It’s official: Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni are going to court in 2026.
Attorneys for Lively claimed that Baldoni’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, took actions to taint the public’s—and potential jurors’—perception of her, specifically, with his numerous threats to create a website of evidence to clear his client. In a recent filing, Lively’s attorneys accused Freedman of “engaging in this extrajudicial campaign to influence these proceedings and the public perception of legal filings to this Court, and there already is a serious risk that his misconduct is tainting the jury pool.”
They added: “The endless stream of defamatory and extrajudicial media statements must end.”
“We will always respect the court; however, we will never be bullied by those suggesting we cannot defend our clients with pure, unedited facts,” Freedman responded in a statement. “All we want is for people to see the actual text messages that directly contradict her allegations, video footage that clearly shows there was no sexual harassment and all the other powerful evidence that directly contradicts any false allegations.”
Freedman further said that the “irony is not lost on anyone that Ms. Lively is so petrified of the truth that she has moved to gag it.”
Additionally, Lively filed a request for a deposition in Texas court of a man she asserts is responsible for negatively shifting online sentiment against her during the release and promotion of It Ends With Us. The man, identified as Jed Wallace, is a crisis management specialist whose Texas-based firm, Street Relations, was hired as a subcontractor by publicists working with Baldoni and his studio, Wayfarer, Lively’s filing claims. Wallace was also named in the New York Times story that first laid bare Lively’s allegations against Baldoni, his publicists, and Wayfarer studios.
“He weaponized a digital army around the country, including in New York and Los Angeles, to create, seed, manipulate, and advance disparaging content that appeared to be authentic on social media platforms and internet chat forums,” Lively’s attorneys claim. Notably, Lively did not include Wallace as a defendant in her suit. Freedman, who’s listed as Wallace’s attorney, hasn’t responded to a request for comment on Wallace specifically.
This week, a seven-minute voice note sent by Baldoni to Lively also made its way to the internet via TMZ. It’s unclear what date the recording was sent, but Baldoni begins it by apologizing for sending a voice note at 2 a.m. and references Lively’s rewrite of the rooftop scene in It Ends With Us. It’s long been reported (and admitted by Lively) that she and Reynolds participated in re-writing the scene. According to Baldoni’s suit, when Lively allegedly sent “dramatic” edits that she and Reynolds made to Baldoni, he replied “diplomatically” and told her the scene would land somewhere between what he worked on and the one she and Reynolds wrote. Lively, per screenshots of their text thread, didn’t reply for days and when she did, confirmed his text “didn’t feel great for her” nor Reynolds or the couple’s friend, Taylor Swift, who later praised the edits to Baldoni at Lively and Reynolds’ home.
After that meeting, Baldoni reached out to Lively as he “felt obliged to text Lively to say that he had liked her pages and hadn’t needed Reynolds and her megacelebrity friend to pressure him.” In her reply, she referred to herself as “Khaleesi” and Reynolds and Swift as her “dragons” who protect and advocate for her as they “don’t give a shit” about “threatening egos” or “affecting the ease of the process” as she does.
“The message could not have been clearer. Baldoni was not just dealing with Lively. He was also facing Lively’s ‘dragons,’ two of the most influential and wealthy celebrities in the world, who were not afraid to make things very difficult for him,” Baldoni’s filing stated.
In Baldoni’s voice note, he apologizes further for making her feel like he didn’t appreciate her edits, referring to himself as “a flawed man” and praising her relationships with Reynolds and Swift.
“If that’s how you felt and they knew that, and fuck, we should all have friends like that, aside from the fact that they’re two of the most creative people on the planet. The three of you guys together is unbelievable. Talk about energy and just to force, all three of you,” Baldoni said. “But I just wanted you to know that I didn’t need that, because it’s really good and it’s gonna make the movie sing, like you said, and and I’m excited to go through the whole movie with you. I’m just excited to spend time with you.”
Baldoni’s libel suit against the New York Times has not yet been given a date.
