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| Justin Baldoni, Blake Lively |
In the latest twist in the “It Ends With Us” legal drama, director and actor Justin Baldoni has filed a lawsuit against the New York Times accusing the news outlet of publishing a “false and defamatory article” about his co-star Blake Lively’s allegations against him.
The complaint, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleges that the New York Times relied on “Lively’s unverified and self-serving narrative” and disregarded “an abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims” in its Dec. 21 article on the lawsuit Lively filed.
“Given the breadth of the article and the coordinated drop, it is readily apparent that The Times had been quietly working in concert with Lively’s team for weeks or months,” the suit states.
Lively has accused Baldoni of engaging in sexual harassment on the set of the Sony Pictures movie and mounting a smear campaign against her in the media.
A spokesperson for the New York Times said in a statement shared with the L.A. Times that the company stands by its journalism and intends to vigorously defend against the lawsuit in court.
On Dec. 20, Lively filed a legal complaint against Baldoni accusing him, as well as a producer on the film, of inappropriate behavior including sexual remarks and physical touching without consent. Lively says she was pressured into performing more nudity than agreed upon. She also accused him of enlisting a crisis PR team to wage a retaliatory smear campaign against her.
The New York Times’ article, headlined “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine,” relied heavily on text messages between Baldoni and his PR team that were used as evidence in Lively’s complaint.
The new lawsuit filed by Baldoni accuses the New York Times of cherry-picking texts, stripping them of context and deliberately splicing them to mislead readers.
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