EXCLUSIVE: Hours after Justin Baldoni filed a $400 million defamation and extortion lawsuit against Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, the It Ends With Us star and her legal team have clapped back — hard.
“This latest lawsuit from Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and its associates is another chapter in the abuser playbook,” said Lively’s Manatt, Phelps & Phillips attorneys and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP on Thursday evening in a statement provided to Deadline.
“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,” they said. “This is what experts call DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim Offender.”
“Their response to sexual harassment allegations: she wanted it, it’s her fault,” the lawyers add of Baldoni and gang’s federal filing in New York this morning.
“Their justification for why this happened to her: look what she was wearing,” Lively’s team goes on to say in a some deft narrative reclamation of their own after Baldoni’s 179-page omnibus dropped in the court docket. “In short, while the victim focuses on the abuse, the abuser focuses on the victim. The strategy of attacking the woman is desperate, it does not refute the evidence in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and it will fail.”
Read the full statement below.
Of course, as made evident today and over the past few weeks, Baldoni, his Wayferer Studios CEO Janey Heath, crisis PR chief Melissa Nathan (who worked for Johnny Depp during his down and dirty and ultimately successful legal battles with ex-wife and Aquaman star Amber Heard) and publicist Jennifer Abel insist they are the real victims.
“At bottom, this is not a case about celebrities sniping at each other in the press,” proclaims Baldoni’s jury-seeking complaint filed today against Lively, Reynolds, their publicist Leslie Sloane and her Vision PR firm, with cameos by Deadpool & Wolverine, the L.A. wildfires, an uncredited Taylor Swift, the New York Times and more. As there has been since this all spewed out into the public sphere last month, there’s a lot of the dark arts of Hollywood PR revealed too — to no one’s reward.
Swiping his Reynolds-backed co-star Lively of not even reading Colleen Hoover’s 2016 book on which the domestic abuse movie was based, Baldoni’s legal action Thursday is the latest in an ever-growing line of filings, agency pink-slippings and lawsuits over what may have occurred on It Ends With Us and the alleged smear campaign that followed.
Aside from the lack of mutual press between the co-stars leading up to box office hit It Ends With Us’ release in August, this truly commenced with Lively’s December 20 sexual harassment and retaliation complaint filed with the California’s Civil Rights Department. Since then, the NYT ran a detailed ‘We Can Bury Anyone: Inside A Hollywood Smear Machine’ story December 21, and Baldoni and gang sued the Gray Lady in L.A. for defamation and $250 million 10 days later, with Lively suing her co-star and cohorts the same day with most of what was in her CRD complaint.
Add to that, Stephanie Jones, founder of Baldoni’s former PR firm and the ex-employer of publicist Jennifer Abel, launched her own lawsuit against her ex-client and ex-staffer. As well, amongst subpoenas, attorney media appearances and more, Baldoni’s team sent an evidence preservation letter January 7, just before the fires exploded in L.A., to Disney CEO Bob Iger and Marvel boss Kevin Feige over the Jane the Virgin veteran’s feeling that Reynolds mocked him and bullied him with the Nicepool character featured in Deadpool & Wolverine.
Or, as today’s I-didn’t-smear-you-you-smeared-me filing states, it’s messy.
“This is a case about two of the most powerful stars in the world deploying their enormous power to steal an entire film right out of the hands of its director and production studio,” read Baldoni’s text message- and email-illustrated 179-page filing from Los Angeles-based attorney Bryan Freedman and NYC’s Meister Seelig & Fein PLLC. “Then, when Lively and Reynolds’ efforts failed to win them the acclaim they believed they so richly deserved, they turned their fury on their chosen scapegoat. Tolerating a year and a half of their behavior while remaining polite and professional at every turn offered Badoni and Wayfarer no protection.”
Baldoni and fellow plaintiffs want a jury trial – as does Lively in her own federal filing of last month. They might get it if all this isn’t settled in some legal firm’s boardroom over the next few months. That feels unlikely at this juncture.
There’s also going to be more pox on the PR houses as no one will want to see themselves so allegedly attacked or so allegedly exposed again. Then again, the federal court might even link or meld Lively’s NYE lawsuit with Baldoni’s for expediency’s sake – but you can bet there still will be more.
Here’s today’s statement from Lively’s legal team:
This latest lawsuit from Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and its associates is another chapter in the abuser playbook. 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.
Wayfarer has opted to use the resources of its billionaire co-founder to issue media statements, launch meritless lawsuits, and threaten litigation to overwhelm the public’s ability to understand that what they are doing is retaliation against sexual harassment allegations.
They are trying to shift the narrative to Ms. Lively by falsely claiming that she seized creative control and alienated the cast from Mr. Baldoni. The evidence will show that the cast and others had their own negative experiences with Mr. Baldoni and Wayfarer. The evidence will also show that Sony asked Ms. Lively to oversee Sony’s cut of the film, which they then selected for distribution and was a resounding success.
Their response to sexual harassment allegations: she wanted it, it’s her fault. Their justification for why this happened to her: look what she was wearing. In short, while the victim focuses on the abuse, the abuser focuses on the victim. The strategy of attacking the woman is desperate, it does not refute the evidence in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and it will fail.
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