Justin Baldoni's lawyer responds to Blake Lively's allegations against the actor
The lawyer of Justin Baldoni, the director and co-star of Blake Lively in the 2024 drama It Ends With Us, said his client experienced threats by "two extremely powerful people with unlimited resources."
Bryan Freedman made the statement amid Lively's sexual harassment complaint against Baldoni, whom she also accused of running a public smear campaign against her.
Freedman said TAG PR, the crisis management firm Baldoni had hired, was simply doing its job.
"TAG PR operated as any other crisis management firm would when hired by a client experiencing threats by two extremely powerful people with unlimited resources," he said in a statement shared by PEOPLE Magazine.
He didn't specify who those people are.
Freedman said the public was in control of their perception of Lively.
"The standard scenario planning TAG PR drafted proved unnecessary," he said, "as audiences found Lively’s own actions, interviews and marketing during the promotional tour distasteful, and responded organically to that which the media themselves picked up on."
He also criticized the New York Times, which published a report titled 'We Can Bury Anyone': Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine. The report used excerpts from alleged text messages and emails that Lively obtained through a subpoena and detailed TAG PR's work for Baldoni, including allegedly planting negative stories in the media.
"It’s ironic that the New York Times, through their effort to 'uncover' an insidious PR effort, played directly into the hands of Lively’s own dubious PR tactics by publishing leaked personal text exchanges that lack critical context—the very same tactics she’s accusing the firm of implementing," Freedman said.
In her sexual harassment complaint, Lively accused Baldoni and Jamey Heath, chief executive officer of Wayfarer Studios, of telling to her their past sexual relationships and "previous porn addiction."
Heath also allegedly showed Lively a video of his wife naked and giving birth.
Baldoni and Heath likewise supposedly entered Lively's makeup trailer without permission, "including when she was breastfeeding her infant child."
Lively also recalled Baldoni claiming he could communicate with the dead, including her father, Ernie Lively. She found it "off-putting and violative."
Freedman called the accusations "categorically false." He also said that a crisis manager was hired ahead of the film's marketing campaign "due to the multiple demands and threats made by Ms. Lively during production."
Baldoni, meanwhile, claimed that Lively threatened him not to show up on set and promote the film.
His legal team also alleged that Lively's camp had "planted negative and completely fabricated and false stories with media."
As the film premiered, rumors of a rift between Lively and Baldoni made the rounds on social media. They did not do any promotion for the movie together.
It Ends with Us, based on the 2016 bestselling novel of the same name by Colleen Hoover, follows the story of Lily (Lively), who just moved and is ready to start her life after college. She then meets Ryle (Baldoni) who she falls for. Suddenly, her first love, Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), reenters her life, leaving Lily to choose between the two.
