Blake Lively has filed a formal lawsuit against her “It Ends With Us” co-star and director, Justin Baldoni.
The actress, 37, sued Baldoni, 40, Tuesday in New York federal court for alleged sexual harassment, retaliation, breach of contract, infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy and lost wages, Page Six can confirm.
The allegations in the suit, which we obtained, mirror those in the complaint she filed last week with the California Civil Rights Department.
Lively claimed in her lawsuit that Baldoni sexually harassed her on the set of their August movie and that after they held a meeting to address his alleged behavior, he allegedly hired a crisis management team to destroy her reputation.
In addition to Baldoni, Lively is suing his crisis manager, Melissa Nathan, his publicist, Jennifer Abel, and Wayfarer Studios, which produced “It Ends with Us.”
“Earlier today, Ms. Lively filed a federal complaint against Wayfarer Studios and others in the Southern District of New York,” her attorneys told us in a statement.
“Ms. Lively previously sent her California Civil Rights Department complaint in response to the retaliatory campaign Wayfarer launched against her for reporting sexual harassment and workplace safety concerns.”
Her attorneys continued, “Unfortunately, Ms. Lively’s decision to speak out has resulted in further retaliation and attacks. As alleged in Ms. Lively’s federal complaint, Wayfarer and its associates have violated federal and California state law by retaliating against her for reporting sexual harassment and workplace safety concerns. Now, the defendants will answer for their conduct in federal court.”
Her attorneys concluded, “Ms. Lively has brought this litigation in New York, where much of the relevant activities described in the complaint took place, but we reserve the right to pursue further action in other venues and jurisdictions as appropriate under the law.”
Lively claimed in her lawsuit that during the filming of the romantic drama, there had to be an “all-hands” meeting about Baldoni’s alleged on-set behavior.
During the purported meeting, he was allegedly told to stop showing his co-star “nude videos or images of women,” mentioning his past “porn addiction” and sexual conquests and bringing up the “cast and crew’s genitalia,” according to the suit.
Baldoni was also allegedly asked not to add more sexually charged scenes “outside the scope” of the pre-approved script.
Furthermore, he was allegedly told to stop inquiring about Lively’s “weight” and “dead father.”
According to the lawsuit, her husband, Ryan Reynolds, was present for the discussion.
Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios’ attorney, Bryan Freedman, previously told Page Six in response to the allegations, “It is shameful that Ms. Lively and her representatives would make such serious and categorically false accusations.
“These claims are completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media.”
Freedman claimed his client hired a crisis manager due to the “multiple demands and threats” Lively had allegedly made during production, including “threatening to not showing up to set [and] threatening to not promote the film, ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met.”
Lively also alleged in her suit that Baldoni was behind much of the avalanche of negative stories that began circulating about her shortly after he retained said fixer, accusing them of engaging in “social manipulation” to “destroy” her reputation.
The suit included an alleged text message from Abel that stated Baldoni “wants to feel like [Lively] can be buried,” to which Nathan replied, “You know we can bury anyone.”
Lively alleged in the complaint that the Baldoni-Wayfarer team “retained subcontractors … who weaponized a digital army around the country from New York to Los Angeles to create, seed and promote content that appeared to be authentic on social media platforms and internet chat forums.”
According to the lawsuit, they “would then feed pieces of this manufactured content to unwitting reporters, making content go viral in order to influence public opinion and thereby cause an organic pile-on.”
However, Freedman called Lively’s suit “another desperate attempt to ‘fix’ her negative reputation, which was garnered from her own remarks and actions during the campaign for the film, interviews and press activities that were observed publicly, in real time and unedited, which allowed for the internet to generate their own views and opinions.”
He also accused her of using her publicist to plant negative stories about Baldoni, claiming his clients’ reps did not retaliate in response to those reports.
“There were no proactive measures taken with media or otherwise, just internal scenario planning and private correspondence to strategize, which is standard operating procedure with public relations professionals,” Freedman insisted.
Lively told the New York Times, who was first to report on her initial complaint, “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.”
She also denied that her team planted any negative stories about Baldoni or Wayfarer.
Meanwhile, also on Tuesday, Baldoni and several others — including Wayfarer Studios, Nathan and Abel — filed their own $250 million lawsuit against the Times for alleged libel, false light invasion of privacy, promissory fraud and breach of contract.
“In this vicious smear campaign fully orchestrated by Blake Lively and her team, the New York Times cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful ‘untouchable’ Hollywood elites, disregarding journalistic practices and ethics once befitting of the revered publication by using doctored and manipulated texts and intentionally omitting texts which dispute their chosen PR narrative,” Freedman told Page Six in a statement.
“In doing so, they pre-determined the outcome of their story and aided and abetted their own devastating PR smear campaign designed to revitalize Lively’s self-induced floundering public image and counter the organic groundswell of criticism amongst the online public. The irony is rich.”
He went on, “Make no mistake, however, as we all unite to take down the NY Times by no longer allowing them to deceive the public, we will continue this campaign of authenticity by also suing those individuals who have abused their power to try and destroy the lives of my clients.
“While their side embraces partial truths, we embrace the full truth — and have all of the communications to back it. The public will decide for themselves as they did when this first began.”
In response to the lawsuit by Baldoni and the other plaintiffs, the New York Times said, “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 the text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article. To date, Wayfarer Studios, Mr. Baldoni, the other subjects of the article and their representatives have not pointed to a single error. We published their full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well.
“We plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”
