Justin Baldoni has issued a stinging response to Blake Lively after she filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him.
The director is being sued by Lively over allegations about his behavior on the set of their movie It Ends With Us.
The film’s release was mired in controversy after fans noticed tensions between the two leads, which Lively appears to have partially explained in the lawsuit.
She accused Baldoni of making sexual comments about the cast and crew, showing her explicit videos and images of women and discussing his previous alleged porn addiction.
However, Baldoni has now hit back and claims that Lively has only filed the lawsuit to try to repair her reputation in the wake of negative press she received following the film’s release.
Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman branded the legal action ‘false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt’.
He insisted Lively is attempting to ‘fix her negative reputation’ after rumors emerged of diva-like behavior during filming.
This included ‘threatening to not show up to set [and] threatening to not promote the film, ultimately leading to its demise during release,’ according to Freedman.
Meanwhile, Lively has accused Baldoni of fostering a toxic workplace environment, which allegedly became so tense that she demanded crisis talks attended by her husband Ryan Reynolds among other people, TMZ reported.
The lawsuit states that Baldoni made inappropriate inquiries about Lively’s weight, comments about her dead father and sexual remarks about the cast and crew which she insisted must come to an end.
Lively also requested: ‘No more adding of sex scenes, oral sex or on-camera climaxing by BL [Blake Lively] outside the scope of the script BL approved when signing onto the project’, per the filings.
The demands were allegedly accepted by the studio, but the movie’s release was still hampered by a dispute between its stars about how it should be marketed, according to the lawsuit.
Eagle-eyed fans soon spotted the frosty relationship between Baldoni and Lively on the red carpet and reports began to emerge about the rift.
Lively claims that Baldoni’s team then engaged in a ‘social manipulation’ campaign to tarnish her reputation.
The lawsuit includes text messages from the director’s publicist to the studio which allegedly said Baldoni ‘wants to feel like [Lively] can be buried’, and ‘we can’t write we will destroy her’.
It Ends With Us became one of the most talked about movies of the year following its release in August, but for all the wrong reasons.
Insiders revealed the concerning truth about the on-set tensions, telling DailyMail.com that Blake and Justin clashed over his ‘dismissive’ attitude to her ‘input’ while they were filming scenes that involved abuse.
The insider claimed that Justin focused only on ‘what he believed was the abusive male viewpoint’ and had a very ‘chauvinistic’ approach to the topic.
But as rumors of the feud persisted, social media reaction began to turn against Blake, who has been criticized for her responses in interviews promoting the movie.
She was blasted as ‘tone deaf’ and ‘shallow’ after she hosted an interview with her It Ends With Us costars and failed to discuss the serious message behind the movie.
A difference in opinion on how the movie should be marketed only contributed to the problems between its leads, with Lively favoring an upbeat approach while Baldoni was reportedly more concerned with communicating the film’s themes of domestic violence.
Also around the time of the movie’s press run, some of Lively’s old interviews resurfaced which garnered backlash for her ‘rude’ demeanor towards interviewers.
Among them was an awkward encounter with Kjersti Flaa during which a visibly pregnant Lively appeared to take offense at Flaa referencing her baby bump.
Another saw Lively accused of ‘mean girl’ behavior during an interview with Café Society costar Parker Posey during promotion for the movie.
