Insiders reveal bombshell 'code word' used by Justin Baldoni and Taylor Swift that will leave Blake Lively FURIOUS

Justin Baldoni's wife Emily stared into the camera on Wednesday and smiled a knowing smile.

'This feels like the moment,' she said, as Baldoni nodded beside her. With a carefully rehearsed casual shrug, he added: 'So, here we are.'

The moment, of course, did not come by chance. Neither did the couple's five-minute speech, lamenting 'so many painful things that have been spoken into existence over the last couple of years.'

Despite the relaxed and raw style, this was a candy-coated cruise missile, targeted and timed to perfection.

Because the Baldonis chose to break that lengthy silence while Blake Lively was still licking her wounds from the most public snubbing of her life. Just five days earlier the actress had been excluded from the wedding of her former friend, Taylor Swift. 

One thousand people snagged an invite, but neither Lively nor her husband Ryan Reynolds were among them. The subtext in Baldoni's carefully-scripted speech seemed clear: No Taylor. No clout.

After all, it was the power of the singer with which Lively had once threatened Baldoni in texts in which she referred to herself as the character Khaleesi from Game of Thrones, and cast Swift and Reynolds as her 'dragons.'

'If you ever get around to watching Game of Thrones, you'll appreciate that I'm Khaleesi, and like her, I happen to have a few dragons,' Lively wrote.

The lawsuit, brought by Lively against Baldoni in December 2024 in which she accused him, among other things, of sexual harassment on the set of the film It Ends With Us, was settled in May. By then, the bulk of the actress's claims had been gutted.

But both parties came away deeply tarnished by the tawdry affair. Key among the carnage was the very public destruction of Lively's friendship with Swift after those text messages between the two women were made horribly, embarrassingly public.

One month before the sides settled, Lively had issued a defiant statement on Instagram, in which she seemed again to reference Swift, claiming she had taken legal action 'for those who don't have the same opportunity to.'

'The physical pain from digital violence is very real,' she wrote. 'It is abuse. And it's everywhere. Not just in the news, but in your communities and schools. If you're looking, my claims won't be the first or last time you'll see examples of the extreme dangers of retaliation and digital warfare. And it often won't be directed at celebrities or those who may able to speak up. It affects us all.'

She ended her statement with a dragon emoji - believed to be a reference to her warm description of Swift as her 'dragon.'

Swift did not appreciate the olive branch, and the pair remain estranged. Now it is hard to see them ever reuniting - a blow to Lively's star power, and career.

Still, the 38-year-old actress held out hope of a rapprochement and was 'sad' and upset at the wedding snub, a source told the Daily Mail last week.

She 'wanted to go' - for their years of friendship as much as for her status and career.

'It feels bad to be excluded like that,' the source added. 'She had sort of hoped that, despite everything, their history was enough that they'd be included. But that's not the way it went.'

So instead of mingling with Beyonce and Jay-Z, Brad Pitt and Steven Spielberg at Madison Square Garden, Lively was 300 miles north of Manhattan, watching her six-year-old daughter Betty - Swift's goddaughter - compete in a pony riding competition.

The Baldonis, perhaps, took note. After all, Swift is a kingmaker in both music and film, having for years enjoyed a lucrative arrangement with Disney, which releases her tour documentaries.

Lively has not made a film since It Ends With Us. In August 2025, it was announced she had signed for action rom-com The Survivalist, but there has been no update.

'We have not spoken publicly for the better part of the last two years, and it's not because we haven't had anything to say, because Lord knows we have,' said Baldoni, 42. 'But it just felt like every time we went to make a video like this, something was telling us not to. It just didn't feel like the right time. We were talking about it, feeling into it, praying about it.'

He added: 'We don't even know if this is the right thing to say, but we just know we need to share something.'

The Los Angeles-born actor, who wrote two achingly woke books on 'redefining masculinity' and rejecting macho stereotypes, thanked his friends, family and fans - and credited his faith for getting him through tough times.

Nothing was left to chance. He was dressed in an artfully casual olive green sweatshirt, while his wife was in dusky pink: the carefully chosen colors echoing those worn by Baldoni during a February court appearance.

The pair were on a terrace to the side of a tasteful kitchen - perhaps the Nashville home they relocated to before Christmas, with a source close to Baldoni telling People magazine they found Tennessee to be 'a kind and healing place for them, without all the noise.'

Bathed in evening sunlight, Baldoni declared: 'We are healing. And if you've ever been through something traumatic, you know that healing isn't linear. It looks different every day. We've had to rethink for ourselves what is real and what matters.'

Emily interjected: 'And it's this. It's our kids.'

The couple, who married in 2013, are parents to an 11-year-old daughter, Maiya, and an eight-year-old son, Maxwell.

Even the seemingly heartfelt thanks seemed, to some, coded.

Baldoni praised his fans who, 'when we didn't have a voice, were our voice.'

He said his wife prayed 'that people would have discernment' - and her prayers came true.

'So many of you had discernment,' he said. 'You used your intuition, you trusted it, and you gave your time to fight for us.'

Swift, whose gut told her to excommunicate Lively, could hardly have worded it better herself.

On June 11 this year, when she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Swift told the gathered crowd: 'I think now more than ever, in an industry that seems to be consumed by metrics, data, analytics, and we're all trying to predict whether something will trend or not, writers need to trust their human intuition.'

Earlier this year, in April, she told the New York Times that her 2010 album Speak Now remained important to her because it was when she learned 'to trust my own intuition.'

And in May 2022 she told New York University graduates, in a commencement speech, that humans are 'led by our gut instincts, our intuitions, our desires and fears, our scars and our dreams.'

Lively must have been left reeling. She is yet to respond.

She was the first to make her comeback move: hours after the case was settled in May, she made a surprise appearance at the Met Gala, head held high. Despite two years of mudslinging and unseemly wrangling, Lively set out to show she was back in business.

It didn't work. Indeed, many now feel that Lively's career is in the doldrums.

One Disney Studios executive who once worked with the actress told the Daily Mail, 'This lawsuit has ruined her in Hollywood. The truth is: she was never that popular. She had a reputation for being difficult, one of those toxic people who always thinks she knows best.'

Some of the drama around It Ends With Us centered on Lively commissioning her own edit of Baldoni's film and dragging in Swift to give an opinion on it. The singer, angered at the drama, issued a terse statement saying she had no creative input on the film.

And the toxicity has not been limited to the movie.

Lively's own production company, B for Effort, has completed not one single film since the company launched in March 2020.

The Hollywood source added: 'The general view now is that she's made her bed and she can lie in it. I don't think people in Hollywood are shedding tears over her.'

And if Lively is left out in the cold, Baldoni's position could not be more different. He concluded his clip by saying: 'We feel so loved.'

Emily added: 'There is so much more to say.'

To which her husband tantalizingly responded: 'And we will say it.'