Justin Baldoni’s legal team has fired back at Blake Lively following her reaction to his $400 million lawsuit against her.
Baldoni is taking legal action against Lively, her spouse Ryan Reynolds, their publicist Leslie Sloane, and Sloane’s PR firm, Vision PR. This comes after accusations were made regarding his behavior on the set and behind the scenes of the It Ends With Us movie.
The Gossip Girl actress made headlines when, a few weeks after the film’s release, she disclosed her own allegations against Baldoni in a lawsuit filed in December of last year.
She alleged that Baldoni attempted to ‘ruin her reputation’ and sexually harassed her during their time working on the movie, where he served as both director and lead actor.
Baldoni’s representatives have dismissed Lively’s claims as ‘categorically false’ and have initiated a counter-suit. However, Lively’s rebuttal denies accusations that she sought to seize creative control, allegedly enlisting Taylor Swift and Ryan Reynolds to support her script changes.
Baldoni’s attorney recently released a vehement response to Lively’s team, stating: “This is an age-old story: A woman speaks up with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation, and the abuser attempts to turn the tables on the victim. This is what experts call DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim Offender.”
The statement continued, describing the lawsuit from Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and its associates as ‘another chapter in the abuser playbook’.
The defamation lawsuit, exclusively acquired by DailyMail.com, includes strong commentary from Bryan Freedman.
He referred to the claims as ‘revoltingly false sexual allegations’ against his client, as reported by Deadline.
Freedman stated: “After my clients filed a comprehensive lawsuit packed with almost 200 pages of undeniable facts and documentary evidence which crushed their false allegations of a smear campaign by providing doctored communications to the New York Times, Blake and her legal team have just one heinous pivot left, and that is to double down on the revoltingly false sexual allegations against Mr. Baldoni.
“The mere fact that Ms. Lively feels that she can publicly destroy Mr. Baldoni’s reputation in an attempt to devastate his future career and then deny him or his team their own ability to defend themselves against her is preposterous.
“Mr. Baldoni never once publicly attempted to call Ms. Lively out for her own many wrongdoings during filming; he kindly addressed all her concerns during filming in the correct manner despite the fact that he wholly disagreed, he himself was committed to do things differently and to keep the peace as she specifically admitted to in her own lawsuit.”
He concluded: “We will not only continue to defend our clients against Blake’s power, privilege and all-out lies, but we will now fight even harder for the voiceless in the DV community who are unfairly suffering while she continues to push on her own self-serving and selfish vendetta in the media.”
Baldoni’s publicists, Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel, were also implicated in Lively’s initial filing, and they issued a statement as well.
Nathan and Abel discussed the repercussions of Lively’s allegations on their lives, stating that Lively’s provision of ‘The New York Times with doctored, out of context, and edited text messages in an effort to portray herself as a victim set off a chain of events that has been harmful beyond measure,’ leading to the pair facing ‘death threats, abhorrent abuse, and vile anti-Semitic slurs’.