking out about sexual harassment—a premise that is categorically false and easily disproved,” 87 – the lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court by attorney Bryan Freedman, claims.
A freelancer he told Variety that the Times “bowed to the wishes and whims of two powerful ‘untouchable’ Hollywood elites, disregarding journalistic practices and ethics once befitting a respected publication by using faked and manipulated stories and deliberately omitting stories that challenge their chosen PR narrative.”
“The role of an independent news organization is to follow the facts where they lead. Our story was meticulously and responsibly reported. It was based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article,” said Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha Fox News Digital.
“We published theirs full statement also in response to the allegations in the article,” she continued. “We plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”
Fox News Digital’s Brian Flood contributed to this report.
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