Justin Baldoni sues ex-publicist for allegedly leaking private texts amid legal battle with Blake Lively
Actor and director Justin Baldoni is suing his former publicist, Stephanie Jones, for allegedly "maliciously" leaking private text messages that ignited a legal dispute with actress Blake Lively.
In a statement to Variety, Baldoni's attorney Bryan Freedman said that Jones, who represented Baldoni and his Wayfarer Studios during the initial rift between the director and Lively, "initiated the catastrophic sequence of events by violating the most basic of privacy rights."
"No stranger to stirring up crisis scenarios for departing clients, Ms. Jones maliciously turned over communications from the phone she wrongfully took from her own partner to her cohort, [Lively's personal publicist] Leslie Sloane, immediately after Jones was terminated for cause by Wayfarer due to her own wrongful behavior," the lawyer said.
According to the lawsuit, Jennifer Abel, one of the complainants and Jones' partner who handled Baldoni, was called to the Jonesworks office in Beverly Hills where there was a "physically imposing security guard, a forensic data extraction technical expert, and an attorney sitting at a conference table awash in documents."
With the guard standing at the door, Abel was supposedly instructed to review and sign documents. The attorney said she was suspected to have retained proprietary information on her personal laptop and that Jones' company "had grounds to sue" if she didn't give them access.
The complaint continues to detail that Jones locked Abel out of her accounts, including iCloud, bank, utilities, and insurance.
"By contrast, Jones now had unrestricted access to everything stored on Abel's phone—her text messages, emails, personal photos," the lawsuit, which alleged violation of California labor laws, read.
Jones is then accused of passing over the materials to Lively's camp.
Ongoing legal battle
The most recent lawsuit, filed in New York federal court on Friday, is the sixth legal action involving the parties connected to It Ends With Us.
It stemmed from her filing a sexual harassment complaint against him and Jamey Heath of Wayfarer Studios, the producer of the 2024 romantic drama. She also accused them of running a smear campaign against her.
In her complaint, Lively accused Baldoni and Heath of telling her about 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."
The New York Times then 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 the work of crisis management firm TAG PR for Baldoni, including allegedly planting negative stories in the media.
Baldoni's camp has called the accusations in the report "categorically false."
Jones also filed a lawsuit against Baldoni and Abel in December 2024 for breach of contract and defamation.
