Not only have Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s lawyers taken their claims about what they said happened on the set of “It Ends With Us” to legal courts, they are also hashing things out in the court of public opinion.
Shortly after Baldoni and his production company’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, did a primetime interview Monday with Chris Cuomo on NewsNation about his lawsuit against The New York Times, Lively’s lawyers put out a statement to People that criticized the “classic tactic” Baldoni’s legal team has used to “distract” from Lively’s allegations of on-set sexual harassment and retaliation.
“Ms. Lively’s federal litigation before the Southern District of New York involves serious claims of sexual harassment and retaliation, backed by concrete facts. This is not a ‘feud’ arising from ‘creative differences’ or a ‘he said/she said’ situation,” Lively’s legal team said in their statement, obtained by USA TODAY on Tuesday.
“As alleged in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and as we will prove in litigation, Wayfarer (Studios) and its associates engaged in unlawful, retaliatory astroturfing against Ms. Lively for simply trying to protect herself and others on a film set. And their response to the lawsuit has been to launch more attacks against Ms. Lively since her filing.”
Among Lively’s allegations, detailed in a complaint submitted to the California Civil Rights Department last month and a lawsuit filed in New York federal court on New Year’s Eve, were that she’d experienced “invasive, unwelcome, unprofessional, and sexually inappropriate behavior” from Baldoni and film producer Jamey Heath, who is also the CEO of Wayfarer Studios. The “Gossip Girl” alum also claimed Baldoni and his team carried out a “social manipulation” campaign to “create and sustain a negative news cycle and social media algorithm around Ms. Lively.”
Lively’s lawyers’ statement continued: “While we go through the legal process, we urge everyone to remember that sexual harassment and retaliation are illegal in every workplace and in every industry. A classic tactic to distract from allegations of this type of misconduct is to ‘blame the victim’ by suggesting that they invited the conduct, brought it on themselves, misunderstood the intentions, or even lied. Another classic tactic is to reverse the victim and offender, and suggest that the offender is actually the victim.
“These concepts normalize and trivialize allegations of serious misconduct,” the statement stated. “Most importantly, media statements are not a defense to Ms. Lively’s legal claims. We will continue to prosecute her claims in federal court, where the rule of law determines who prevails, not hyperbole and threats.”
Justin Baldoni’s lawyer promises to show ‘receipts’ with full text conversations
Appearing on NewsNation’s “Cuomo” Monday night, Freedman doubled down on his clients’ claim in their Dec. 31 lawsuit against The Times that the newspaper’s reporters used “‘cherry-picked’ and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead.”
“What we’re going to do is like no one’s ever done in any kind of case. We’re going to take what the young kids call receipts, and we’re going to take those text messages, and we’re going to put them out for the public to see, and we’re doing it as we speak,” Freedman said. “What you’re starting to see is you’re starting to see a complete turnaround in this story … because people are questioning, is this truthful or not?”
He noted that a text exchange screenshot in Baldoni’s lawsuit showed Lively allegedly telling her co-star, “I’m just pumping in my trailer if you wanna work out our lines.” Freedman also said he’d responded to The Times’ request for comment ahead of publication and told reporters the text conversations lacked context but claimed he was not asked for more information about how they were “cherry-picked.”
Freedman implied this was evidence that poked a hole in Lively’s lawsuit’s allegation that Baldoni Heath “invaded Ms. Lively’s privacy by entering her makeup trailer uninvited while she was undressed, including when she was breastfeeding her infant child.”
“It’s right there. It’s in a text message. They reviewed thousand pages,” Freedman told Cuomo. “Why didn’t (The New York Times) find that one? I could go on and on and on. There’s more and more and more receipts.”
The Times article, titled “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine,” published on Dec. 21 – around the same time Lively’s legal complaint was filed in California – and included alleged records of text conversations from Baldoni’s camp, which were detailed in the complaint.
In addition, Cuomo shared a disclaimer interview that Freedman is his lawyer as well as “a trusted friend and mentor to me.”
Freedman represents Wayfarer, Baldoni and Heath, as well as Wayfarer cofounder Steve Sarowitz, crisis PR specialist Melissa Nathan, public relations firm The Agency Group PR (also known as TAG PR) and publicist Jennifer Abel, who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit against The Times.
A spokesperson for The New York Times previously defended its reporting in a statement to TMZ, which read, in part: “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.”
‘It Ends With Us’ producer says he and Justin Baldoni are the ones being harassed
Sarowitz, who has a producer credit in “It Ends With Us,” broke his silence on the legal drama with an emailed statement to Forbes, which published in a Tuesday article. He said Wayfarer Studios and the other defendants named in Lively’s suit are the victims in this scenario.
“The actual harassment and smear campaign both occurred and continues to occur against us,” he told Forbes, calling Lively’s accusations “vicious lies about my business partners.”
Sarowitz’s lawyer said he had minimal involvement with the film “besides providing its funding, only visited the set twice and was not involved in the PR for the film,” Forbes says.
Lively’s lawsuit claimed Sarowitz had flown in to be on set while Lively filmed a birthing scene in an environment that she described as “chaotic, crowded, and utterly lacking in standard industry protections for filming nude scenes.” However, his attorney denied Sarowitz was on set at that time.
