Blake Lively‘s lawyers issued a new statement to Variety (first published by People magazine) rejecting claims that Lively’s legal battle against her “It Ends With Us” director and co-star Justin Baldoni is due to a “feud” over “creative differences” on the movie. Lively’s legal team said their clients “serious claims of sexual harassment and retaliation” against Baldoni are “backed by concrete facts.”
“This is not a ‘feud’ arising from ‘creative differences’ or a ‘he said/she said’ situation,” Lively lawyers’ statement reads. “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.”
“Sexual harassment and retaliation are illegal in every workplace and in every industry,” the statement continues. “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.”
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Lively filed a complaint at the end of December accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment on set of “It Ends With Us” and of mounting a smear campaign to tarnish her reputation during the film’s release. Baldoni then filed a $250 million lawsuit against The New York Times, the publication that first ran Lively’s complaint in full and reported in depth on Baldoni’s alleged smear campaign against her.
Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, confirmed afterwards in a video interview with NBC News that Baldoni “absolutely” plans to sue Lively herself over her accusations against him.
“We’re working on it now,” Freedman told NBC News about Baldoni’s lawsuit against Lively, adding that Lively’s accusation about Baldoni’s alleged smear campaign is “100%” false. He also said that he’s “more than willing to take every single text message that exists out there, leave them out, put them on a website for the world to see, have them see the truth, and determine the truth for themselves.”
Freedman also appeared on NewsNation’s “Cuomo” to explain why his client is suing The Times, saying the publication’s story “was a complete reckless disregard for the truth” and claiming “there was no investigative journalism done whatsoever.”
In Lively’s lawyers’ latest statement to People, the legal team alluded to Freedman’s interviews by saying “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.”