Blake Lively is turning her sights to her former friend Taylor Swift as her sexual harassment lawsuit against Justin Baldoni drags on.
Now requesting a protective order from the judge handling her case, the 37-year-old Gossip Girl actress aims to prevent Baldoni’s lawyer from persisting with their requests for Lively’s communications with Swift, as per documents from the Daily Mail.
Lively’s legal team filed a letter on Friday, alleging that Baldoni, whose $400 million defamation lawsuit against Lively, Ryan Reynolds, her publicist, and the New York Times was dismissed, had failed to provide Lively with the documents they claimed to have obtained through an agreement to retract their subpoenas to Swift and her representatives.
The protective order is being pursued by Lively’s lawyer Esra Hudson, who portrayed Baldoni’s actions as a strategic move to involve Swift and her fan base in their public relations efforts against Lively.
Representatives for Swift and Baldoni didn’t immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment.
The letter was filed just days after social media accounts that regularly post pro-Baldoni updates claimed Swift, 35, had recently deleted Instagram posts featuring Lively.
Blake Lively is asking a judge for a protective order to prevent Justin Baldoni’s legal team from gaining communications she had with her former friend Taylor Swift, according to a letter filed Friday and obtained by DailyMail.com; pictured June 9 in NYC
Lively’s attorneys accused Baldoni of having ‘refused to produce to Ms. Lively the documents they publicly claimed to have received as part of a deal to withdraw their subpoenas to Ms. Swift and her counsel’; Swift is pictured in February in LA
The latest development comes days after Baldoni’s $400M defamation suit against Lively was dismissed; pictured in December 2024 in LA
However, the pop singer’s fans quickly shut down the discussion by pointing out that the posts in question were deleted years before her reported falling out with Lively as part of an album promotion stunt for 2017’s Reputation.
Lively’s attorneys added that she ‘respectfully requests that she be relieved from producing documents responsive to’ requests from the 41-year-old Jane The Virgin star for all of her communications with Swift.
In a statement to People, a spokesperson for Lively said that ‘Justin Baldoni and the Wayfarer parties are still demanding access to Taylor Swift’s private communications — despite having already subpoenaed and then withdrawn that subpoena after they ‘got all they needed.’
‘As reflected in today’s filing, their intent to drag Taylor Swift into this was evident as far back as August 2024, when the crisis PR firm led by Melissa Nathan included her in their ‘Scenario Planning’ document (Lively Amended Complaint, Exhibit D) and flagged the ‘TS fanbase’ as something to take ‘extremely seriously’ (Lively Amended Complaint, ¶214(b)),’ they wrote.
‘The ongoing attempts to once again try and use the world’s biggest star as a PR tactic in this matter reflects a public unraveling of epic proportions — and serves only to distract from the fact that Justin Baldoni’s lawsuits against Ms. Lively, Ryan Reynolds, their publicist, and the New York Times have been entirely dismissed.’
Earlier this week, Lively served a subpoena to a figure connected to Swift: her nemesis Scooter Braun.
Both Braun and his K-Pop corporation HYBE were subpoenaed as Lively’s legal team seeks documents relating to crisis PR manager Melissa Nathan — who was named in Lively’s bombshell suit against Baldoni — as well as information on work she did for Baldoni.
Braun famously bought up Taylor Swift’s early master recordings after she claimed her former label had refused to sell them to her.
Baldoni had also been suing Lively’s husband Ryan Reynolds (pictured with her in April in NYC), as well as her publicist and the New York Times. He still has the option to refile four of his seven original claims
Lively’s attorney Esra Hudson defended the request for the protective order by saying it had been a ‘tactic’ of Baldoni to ‘make Ms. Swift and her fan base central to their media strategy against Ms. Lively’
Blake and Taylor have frequently appeared in each other’s social media posts, as seen above
But Swifties noted in the comments that Taylor had wiped her Instagram and other social media accounts in August 2017 — after the photos were posted — as a PR stunt to announce the release of her Reputation album (pictured)
The Shake It Off singer’s fury led her to launch her ‘Taylor’s Version’ series of rerecorded albums to siphon off recording royalties from her masters’ new owners could have received.
However, the saga came to an end in late May when Swift was finally able to buy back the recordings for an undisclosed sum.
Swift has since shared that she had rerecorded her self-titled debut album, and she suggested it might be released sometime in the future in her letter announcing her purchase of her masters.
However, she disappointed many of her fans by also admitting that she had not finished rerecording her 2017 album Reputation, which Swifties have been calling for in recent months.
Although she debuted a rerecorded version of the album’s single Look What You Made Me Do on a recent episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s unclear when she will finish rerecording the album, or if she even plans to complete the project.
She admitted to slow-rolling the process in her letter because Reputation was ‘so specific to that time in my life.’
‘To be perfectly honest, it’s the one album in those first six that I thought couldn’t be improved by re-doing it… so I kept putting it off,’ she wrote.
