It Ends With Us director and star Justin Baldoni has filed a lawsuit against The New York Times following its reporting on costar Blake Lively after she sued him for sexual harassment.
Baldoni, 40, filed a $250 million lawsuit against Lively, 37, on Tuesday, December 31 in Los Angeles Superior Court, Us Weekly can confirm.
A group of 10 plaintiffs, including the actor and publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel, as well as producers James Heath and Steve Saraowitz from the movie It Ends With Us, have initiated legal action.
The lawsuit filed by the plaintiffs is based on claims of libel and invasion of privacy through false light. They argue that The New York Times selectively used communications and left out important context to deceive readers in an article titled “We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.”
The article, authored by Megan Twohey, Mike McIntire, and Julie Tate, alleged that Lively had endured months of sexual harassment from Baldoni and was released on Saturday, December 21st.
The lawsuit alleges Lively pursued a “strategic and manipulative” smear campaign against Baldoni (rather than the other way around), using false “sexual harassment allegations to assert unilateral control over every aspect of the production.”
“The Times story relied almost entirely on Lively’s unverified and self-serving narrative, lifting it nearly verbatim while disregarding an abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims and exposed her true motives,” the lawsuit reads.
The lawsuit details the alleged discrepancies and provides a rebuttal to the claims made in the article. Among these are the texts between publicists Nathan and Abel that celebrated negative press against Lively, which the suit claims omitted key context such as a text from Nathan that read, “Damn this is unfair because it’s also not me.”
The lawsuit also offers rebuttals to numerous other claims in The New York Times article, including the suggestion Baldoni would repeatedly enter Lively’s trailer while she was breastfeeding (the lawsuit tendered a text from Lively to Baldoni that reads “I’m just pumping in my trailer if you wanna work out our lines.”)
The Times article also accused Baldoni of showing Lively a “pornographic video” that involved his wife, which the lawsuit alleges was “non-pornographic.”
“This claim is patently absurd,” the lawsuit reads. “The video in question was a (non-pornographic) recording of Heath’s wife during a home birth — a deeply personal one with no sexual overtone. To distort this benign event into an act of sexual misconduct is outrageous and emblematic of the lengths to which Lively and her collaborators are willing to go to defame plaintiffs.”
In addition the lawsuit also claims that allegations that Baldoni sexualized Lively during references to her character’s costumes were “exaggerated and misleading.”
The suit claims Lively herself used similar terminology as she advocated in making her character’s attire “sexier” and claimed Baldoni was following the tone set. One text read, “Will show you both ways but beanie is much sexier.”
The Times article also reported that Lively had filed an HR complaint during filming, with 30 items set out and agreed to before she would return to set. Among these were that an intimacy coordinator must be present, “no more showing nude videos or images of women to Blake” and “no further mentions of cast and crew’s genitalia.”
The plaintiffs’ lawsuit alleges that no complaint was ever officially made by Lively.
“No such document was ever presented to Baldoni, the Wayfarer team, or, to their knowledge, anyone else — whether during that meeting or at any other time — and therefore, could not have been agreed to,” the lawsuit claims.
A New York Times spokesperson stood by its story in a statement to Us Weekly on Tuesday, December 31.
“The role of an independent news organization is to follow the facts where they lead,” the statement read. “Our story was meticulously and responsibly reported. It was based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article. To date, Wayfarer Studios, Mr. Baldoni, the other subjects of the article and their representatives have not pointed to a single error. We published their full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well.”
The spokesperson added, “We plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”
In response to the filing, Lively’s attorney told Us on Tuesday, December 31 that the lawsuit was based on an “obviously false premise.”
“Nothing in this lawsuit changes anything about the claims advanced in Ms. Lively’s California Civil Rights Department Complaint, nor her federal complaint, filed earlier today,” the statement read. “This lawsuit is based on the obviously false premise that Ms. Lively’s administrative complaint against Wayfarer and others was a ruse based on a choice “not to file a lawsuit against Baldoni, Wayfarer,” and that “litigation was never her ultimate goal.” As demonstrated by the federal complaint filed by Ms. Lively earlier today, that frame of reference for the Wayfarer lawsuit is false. While we will not litigate this matter in the press, we do encourage people to read Ms. Lively’s complaint in its entirety. We look forward to addressing each and every one of Wayfarer’s allegations in court.”
Meanwhile, Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman vowed to “take down” The New York Times for its “vicious smear campaign,” he tells Us Weekly.
“In this vicious smear campaign fully orchestrated by Blake Lively and her team, the New York Times cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful “untouchable” Hollywood elites, disregarding journalistic practices and ethics once befitting of the revered publication by using doctored and manipulated texts and intentionally omitting texts which dispute their chosen PR narrative,” he said via a statement to Us. “In doing so, they pre-determined the outcome of their story, and aided and abetted their own devastating PR smear campaign designed to revitalize Lively’s self-induced floundering public image and counter the organic groundswell of criticism amongst the online public. The irony is rich.”
He continued: “Make no mistake however, as we all unite to take down The NY Times by no longer allowing them to deceive the public, we will continue this campaign of authenticity by also suing those individuals who have abused their power to try and destroy the lives of my clients. While their side embraces partial truths, we embrace the full truth – and have all of the communications to back it. The public will decide for themselves as they did when this first began.”
Lively made headlines when she sued Baldoni for sexual harassment in December 2024. In the court documents, which were obtained by Us Weekly after reporting from TMZ and The New York Times, Lively also accused Baldoni of launching a “social manipulation” campaign against her to “destroy” her reputation. The docs also claim that Lively was not the only cast member to complain about Baldoni.
Baldoni denied the allegations through his lawyer, Bryan Freedman, who called the accusations “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious” in a statement to Us. The statement also claimed that Lively filed the lawsuit to “fix her negative reputation” and “rehash a narrative” about the movie’s production.
In a statement to The New York Times on Saturday, December 21 regarding her lawsuit, Lively said, “I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted.”
Ahead of Baldoni’s filing, the Daily Mail reported that the actor was planning to file a countersuit and suggested that Lively’s publicist attempted to tarnish his image by leaking stories to the press.
“I was contacted on 8/11 by Sara Nathan (Melissa Nathan’s sister) forwarding an anonymous tip that Page Six received, regarding allegations of HR complaints on the set of It Ends with Us,” Lively’s rep, Leslie Sloan, told Us in a statement. “After that, I was contacted by various press outlets asking about allegations of HR complaints. When contacted, I responded to press questions by referring them to Wayfarer or Sony for information regarding HR complaints.”
Sloane added, “It’s clear that Mr. Baldoni and his Wayfarer Associates are suggesting that I originated press stories about HR complaints on set, which is false. Please read Ms. Lively’s Complaint and the Complaint filed by Jonesworks LLC and Stephanie Jones, which provides the details of the campaign against my client.”
In response to the Daily Mail article, Freedman told Deadline: “I am not going to speak to when or how many lawsuits we are filing but when we file our first lawsuit, it is going to shock everyone who has been manipulated into believing a demonstrably false narrative. It will be supported by real evidence and tell the true story. In over 30 years of practicing, I have never seen this level of unethical behavior intentionally fueled through media manipulation.”
