Justin Baldoni has updated his lawsuit against Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, alleging that Reynolds used the Deadpool & Wolverine movie to bully him, while also adding claims that Lively’s team had planned to tarnish his reputation for some time.
What’s new in Justin Baldoni’s lawsuit?
Baldoni’s amended lawsuit was filed on Friday night (via Variety), and takes aim at two specific things. First, The New York Times, which Baldoni’s legal team said had access to Lively‘s initial civil rights complaint up to 11 days prior to its report, with metadata taken by Baldoni’s legal team showing that the Times allegedly had information on the story dating back to October 2024.
According to the lawsuit, the metadata and fact that the paper was working on a story for so long shows that Lively’s team was working and “colluded for months to destroy reputations through a complex web of lies, false accusations and the manipulation of illicitly received communications,” according to Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman.
Elsewhere in the amended lawsuit, Baldoni alleges that Ryan Reynolds used the character “Nicepool” in 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine to throw subtle shade at Baldoni. According to the suit, the character is intended to be a mocking portrayal of Baldoni, or what Reynolds sees Baldoni as.
“Reynolds portrayed Nicepool as a vicious caricature of a ‘woke’ feminist before concluding the character’s arc with his violent shooting death at the hands of ‘Ladypool,’ a character voiced by Blake Lively,” the suit reads. The suit goes on to say that Nicepool was “intended to be a transparent and mocking portrayal of Reynolds’ warped perception of Baldoni.”
Baldoni’s new, updated lawsuit comes alongside website for information
The new suit comes alongside a new website that was released this week courtesy of Baldoni’s team, which includes PR boss Melissa Nathan and attorney Bryan Freedman. The site, simply titled “The Lawsuit Info,” includes links to two different PDF files, including Baldoni’s amended complaint against Lively as well as a timeline of what the team calls “relevant events” regarding the case.
Both files link to legal documents that were submitted by Baldoni’s team, with the relevant events file consisting of 168 pages of information detailing the beginning of the issues between Baldoni and Lively. The amended complaint PDF, on the other hand, is simply the team’s complaint that it filed in court earlier this year against both Lively and Ryan Reynolds.
Lively’s team has been bucking back against Freedman ever since videos of on-set activity on It Ends With Us were released by his lawyer, with Lively’s legal team arguing that Freedman has been trying to sway public opinion.
Lively’s complaint alleges that Baldoni created a hostile work environment
Baldoni’s lawsuit stems from a formal complaint that Lively made against Baldoni in December. In it, she states that things got so bad during the filming of It Ends With Us that an all-hands-on-deck meeting was called in response to her claims of a hostile work environment. During the meeting, Lively asked that Baldoni stop showing her nude videos or images of women, that he stop mentioning his pornography addiction to her, that Baldoni stops discussing sexual experiences in front of her, and that he also stop mentioning Lively’s weight.
The complaint also claims that an agreement was made between production company Wayfarer Studios and the cast, in which the promotion of the movie would focus “more on [Lively’s character’s] strength and resilience as opposed to describing the film as a story about domestic violence.” However, Lively claims that Baldoni would renege on that and instead spoke in interviews about the film’s serious story.
Lively also claimed that Baldoni and his PR manager, Melissa Nathan, discussed ways to start a social media campaign to harm her reputation. The filing by Lively includes 22 pages of texts between Baldoni’s publicist and Nathan, in which they discuss wanting to have Lively “buried.”
Source: Variety