Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni controversies prior to working on “It Ends With Us” have been called into question now, with the actors engaged in multimillion dollar lawsuits against each other.
Lively filed a sexual harassment suit in December against Justin Baldoni, his Wayfarer studio and former PR reps. The same day Lively filed her suit, Baldoni filed a $250 million suit against the New York Times for a December article about the alleged smear campaign Baldoni attempted to run against his co-star.
Weeks later, Baldoni then named Lively and Reynolds in a separate $400 million defamation lawsuit in which he accused the Hollywood power couple of attempting to hijack “It Ends With Us” and create their own narrative.
Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively and scandals prior to “It Ends With Us” legal battle (Getty Images)
Baldoni, 41, apologized to Lively in a six-minute message seemingly sent after the pair met to discuss a now-infamous rooftop scene from the movie in which he claimed in legal documents that he felt pressured by Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, and her best friend, Taylor Swift, to use Lively’s rewritten scene for the film.
Frenemies
Lively rose to fame in the 2000s thanks in part to “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and her starring role on “Gossip Girl,” where she portrayed Upper East Side “it girl” Serena Van Der Woodsen.
The show, which premiered in 2007 and ran for five years on The CW network, featured an all-star cast of up-and-coming actors, including, Penn Badgley, Chace Crawford, Leighton Meester and Ed Westwick.
Leighton Meester, left, and Blake Lively allegedly didn’t get along on the “Gossip Girl” set. (Marcel Thomas)
On camera, Lively and Meester were sworn frenemies, and off-camera appeared to be no different for the actors, too. Lively and Meester reportedly “avoid each other like the plague” on set, which left their castmates to “choose sides,” according to a New York Magazine piece published in 2008.
Executive producer Joshua Safran admitted that Lively and Meester were business as usual on set without unnecessary pleasantries.
“Blake and Leighton were not friends,” Safran told Vanity Fair during the “Gossip Girl” 10-year anniversary. “They were friendly, but they were not friends like Serena and Blair. Yet the second they’d be on set together, it’s as if they were.”
White wedding
Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds said “I do” on Sept. 9, 2012, in South Carolina at Boone Hall Plantation. The location in Mount Pleasant had nine slave cabins and was referred to as “slave street.”
Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds were married on Sept. 9, 2012. (Dia Dipasupil/FilmMagic)
Nearly eight years after their wedding, the couple shared regret for hosting the nuptials on a plantation.
“We’re ashamed that in the past we’ve allowed ourselves to be uninformed about how deeply rooted systemic racism is,” they wrote on Instagram at the time, accompanied by a $20,000 donation to the NAACP.
“It’s something we’ll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for,” Reynolds told “Fast Company” in 2020. “It’s impossible to reconcile. What we saw at the time was a wedding venue on Pinterest. What we saw after was a place built upon devastating tragedy.”
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Buzzing opportunity
Fans criticized Lively for seemingly using the “It Ends With Us” press tour to market her own personal endeavors.
Blake Lively promoted a floral line and haircare brand during “It Ends With Us.” (Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
While the film includes challenging subjects of domestic violence and emotional abuse, Lively launched her own haircare line, Blake Brown Beauty, on Aug. 4, the week “It Ends With Us” was set to premiere theatrically.
Additionally, another business opportunity was blooming for Lively, and she released her Betty Blooms floral arrangements collection one day before the movie was released in US theaters.
‘Unhealthy’ relationship
Justin Baldoni previously admitted he was introduced to pornography at a young age and formed an “unhealthy relationship” with adult content.
Justin Baldoni admitted to having a difficult relationship with pornography. (Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty Images)
“I was introduced to porn when I was 10 years old. Long before I ever, you know, could have an erection or even knew how I felt about anything,” he told Sarah Grynberg on her “A Life of Greatness” podcast. “We’ve sexualized this thing, so of course it becomes fascinating and interesting, and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, boobs.’ And then, you know, hormones start raging.”
Baldoni admitted he found comfort in porn when he was alone “or when I felt abandoned, or when I felt hurt or something like that, because it was a dopamine rush. I didn’t know that then. At an early age, I trained my brain to deal with pain with the dopamine hit.”
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While alcohol or drugs were never of interest to him, porn was something he could use in an “unhealthy” way.
“And I found myself, over the course of my life, going back to looking at images and videos of naked women when I was feeling necessarily bad about myself,” he said. “And I knew that it was an issue for me when I would tell myself that I don’t want to do that.”
Script woes
Baldoni’s “It Ends With Us” lawyer, Bryan Freedman, previously represented Travis Flores, who accused Baldoni of stealing his movie idea for Baldoni’s directorial debut, “Five Feet Apart,” which starred Cole Sprouse and Haley Lu Richardson.
Justin Baldoni was once sued for allegedly stealing a script idea. (Getty Images)
Flores accused Baldoni of reading his script, which was inspired by his own struggles living with cystic fibrosis and centered around two teens with the genetic disease. Soon after, Flores allegedly discovered that Baldoni was working on a similar story through his Wayfarer production banner.
Baldoni never publicly spoke out about Flores’ accusations. Freedman filed to dismiss the case in 2022, and the case was settled soon after, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The children’s book author died in 2024.
