Ryan Reynolds tore into Justin Baldoni in newly unsealed texts, calling the director a “predator and sociopath” and a “human rounding error” as his wife Blake Lively faced backlash during the “It Ends With Us” press tour.
The messages, exchanged in August 2024 with author Colleen Hoover and Reynolds’ agent Warren Zavala, surfaced in court filings as Lively’s legal battle with Baldoni heads toward trial. Reynolds, 48, wrote to Hoover, 46, on Aug. 10, 2024, as online criticism of Lively, 39, intensified during the film’s promotional push.
“It’s amazing to me that you can have everybody involved with a production completely run away from a person who is obviously a predator and sociopath and the narrative must first land on why a woman is the problem,” Reynolds wrote to Hoover.
He continued, “It’s amazing to me how low people still go. But people are already coming forward and soon enough someone is just gonna go on record.”
Hoover fired back at the online attackers in the same exchange.
“But also I feel like the loud ones are mostly 13-year-olds who don’t have fully developed brains yet and will be mortified by their thought process a few years from now,” she wrote, adding, “Good to hear it’s already beginning to skew away from him.”
Reynolds noted the demographic surprised him. “Surprising it’s mostly girls. At least, that’s what I’ve seen. And the really smart folks already know. Although the narrative at the moment is how insanely well the film is performing and how much audiences love it. So…”
Hoover reacted with a heart to his response.
Reynolds also mocked Baldoni’s crisis public relations strategy by scripting an imagined dialogue between the filmmaker and his hired team.
“Yeah, when he uses a crisis team like that, you can start to see all the strategy they’ve equipped him with,” Reynolds wrote.
“Crisis team: okay, Justin, all you do is talk about DV and how wonderful Blake is. And we’ll handle the online stuff. No matter what, you keep up your feminist advocacy. And speak like an emotionally elevated thought leader. Understood?”
He then supplied Baldoni’s imagined reply: “Justin: Namaste. Let’s get this bitch.”
A day earlier, on Aug. 9, 2024, Reynolds sent a separate message to his agent Zavala. In that text, he described Baldoni as a “human rounding error” while celebrating the film’s box office performance.
A source close to Reynolds defended the actor’s blunt private communications as protective, not malicious. “It is no secret that Ryan was trying to protect his wife who was being targeted by a crisis PR team hired by Baldoni,” the source said. “This is the same crisis team who has been accused of these smear tactics in at least 5 other lawsuits according to the NYT.”
Lively filed her complaint against Baldoni, 42, in December 2024, alleging he sexually harassed her during production of the domestic violence drama and later orchestrated a retaliatory smear campaign. Baldoni denied the allegations and countersued Lively, Reynolds, and their publicist Leslie Sloane for $400 million, accusing them of defamation and extortion. That lawsuit was dismissed in June 2025. Lively and the remaining defendants in her case reached a settlement in May 2026.
The unsealed texts reveal the private fury behind Reynolds’ public silence during a promotional cycle that saw Lively absorb disproportionate criticism for the film’s troubled rollout. While Baldoni positioned himself as a feminist advocate speaking on domestic violence, Reynolds and Hoover privately dissected what they viewed as a manufactured image.
