Blake Lively has issued a scathing response to Justin Baldoni who is suing her for $400,000,000.
Baldoni is suing Lively, her husband, Ryan Reynolds, their publicist Leslie Sloane and Sloane's PR firm, Vision PR, for $400 million based on several allegations.
The legal battle comes as the Gossip Girl star outlined her own allegations in a lawsuit in December last year which claimed Baldoni tried to 'destroy her reputation' and sexually harassed her while the pair starred in the movie, It Ends With Us, which Baldoni also directed.
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Baldoni's team branded Lively's allegations as 'categorically false' and is now counter-suing on a range of claims, from defamation and civil extortion to 'negligent interference with prospective economic advantage' and 'intentional interference' with contractual relations.
The 179-page lawsuit, filed on Thursday (January 16), accuses the actress and her husband of interfering with the 2024 film.
Among the allegations is a claim that Taylor Swift and Ryan Reynolds seemingly served as Lively's 'dragons' in backing her script rewrites.
Rumours that Baldoni and Lively had apparently fallen out on the set of the adaptation of Colleen Hoover's 2016 novel were sparked during the film's press tour as they appeared to avoid each other.
Now, Lively's legal team has snapped back at Baldoni's lawsuit.
They told the Daily Mail: "This is an age-old story: A woman speaks up with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation and the abuser attempts to turn the tables on the victim. This is what experts call DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim Offender."
The statement continued to accuse Baldoni's company, Wayfarer Studios, that it 'opted to use the resources of its billionaire co-founder to issue media statements, launch meritless lawsuits, and threaten litigation to overwhelm the public’s ability to understand that what they are doing is retaliation against sexual harassment allegations'.
"They are trying to shift the narrative to Ms. Lively by falsely claiming that she seized 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," Lively's attorneys continued. "The evidence will also show that Sony asked Ms. Lively to oversee Sony’s cut of the film, which they then selected for distribution and was a resounding success."
It added: "Their response to sexual harassment allegations: she wanted it, it’s her fault. Their justification 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, it does not refute the evidence in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and it will fail.”
Bryan Freedman, Baldoni's lawyer, previously told UNILAD that the lawsuit is driven by 'an overwhelming amount of untampered evidence' of Lively's 'duplicitous attempt to destroy Justin Baldoni' and his team through 'disseminating grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and doctored information to the media'.
He continued: "Let’s not forget, Ms. Lively and her team attempted to bulldoze reputations and livelihoods for heinously selfish reasons through their own dangerous manipulation of the media before even taking any actual legal action. We know the truth, and now the public does too. Justin and his team have nothing to hide, documents do not lie."
UNILAD has reached out to representatives for Wayfarer Studios, Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds and Taylor Swift for comment.
Topics: Blake Lively, Hollywood, Justin Baldoni, Ryan Reynolds, Taylor Swift, Celebrity, US News
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