Justin Baldoni filed a counter lawsuit against “It Ends With Us” co-star Blake Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, on Thursday, alleging the couple hijacked his film and sought to destroy his livelihood and career.
In the lawsuit’s 179-page complaint filed in the Southern District of New York, Baldoni accuses Lively and Reynolds of civil extortion, defamation and invasion of privacy.
The lawsuit, which also named Lively’s publicist, Leslie Sloane, and her firm Vision PR Inc., comes shortly after Baldoni filed a separate defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, which first reported Lively’s allegations of sexual harassment against Baldoni during the film’s production.
“The allegations against The New York Times in this new lawsuit are meritless and recycled from the equally baseless claims in the suit that was filed against The Times in California,” a spokesperson for The New York Times said in a statement.
Baldoni’s production company Wayfarer Studios, his business partner Jamey Heath and two others are also named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Lively and Reynolds. They’re seeking at least $400 million in damages.
Bryan Freedman, an attorney representing Baldoni, told CBS News in a statement the lawsuit details alleged evidence that Lively disseminated “grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and doctored information to the media.”
“It is clear based on our own all out willingness to provide all complete text messages, emails, video footage and other documentary evidence that was shared between the parties in real time, that this is a battle she will not win and will certainly regret,” Freedman said.
Lively in December came forward with allegations of sexual harassment against Baldoni, who also directed and co-financed the film adaption of the 2016 Colleen Hoover novel that explores domestic violence and emotional abuse.
Lively’s complaint against Baldoni, Heath and Wayfarer Studios, originally reported by The New York Times, included accusations that, after a meeting in which she and Reynolds addressed alleged “repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behavior” by Baldoni and a producer on the movie, he and the studio “embarked on a ‘multi-tiered plan’ to damage her reputation following the meeting.”
According to The New York Times, Lively’s lawsuit also included texts allegedly sent by Baldoni’s publicist, Jennifer Abel, to crisis PR specialist Melissa Nathan, both of whom are named as plaintiffs in Baldoni’s lawsuit, which say the actor “wants to feel like she can be buried,” and, “We can’t write we will destroy her.”
In Baldoni’s countersuit, he claimed that his former publicist, Stephanie Jones, was “filled with impotent rage” at him and Abel, who left Jones’ company Jonesworks to form her own firm and work for Baldoni.
In turn, Baldoni’s lawsuit alleges, Jones colluded with Lively, Reynolds and Sloane to seize Abel’s phone and “mine it for messages that, stripped of context, could be used to concoct a false narrative” to make it appear that Baldoni was behind negative press coverage and public reactions to Lively.
The new lawsuit says the plaintiffs did not want to file the suit, but that Lively “has unequivocally left them with no choice, not only to set the record straight in response to Lively’s accusations, but also to put the spotlight on the parts of Hollywood that they have dedicated their careers to being the antithesis of.”
An email seeking comment from Sloane, whose PR company represents both Lively and Reynolds, was not immediately answered.
The two actors are also both represented by agency WME, which dropped Baldoni as a client after Lively filed a legal complaint that was a precursor to her lawsuit and the Times published its story on the fight surrounding the film.
The surprise hit film has made major waves in Hollywood and led to discussions of the treatment of female actors both on sets and in media.
Source : Cbs News
