Justin Baldoni Sues Blake Lively & Ryan Reynolds, Streisanding All Of This Into A Mega-Story

Defamation

from the here-we-go dept

I suppose this was probably inevitable, but boy do I wonder if it’s smart. We were just talking about the celebrity drama du jour between Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, and Justin Baldoni. The very short version of this is that Lively and Baldoni starred in a movie together, Lively sued Baldoni and made a series of accusations about gross behavior Baldoni allegedly participated in, including a scheme in which Baldoni and associates were going to try to “ruin” Lively for making those accusations, whereas Baldoni denies all of it and instead accuses Lively and Reynolds of a coordinated scheme to take over the movie they were in and to ruin Baldoni’s career. Mixed in there as well is a lawsuit Baldoni filed against the New York Times for reporting on the accusations and a litigation hold letter Baldoni sent to Marvel and Disney in order to preserve any evidence about the character Nicepool in the latest Deadpool movie, because of the speculation that the character is made in such a way so as to make fun of, or defame as Baldoni will likely claim, Baldoni.

Again, that’s the short version. What you may have noticed is missing in all of that is a countersuit against Lively by Baldoni. We even called this out in our previous post, noting that attacking the coverage but not the accuser was “telling.”

Well, it’s telling no more, as Baldoni has in fact countersued both Lively and Reynolds.

The 179-page complaint — in which Baldoni is seeking $400 million and demanding a jury trial — was filed in the Southern District of New York on behalf of Baldoni, his company Wayfarer Studios, as well as his producing partner, Jamey Heath, his crisis manager, Melissa Nathan, his publicist Jennifer Abel and the It Ends With Us LLC. The defendants are accused of civil extortion, defamation and invasion of privacy.

“Lively stole Wayfarer’s movie, hijacked Wayfarer’s premiere, destroyed Plaintiffs’ personal and professional reputations and livelihood, and aimed to drive Plaintiffs out of business entirely,” the lawsuit states.

The suit of course states a whole lot more than that. The whole thing is below if you want to read it. It’s every bit as catty and gossipy as you’d expect out of this sort of thing, with accusations of doctoring text messages, claims that Reynolds and Lively attempted to coerce Baldoni and the studio to take the blame for the bad press Lively was getting, and so on. Again, for the purposes of our reporting on all of this, the veracity or not of anyone’s claims is not the point.

But it does play a role in our analysis of all of this. On the one hand, if Baldoni’s claims are true and he really is the victim of an organized campaign headed by Lively and Reynolds, well, then a countersuit probably makes all the sense in the world. One of the reasons the initial context of him not suing Lively was supposedly telling is that you typically get people threatening to sue but failing to do so because they are absolutely terrified about the discovery phase of the trial. That’s when all the dirt comes out and eventually gets made public. But if you’re not afraid of discovery because the facts are all on your side, then a countersuit makes sense.

But, man, if that isn’t the case, then we’re going to have to come up with an altered term for the kind of Streisand Effect that this will be. A public trial of this kind, between these levels of celebrities, is going to be like the Depp/Heard fiasco all over again. Everyone is probably going to come out looking real, real shitty. And, again, whatever minor anonymity Baldoni may have had previously is just gone. He and the accusations against him are in the spotlight now. He potentially could have settled all of this out of court and made it go away somewhat quietly. Not any more.

And from the initial responses to the lawsuit, it appears Lively intends for this to indeed be a fight.

Lively’s legal team told CNN in a statement Thursday that Baldoni’s suit “is another chapter in the abuser playbook. This is an age-old story: A woman speaks up with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation and the abuser attempts to turn the tables on the victim.”

“They are trying to shift the narrative to Ms. Lively by falsely claiming that she seized creative control and alienated the cast from Mr. Baldoni. The evidence will show that the cast and others had their own negative experiences with Mr. Baldoni and Wayfarer. The evidence will also show that Sony asked Ms. Lively to oversee Sony’s cut of the film, which they then selected for distribution and was a resounding success,” the statement also said.

So buckle up, because this is likely to be one hell of a ride. In no small part, I contend, because Baldoni’s actions have skyrocketed the press interest in all of this.

Filed Under: blake lively, defamation, extortion, justin baldoni, ryan reynolds, smear campaigns