Blake Lively responds to Justin Baldoni’s new $400 million lawsuit

Blake Lively responded through their legal team Justin Baldonis Studio files a new lawsuit against her, her publicist Leslie Sloan and her husband Ryan Reynolds.

The submission received from Us weekly on Thursday, January 16th is seeking $400 million in damages and accuses Lively, 37, of being “determined to make Baldoni the real villain in her story” in order to thwart her alleged “tone deaf” publicity It ends with usthe film that Baldoni, 40, and Lively worked on together. The lawsuit also includes allegations of civil extortion, defamation and invasion of privacy by false means among other things.

Lively’s legal team responded to the Baldoni camp’s “desperate” strategy, sharing a statement Us weekly on Thursday, January 16 in response.

“This latest lawsuit by Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and its partners is another chapter in the abuse playbook. This is an age-old story: A woman comes forward with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation, and the perpetrator tries to turn the tables on the victim. That’s what experts call DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim Perpetrator,” the statement said. “Wayfarer has chosen to use the resources of its billionaire co-founder to issue media statements, launch baseless lawsuits and threaten litigation in order to overwhelm the public’s ability to understand that what they are doing is Retaliation against allegations of sexual harassment.”

Lively’s legal team accused Baldoni’s team of trying to “shift” the focus onto Lively and away from Baldoni himself.

“They are trying to shift the narrative to Ms. Lively by falsely claiming that she took creative control and alienated the cast from Mr. Baldoni. The evidence will show that the cast and others had their own negative experiences with Mr. Baldoni and Wayfarer. The evidence will also show that Sony asked Ms. Lively to oversee Sony’s editing of the film, which they then selected for distribution and which was a resounding success,” the statement said.

The statement continued: “Her reaction to the sexual harassment allegations: She wanted it, it’s her fault.” Her reasoning for why this happened to her: Look what she was wearing. In short, while the victim focuses on the abuse, the abuser focuses on the victim. The strategy of attacking the woman is desperate, does not refute the evidence in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and will fail.”

Baldoni claimed that the feud between him and Lively began in May 2023, when the film opened. He claimed Lively developed a “takeover strategy” as they fought for creative control.

The documents include emails between Baldoni and Lively before filming began, with Baldoni claiming Lively expressed “heartfelt gratitude” for the preparation but believed she was trying to gain control.

Baldoni claimed that Lively hadn’t read It ends with us. The lawsuit states, “She even tried Googling her character’s hair color instead of picking up the book.”

Following the lawsuit, Baldoni’s attorney stated, Bryan Freedman, shared in a statement Us“This lawsuit is a legal action based on an overwhelming amount of unadulterated evidence and describes Blake Lively and her team’s duplicitous attempt to harm Justin Baldoni, his team and their respective companies by distributing crudely edited, unsubstantiated, new and manipulated information to the media.”

The statement continued: “Based on our full willingness to provide all full text messages, emails, video recordings and other documentary evidence exchanged between the parties in real time, it is clear that they are not winning this fight I’ll definitely regret it. Blake Lively was either severely misled by her team or intentionally and knowingly misrepresented the truth.”

“MS. Lively will never again be allowed to exploit actual victims of real harassment solely for her personal reputation, at the expense of those who have no power,” the statement said. “Let us not forget that Ms. Lively and her team for vilely selfish reasons through their own dangerous manipulation of the media, trying to ruin their reputations and livelihoods before even taking legal action. We know the truth, and now the public knows too. Justin and his team have nothing to hide. Documents lie not.”

Us weekly Baldoni asked for comment.