Blake Lively’s attorneys filed an amended complaint Tuesday against “It Ends With Us” director and actor Justin Baldoni alleging other unnamed witnesses had raised allegations of misconduct on set, support her claims of a retaliation campaign and are willing to testify about it.
The 137-page filing included new assertions of alleged misconduct saying “Ms. Lively was not alone in raising allegations of on-set misconduct more than a year before the film was edited” and evidence of alleged threats, harassment and intimidation of Lively and others in “defendants’ retaliatory campaign,” Lively’s attorneys, Esra Hudson and Mike Gottlieb, said.
Her attorneys said over the next weeks they’ll move to dismiss the lawsuits brought against Lively and her husband.
New allegations
The complaint is filed against Wayfarer Studios, the studio’s co-founders Baldoni and Steve Sarowitz, its CEO Jamey Heath, Baldoni and Wayfarer’s retained crisis communications specialist Melissa Nathan, her company The Agency Group, Wayfarer publicist Jennifer Abel and others.
New items in the amended complaint alleged Baldoni made other women on set feel uncomfortable.
In May 2023, a female cast member who was not Lively reported concerns regarding Baldoni’s “unwelcome behavior” to a Sony employee and one of the film’s producers, the filing said. The Sony employee shared those concerns with Wayfarer and on June 1, 2023, Baldoni allegedly responded to that female cast member in writing “acknowledging that he was aware of her concerns, and that adjustments would be made,” the filing said.
The complaint said the “dangerous climate of threats, harassment and intimidation” fueled by the defendants’ ”retaliation campaign” required Lively to “alter her personal and professional life” and “take steps to protect innocent bystanders.” The complaint doesn’t refer to witnesses by name but said witnesses have given her permission “to share the substance of their communications in the complaint” and they’ll testify and produce responsive documents in the discovery process.
It also included allegations that the social media campaign allegedly orchestrated by Baldoni’s camp got “dangerously extreme” and resulted in Lively, her family, other cast members and fact witnesses receiving “disturbing threats.” In one instance, a person, who the complaint did not name, described as someone known to publicly support Lively received a written death threat. The filing did not specify who the threat came from.
The amended complaint added Jed Wallace as a defendant, a Texas-based contractor who has described himself as a self-employed “PR consultant” who offers “crisis mitigation services.” The filing alleged the Agency Group “engaged” Wallace in early 2024 “to design and implement their ‘social combat’ plan.” The complaint said Wallace specializes in executing “untraceable” campaigns on social media platforms “to shape the public perception of his clients.”
Wallace filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Lively earlier this month in federal court in Texas. In his suit he states he had “nothing to do with” the alleged retaliatory effort against Lively and the allegations have “caused millions of dollars in reputational harm.”
The amended filing also alleged that the Wayfarer investigation into misconduct is a farce. The company launched an investigation into itself last month, hiring an outside investigation counsel.
“A privileged and confidential internal investigation that is financed and controlled by the same Wayfarer executives who have been sued for sexual harassment and retaliation is not an exercise in transparency, but a sham,” the filing said.
A spokesperson for Lively said Wayfarer chose to devise a plan to retaliate and discredit accusers, rather than thoroughly investigate any claims of sexual harassment when they first surfaced.
Justin Baldoni’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the amended complaint.
Freedman, who represents Wayfarer Studios and all its representatives in addition to Baldoni, had previously described Lively’s allegations as “categorically false.”
“These claims are completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media,” he said in a statement.
NBC News also reached out to attorneys for the other defendants in the suit.
The feud
The amended complaint is part of a months-long legal feud between Baldoni and Lively following the filming and release of “It Ends With Us,” a movie adaptation of the popular Colleen Hoover novel.
Lively’s initial complaint was filed with the California Civil Rights Department on Dec. 20 and accused Baldoni of sexual harassment during the filming of “It Ends With Us.” It also alleged that Baldoni retaliated against Lively after she raised issues about his behavior on the set. In addition to those allegations, Lively claims Baldoni hired a crisis publicity firm to engage in a “social manipulation campaign” to smear her while they were promoting the film.
That filing is typically a precursor to a lawsuit. Baldoni has denied those allegations.
On Dec. 31, Baldoni sued in Los Angeles County Superior Court and accused The New York Times of libel for the story it ran on Dec. 21, which laid out Lively’s allegations. The Times has stood by its reporting.
On that same day, Lively sued Baldoni in the Southern District of New York. In that suit, Lively alleges that Baldoni, the film’s production company Wayfarer Studios, and others engaged in “a carefully crafted, coordinated, and resourced retaliatory scheme to silence her, and others, from speaking out.”
An attorney for Baldoni called the accusations a “vicious smear campaign fully orchestrated by Blake Lively and her team.”
Tension between the stars was initially noticed by fans who followed the film’s premiere and pointed out that Baldoni and Lively never appeared to interact on the red carpet and in press tours. When the suits were filed, it caused a rush of renewed interest on social media.
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