Justin Baldoni’s Lawyer Says Ryan Reynolds Based ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Role On Actor: “No Question”

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni‘s behind-the-scenes drama seems to have been referenced in another hit film from 2024.

The This Ends with Us director and co-star’s attorney Bryan Freedman accused Lively’s husband Ryan Reynolds of taking a jab at his client with the Deadpool & Wolverine character Nicepool, which audiences have speculated was inspired by Baldoni’s apparent pseudo-nice guy persona.

“What I make of that, is that if your wife is sexually harassed, you don’t make fun of Justin Baldoni,” said Freedman on The Megyn Kelly Show. “There’s no question it relates to Justin. I mean, anybody that watched that hair bun — if somebody is seriously sexually harassed, you don’t make fun of it. It’s a serious issue.”

His comment came after Kelly showed a clip from the MCU movie, in which Reynolds plays an alternate version of his titular character named Nicepool. Living in the Void with a myriad of Marvel outcasts, the character is toxically positive to conceal his gross behavior.

Nicepool tells Deadpool (Reynolds) and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) in the clip, “In here, everybody calls me Nicepool. Oh my goodness, wait ’till you see Ladypool. She is gorgeous. She just had a baby too, and you can’t even tell.”

“I don’t think you can say that,” says Deadpool, to which Nicepool responds: “That’s okay, I identify as a feminist.”

Filming It Ends with Us and Deadpool & Wolverine began in Spring 2023, with the Hollywood strikes halting production on both films.

As Lively officially filed a lawsuit against her It Ends With Us co-star and director last month, accusing him of sexual harassment and retaliation, Baldoni filed a countersuit against Lively and The New York Times for using texts between his PR team that “cherry-picked and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead.”

On December 21, Baldoni was unceremoniously dumped by WME, the uber-agency he shared with Lively and the Deadpool star. A flood of A-listers flocked to Lively’s side quickly afterwards over what went down on the Sony-released box office hit It Ends With Us – including author Colleen Hoover, who wrote the 2016 book the domestic violence spotlighting film is based on.