Blake Lively‘s lawyers have once again come out and responded to Justin Baldoni‘s legal team, saying that the group and Baldoni are engaging in “blame the victim” tactics in his lawsuit.
What did Blake Lively’s lawyers say?
Following an interview with NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo featuring Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman in which he blamed Lively for being the one trying to smear Baldoni, Lively’s lawyers and publicists issued a statement condemning the director.
“While we go through the legal process, we urge everyone to remember that sexual harassment and retaliation are illegal in every workplace and in every industry,” Lively’s DC and L.A. legal teams said (via Deadline). “A classic tactic to distract from allegations of this type of misconduct is to “blame the victim” by suggesting that they invited the conduct, brought it on themselves, misunderstood the intentions, or even lied. Another classic tactic is to reverse the victim and offender and suggest that the offender is actually the victim.”
The response comes after Freedman told Cuomo that their legal team would be bringing “receipts” with them in the lawsuit.
“We’re going to take what the young kids call receipts, and we’re going to take those text messages and we’re going to put them out for the public to see,” said Freedman in his interview with Chris Cuomo. “And we’re doing it as we speak, and we have been doing it, and what you’re starting to see is you’re starting to see a complete turnaround in this story, and you’re starting to see a turnaround, because people are questioning, is this truthful or not?”
Baldoni’s lawsuit was filed just ahead of the new year and alleges that Lively’s public relations team began pushing an “unverified and self-serving narrative” against Baldoni while using “cherry-picked and altered communications stripped of necessary context” to paint him in a bad light. The lawsuit sees Baldoni seeking at least $250 million while claiming fraud and breach of contract as well as libel.
“In this vicious smear campaign fully orchestrated by Blake Lively and her team, the New York Times cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful ‘untouchable’ Hollywood elites, disregarding journalistic practices and ethics once befitting of the revered publication by using doctored and manipulated texts and intentionally omitting texts which dispute their chosen PR narrative,” Bryan Freedman, a lawyer for Baldoni and his public relations team, said in a statement.
Lively’s complaint alleges that Baldoni created a hostile work environment
The lawsuit stems from a formal complaint that Blake Lively made against Baldoni last month. In it, she states that things got so bad during the filming of It Ends With Us that an all-hands-on-deck meeting was called in response to her claims of a hostile work environment. During the meeting, Lively asked that Baldoni stop showing her nude videos or images of women, that he stop mentioning his pornography addiction to her, that Baldoni stop discussing sexual experiences in front of her, and that he also stop mentioning Lively’s weight.
The complaint also claims that an agreement was made between production company Wayfarer Studios and the cast, in which the promotion of the movie would focus “more on [Lively’s character’s] strength and resilience as opposed to describing the film as a story about domestic violence.” However, Lively claims that Baldoni would renege on that and instead spoke in interviews about the film’s serious story.
Lively also claimed that Baldoni and his PR manager, Melissa Nathan, discussed ways in which to start a social media campaign to harm her reputation. The filing by Lively includes 22 pages of texts between Baldoni’s publicist and Nathan, in which they discuss wanting to have Lively “buried.”
