The legal drama surrounding Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni is getting messier. An amended lawsuit has been filed by the actress, and accusations are flying. Let’s break down the latest developments.
In late 2024, Blake Lively dropped a lawsuit on her “It Ends With Us” co-star and director, Justin Baldoni, accusing him of sexual harassment and a calculated campaign to trash her reputation. Baldoni fired back with a suit of his own, claiming Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, and others were behind a smear campaign to control the film. Now, the plot thickens with Lively’s amended complaint.
The amended complaint lays out some intense allegations, with Lively’s legal team claiming the cyberbullying, harassment, and intimidation she’s faced since filing her initial complaint have reached “dangerously extreme” levels.
Here’s the direct quote:
“As alleged in Blake’s amended complaint, Mr. Baldoni’s social combat plan has resulted in the viral spread of hateful, threatening, and derogatory harassment and cyber bullying directed towards Ms. Lively, her family, other cast members, and witnesses. Online hate and vitriol have appeared on social media accounts of Ms. Lively, Mr. Reynolds, their numerous businesses, many members of the cast of the Film, and third parties associated with it. Witnesses have been threatened not just with lawsuits, but physical violence, including threats against witnesses’ families. This culture of fear, intimidation, harassment, and threats is the predictable result of an incessant digital campaign to turn social media sentiment as dark and negative as is humanly possible.”
Lively’s legal team also pulls no punches when addressing Wayfarer, Baldoni’s production company:
“The Wayfarer defendants don’t seem to care about how many people they ‘bury’ or ‘destroy’ – it’s all apparently in service of protecting Wayfarer’s image. It is because of the continued harassment and targeting of innocent bystanders that Ms Lively’s Amended Complaint does not refer to certain victim-witnesses by name, nor does it quote directly from their texts or include screen shots. Importantly, however, these victim-witnesses have given Ms. Lively permission to share their communications in the Amended Complaint as they are laid out, and they will testify and produce documents in the discovery process.”
The amended complaint alleges that Lively wasn’t alone in feeling uncomfortable on set, claiming other female cast members also voiced concerns. According to the filing, a Sony representative even discussed these concerns with Baldoni, who allegedly promised to make adjustments but then, according to Lively, doubled down by hiring a crisis management team to launch a smear campaign.
“The amended complaint details the corroboration that backs up Blake’s original sexual harassment and retaliation concerns, including that (1) Justin Baldoni and Jamey Heath made other women uncomfortable on set; and (2) other women confided in Blake about their discomfort and fear of coming forward, and their concern about the current public vitriol.”
“The new filing also details that a Sony representative spoke to Baldoni about the concerns, and that Baldoni responded, including by reaching out to one of the other women who complained to reassure her that he heard her and promised to make adjustments. The complaint alleges that Mr. Baldoni didn’t follow through on that promise, but did make the adjustment to hire a crisis management team, digital manipulation experts, litigators, and used those helpers to plan and execute the smear campaign described in her original lawsuit. In doing so, Blake has alleged, Baldoni hoped that if she or any other woman made their grievances public, nobody would believe them.”
Adding fuel to the fire, Lively claims Steve Sarowitz, a Wayfarer co-founder, compared the legal battle to a war, allegedly saying he’d spend big to defend Baldoni.
“We are just beginning to scratch the surface of the evidence documenting how much of his billions of dollars Steve Sarowitz has spent to bankroll Baldoni’s retaliation campaign and all of the defendants’ litigation budget. And discovery hasn’t even left the station. As alleged in Blake’s lawsuit, Steve Sarowtiz told a witness that he ‘will protect the studio like Israel protected itself from Hamas. There were 39,000 dead bodies. There will be two dead bodies when I’m done. Minimum. Not dead, but you’re dead to me. So that kind of dead. But dead to a lot of people.’”
“As we know from Blake’s original complaint, Mr. Sarowitz has not denied telling another third party he was prepared to spend $100 million to ruin the lives of Ms. Lively and her family.”
The amended complaint also addresses the role of an intimacy coordinator on set. Lively clarifies that she didn’t meet with the coordinator beforehand because, in her view, there wasn’t a need. Her statement goes on to clarify the role of the coordinator as an aid in following the script:
“The purpose of an intimacy coordinator is to work with the actors to establish the appropriate boundaries based on what is in the script, not to rewrite the script to add more sexual content to satisfy the Director’s demands. Blake did not ‘refuse’ to meet with the Film’s intimacy coordinator, she had no need to meet with her before production.”
“Instead, she spoke to her during preparations once production began. Once again a valid and serious complaint about Baldoni improvising intimacy on set – without an intimacy coordinator there – that was not pre-approved in the script, has been turned into a sideshow distraction sought to confuse the public and retaliate against Blake for speaking up.”
Another angle of the situation, according to Lively, is that Baldoni presents a different persona in the public eye than he does in private.
“In public interviews and on his podcast, Justin Baldoni likes to talk about supporting women, listening to women, and believing women, even if he is the man accused of misconduct. Yet, when he did become the man accused of sexual harassment, he has not supported or listened to women, or acknowledged any accountability. Indeed, Mr. Baldoni’s own Amended Complaint brags that when he was asked to issue a simple statement taking accountability for having run a ‘troubling’ set, his team told him to lawyer up (which he did).”
“Given the opportunity to take accountability and end a growing wave of online harassment and hatred against Ms. Lively and other women associated with the Film, Mr. Baldoni and his Wayfarer associates launched, and have continued to perpetuate, a campaign to ‘bury’, silence, and encourage others not to believe Ms. Lively.”
Lively also calls out Wayfarer for their delay in launching an “investigation.”
“Two years after Ms. Lively and others made sexual harassment complaints against Baldoni and [Jamey] Heath, Wayfarer finally launched an “investigation” into itself. What they have put together is a farce, not an investigation. The truth is they chose not to investigate any of the claims of sexual harassment at the time they first surfaced. Instead, as alleged in the lawsuit, Wayfarer and its management chose to expend their efforts and resources devising a plan to retaliate and discredit those who dared to make the accusations in the first place.”
“Wayfarer’s so-called ‘investigation’ that launched last month, in January 2025, vests control in Baldoni, Heath and Sarowitz themselves. They control the scope of the investigation, the budget, the documents disclosed to investigators, whether a report will ever be produced, if anything ever will be released publicly. Whatever the results of this so-called investigation, they will not be rooted in truth seeking or truth telling. We can expect it to be a continuation of their attempt to avoid accountability, confuse and distract the public, and re-victimize and re-brand the women who spoke up as liars not to be trusted.”
Also added to the amended complaint is Jed Wallace, a crisis management expert.
“Ms. Lively added Jed Wallace as a defendant to this lawsuit because in their internal private messages–that they hoped nobody would ever see–Baldoni’s team bragged about how Wallace was so successful in manipulating social media that they saw a shift in the narrative from casting Baldoni in a bad light to shining that negative spotlight on Blake instead. Members of the crisis team even laughed at how sad it was that people so easily latched onto a narrative hating on a woman.”
“Mr. Wallace served a critical role in effectuating the smear campaign that Ms. Lively continues to feel the consequences of today, and we are eager to obtain discovery into his entire business model, how he engineered the narrative shift, and what other tactics he used to distract from and silence the very real sexual harassment and retaliation claims made by Ms. Lively.”
According to the amended complaint, Baldoni was happy to take credit for Lively’s work on the editing of “It Ends With Us” until she accused him of sexual harassment, she alleges.
“The Sony version of the film that was released, that Blake Lively led the edits on, became the biggest, most lucrative film Wayfarer has ever had, costing only $25 million to produce but grossing more than $350 million in revenue.”
“Baldoni, Heath, Sarowitz, and Wayfarer had no complaints about lining their own pockets with the success of the film at the box office. They had no shame in reveling in a movie that, now according to them, they did not control post production. The public did not even know that Ms. Lively is the one who worked so hard to edit the movie.”
“When Ms. Lively first filed her lawsuit, the Wayfarer Parties claimed that she did so to fix her reputation. It is only now, in their latest distraction, that they perpetuate a narrative that would have you believe that Ms. Lively decided to fabricate earlier documented claims of sexual harassment only to be able to gain future leverage over the film she was staring in, even before it was done being made. It makes no sense.”
“These shifting, superficial explanations defy reason and are just an attempt to dismiss the legitimate reasons Ms. Lively and numerous others spoke up about the sexual harassment they experienced, and instead turn this into nothing more than a petty and underhanded grab for power that, again even according to them, Ms. Lively already had.”
Lively’s lawyers, Esra Hudson and Mike Gottlieb, released a statement regarding the amended complaint.
“Ms. Lively has filed an amended complaint today that provides significant additional evidence and corroboration of her original claims,” read their statement. “That evidence includes previously undisclosed communications involving Ms. Lively, representatives of Sony and Wayfarer, and numerous other witnesses. The complaint includes significant contemporaneous evidence that Ms. Lively was not alone in raising allegations of on-set misconduct more than a year before the Film was edited; as well as evidence detailing the threats, harassment, and intimidation of not just Ms. Lively, but numerous innocent bystanders that have followed defendants’ retaliatory campaign.”
“The amended complaint has also added a new claim for defamation based on the repeated false statements the defendants have made about Ms. Lively since she filed her original complaint, and adds Jed Wallace and his company as defendants.”
“Over the next several weeks, we will move to dismiss the utterly meritless lawsuits brought against Ms. Lively and Mr. Reynolds, and we will move full speed ahead with discovery that we expect will reveal shocking details about the depth to which the Defendants have sunk in their unending efforts to ‘bury,’ ‘ruin,’ and ‘destroy’ Ms. Lively and her family,” the statement concluded.
Baldoni’s camp isn’t staying silent. His lawyer, Bryan Freedman, issued a statement.
“Our clients have been transparent in providing receipts, real time documents and video showing a completely different story than what has been manipulated and cherry picked to the media. Our clients have taken this matter and these issues very seriously notwithstanding the jokes made publicly by the plaintiff and her husband.”
He continued, “Her underwhelming amended complaint is filled with unsubstantial hearsay of unnamed persons who are clearly no longer willing to come forward or publicly support her claims. Since documents do not lie and people do, the upcoming depositions of those who initially supported Ms. Lively’s false claims and those who are witnesses to her own behavior will be enlightening. What is truly uncomfortable here is Ms. Lively’s lack of actual evidence.”
