It Ends With Us actor and director Justin Baldoni has filed a lawsuit against The New York Times for their 4000-word article projecting Blake Lively a victim of sexual harassment while relying on selective text messages
Justin Baldoni
It Ends With Use actor and director Justin Baldoni has filed a 250 million dollar lawsuit against the New York Times over its reportage that followed Blake Lively's sexual harassment lawsuit. Baldoni filed the case at the Los Angeles Superior Court. The actor-filmmaker is among a group of 10 plaintiffs that also includes publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel who are suing the newspaper for libel and false light invasion of privacy over the Dec. 21 article titled “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.”
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The plaintiff also included 'It Ends With Us' producers Jamey Heath and Steve Sarowitz. The lawsuit has claimed that the Times 'cherry-picked’ and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead.”
Out-of-context text messages
Text messages to support The Times's claim against Baldoni was also included in the complaint. According to a report in Variety, on June 2, 2023, Blake Lively began a text exchange with her co-star Justin Baldoni that blamed her assistant for not getting her an updated batch of script pages. “She didn’t realize they were new,” Lively wrote. “New pages can always be sent to me as well please.” The actress signed the missive with an “X” — the universal symbol for a kiss. Lively followed up with another text shortly thereafter. “I’m just pumping in my trailer if you wanna work out our lines.” Baldoni responded: “Copy. Eating with crew and will head that way.” The text message was reportedly used out of context by the Times to portray Baldoni in a sinister light. This was one of the many discrepancy pointed out in the complaint.
The 4000-word article for the New York Times was written by Megan Twohey, Mike McIntire and Julie Tate. The piece projected that Lively endured months of sexual harassment from Baldoni and Heath. It also claimed that the actress was subjected to a planned smear campaign when she voiced her concern against Baldoni. However according to the lawsuit, it was Lively who embarked on a “strategic and manipulative” smear campaign of her own and used false “sexual harassment allegations to assert unilateral control over every aspect of the production.” The suit also alleges that Lively's actor-husband Ryan Reynolds berated Baldoni in an aggressive manner during a heated meeting at their Tribeca penthouse in New York "accusing him of ‘fat shaming’” his wife. The suit claims that the A-list actor also pressured Baldoni’s agency, WME, to drop the director during the “Deadpool and Wolverine” premiere in July, well before Baldoni enlisted crisis PR.
New York Times responds
A New York Times spokesperson responded, “The role of an independent news organization is to follow the facts where they lead. 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. We plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”
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