Justin Baldoni files $250M lawsuit against New York Times over Blake Lively article
“It Ends With Us” director Justin Baldoni, who has been accused of sexual harassment by his co-star Blake Lively, has filed a $250 million libel lawsuit against the New York Times over a recent article detailing Lively’s allegations during filming.
Baldoni filed the 87-page complaint Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court with nine other plaintiffs, claiming libel and false light invasion of privacy over a Dec. 21 New York Times article titled, “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.”
“The Times’ story relied almost entirely on Lively’s unverified and self-serving narrative, lifting it nearly verbatim while disregarding an abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims and exposed her true motives,” the lawsuit states.
Baldoni’s lawsuit — which was filed on behalf of Wayfarer Studios, Baldoni’s producing partner Jamey Heath and his publicists and crisis managers Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan — calls the Times’ article “rife with inaccuracies, misrepresentations and omissions.”
Tuesday’s filing marks the latest development in an ongoing battle after Lively filed her own lawsuit against Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios, claiming men on the set sexually harassed her and then tried to ruin her professional reputation after she complained.
In her California Civil Rights Department complaint filed Dec. 20, Lively claims the harassment damaged her business and caused her family, including husband actor Ryan Reynolds, “severe emotional distress.”
In the lawsuit, Lively claimed Baldoni improvised “physical intimacy that had not been rehearsed, choreographed or discussed with Ms. Lively, with no intimacy coordinator involved.”
Lively accused Baldoni of trying to add a graphic sex scene without her consent and accused Baldoni and Heath of entering her hair-and-makeup trailer while she was getting dressed.
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On Tuesday, Lively’s attorneys filed a federal complaint in New York as Baldoni continued to deny the allegations.
“These claims are completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media,” Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman said in a statement after filing the New York Times lawsuit Tuesday.
“If the Times truly reviewed the thousands of private communications it claimed to have obtained, its reporters would have seen incontrovertible evidence that it was Lively, not plaintiffs, who engaged in a calculated smear campaign,” Baldoni’s lawsuit states.
The New York Times also issued a statement Tuesday and vowed to “vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”
“The role of an independent news organization is to follow the facts where they lead,” said Danielle Rhoades Ha, spokesperson for the Times.
“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,” Ha added.
“To date, Wayfarer Studios, Mr. Baldoni, the other subjects of the article and their representatives have not pointed to a single error,” Ha said. “We published their full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well.”
“It Ends With Us,” which was released in August, was a box office success. It is based on a book of the same title about a married couple and domestic violence.
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