Justin Baldoni, director and star of Hollywood movie It Ends With Us has filed a lawsuit against The New York Times following a report published about his interactions with his costar Blake Lively, who is suing him for sexual harassment.
Baldoni is asking a judge to award him $250 million in the lawsuit against the publication, which shared alleged texts between Baldoni and Lively, seemingly showing his behavior to be inappropriate and highly suggestive.
In the text exchanges, Lively invites Baldoni to her trailer to hand her an updated script, but the outlet reportedly wrote: “[Baldoni] repeatedly entered her makeup trailer uninvited while she was undressed, including when she was breastfeeding.”
The plaintiffs are suing for libel and false light invasion of privacy and allege that The New York Times “cherry-picked” communications and omitted context in order to mislead readers in its article “We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.”
Text messages between Baldoni and his PR team were also leaked, suggesting they were conspiring to concoct a smear campaign against Lively…but Baldoni and other plaintiffs included in the lawsuit say the messages were taken out of context.
Baldoni claims that Deadpool actor Ryan Reynolds, Lively’s longtime husband, reprimanded Baldoni in a hostile manner during a meeting at their Tribeca penthouse in New York, “accusing him of ‘fat shaming’” Lively.
Text messages have been revealed that allegedly show Justin Baldoni and his legal team fabricating a smear campaign against Blake Lively during the ‘IT ENDS WITH US’ drama.
“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,” the New York Times said in a statement.
“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.”
