Blake Lively Rejects Justin Baldoni’s Move To Dismiss ‘It Ends With Us’ Suit; Accuses Co-Star Of “Throwing The Kitchen Sink” At Sexual Harassment & Retaliation Claims
Blake Lively says she deserves her “day in court” over the “toxic environment” Justin Baldoni and his Wayfarer Studios’ inner circle created during the making of It Ends With Us and the subsequent alleged retaliation inflicted upon the Another Simple Favor star.
“In their latest effort to avoid accountability for the hostile environment they created during the production and marketing of It Ends With Us, Justin Baldoni, Jamey Heath, Steve Sarowitz, and their co-defendants ask this Court to shield them from trial, and deny Blake Lively her day in court, by throwing the kitchen sink at Lively’s sexual harassment and retaliation claims,” exclaims a filing early this morning from the actress rejecting a late November motion for summary judgment by Baldoni, his execs and PR team.
“Defendants’ campaign to transform Lively—a mother of four with decades of experience in the industry who simply sought a safe and respectful workplace—into a “bully” who “took over” Baldoni’s Film is not a defense to harassment, retaliation, defamation, or any claim Lively has advanced,” the heavily redacted 72-page document adds of what Lively’s team of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, Willkie Farr & Gallagher and Dunn Isaacson Rhee lawyers slam as “Defendants’ scattershot theories.”
Accusing the Wayfarer defendants and their Bryan Freedman-led legal team of enacting a strategy of “Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender” and peddling “their victimization narrative,” Lively today rejected the attempt by her IEWU co-star to toss out her allegations of rabid misconduct.
“Lively may be a movie star, but on the set of the Film, Heath and Baldoni were her bosses with a total consolidation of power as lead actor, producer, director, co-chairman, president, and CEO,” the memo document states, setting the stakes and context, from Lively’s POV. “They set her schedule and her salary, appeared on and managed the set every day, were responsible for receiving and addressing HR concerns, and had the power to exert influence over Lively’s working conditions. Id. Heath and Baldoni also leveraged their close friendship to ‘act with a certain degree of impunity’ and cover the other’s misdeeds.”
With blacked-out sections on almost every page except the table of contents, the opposition to summary judgment comes more than six months after Baldoni’s $400 million countersuit was tossed out and four months before the trial over Lively’s sexual harassment and online smear campaign claims against Baldoni and gang is set to start in NYC.
A March 9 starting trial that looks almost certain to occur, not being anywhere near a settlement at this pitched point, especially if Judge Lewis Liman deep sixes Baldoni’s request to dismiss the matter. Multi-brand businesswoman Lively has stated in previous filings that she is seeking damages in the range of $500 million.
Today and late Wednesday’s filings in federal court also come nearly a year after Lively first filed her initial complaint of December 20, 2024 with the California Civil Rights Department complaint against Baldoni over what may or may not have actually gone down on the clearly troubled and Sony distributed IEWU.
(L-R) Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni, in It Ends With Us (Photo: Sony Pictures Releasing /Courtesy Everett Collection)
Sony Pictures Releasing /Courtesy Everett Collection
As they have before, Rainn Wilson and fellow Freedman client Sage Steele make cameos in Lively’s also very heavily redacted 259-page response to Wayfarer’s previously filed statement of undisputed material facts, as does Deadline and several other publications. IEWU author Colleen Hoover, who has recently lamented how the legal disputes have overshadowed her work, also gets a lot of mentions in the documents filed early this morning, but most of the context is unknown, due to heavy redactions. As before, concerns about Baldoni’s behavior raised during production by IEWU co-star Jenny Slate, and a series of communications by Sony executive Ange Giannetti show up too. There are also some “famous friends,” who are likely Taylor Swift and Hugh Jackman, Lively hubby Ryan Reynolds‘ Deadpool & Wolverine co-star.
More significantly, the New York Post (where Melissa Nathan’s sister is “a reporter at Page Six”) and People Magazine (where “at least eight articles which were favorable to Mr. Baldoni” were placed, according to Lively’s response) are mentioned repeatedly, along with communications from Nathan and attorney Freedman on media coverage that ended up being favorable to Baldoni.
Reps for Baldoni and Wayfarer did not respond to Deadline’s request for comment on Lively’s latest filings. However, regardless if Baldoni’s people do respond to Deadline this week on Lively’s latest filings, we will all be hearing from them soon enough. “The Wayfarer Parties’ reply in support of motion for summary judgment,” as the court has termed it, is due on December 12.
With some other filing deadlines on the calendar, both sides have until January 23, 2026 to get in their last digs, so to speak. That’s when “Proposed Joint Pretrial Order, motions in limine, joint proposed verdict forms, joint voir dire questions” will be due. And then it’s to trial on March 9.
