Blake Lively’s Lawsuit Outlines How Justin Baldoni Allegedly Tried to Ruin Her Reputation

Blake Lively is claiming that It Ends With Us costar and director Justin Baldoni allegedly conducted a “social manipulation” campaign to damage her reputation.

News broke on Saturday, December 21, that Lively, 37, sued Baldoni, 40, for sexual harassment. Per The New York Times, the lawsuit — which was filed on Friday, December 20 — included “thousands of pages of text messages and emails” that Lively obtained through a subpoena.

In one message allegedly sent on August 2, a publicist working with the studio and Baldoni wrote to a crisis management expert, “He wants to feel like she can be buried.”

The text messages allegedly show that the crisis PR team worked to prevent stories about Baldoni’s behavior and reinforced negative ones about Lively. Per the outlet, Jed Wallace, led a digital strategy that, in part, boosted social media posts that could help their cause.

Wallace sent emails referring to “social manipulation” and “proactive fan posting,” and text messages referenced efforts to “boost” and “amplify” online content that was positive about Baldoni or negative about Lively.

“We are crushing it on Reddit,” Wallace texted.

In additional text messages, Baldoni allegedly encouraged the PR team and pointed out social media posts to use. On August 15, he proposed “flipping the narrative” on a positive story about Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, by “using their own words against them.”

The New York Times reported that Baldoni sometimes sought assurance about the tactics. After noticing an article that was critical of Lively, he wrote, “How can we say somehow that we are not doing any of this — it looks like we are trying to take her down.”

At one point, Baldoni wondered whether they were deploying “bot” accounts on social media, which his team denied doing.

Baldoni and others claimed in the texts that Lively used her own PR team to generate negative press about him, but did not cite evidence. (Lively denied that she or her representatives planted or spread negative information about Baldoni.)

Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, addressed Lively’s “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious” accusations in a statement to Us, claiming that Lively filed the lawsuit to “fix her negative reputation” and “rehash a narrative” about the film’s production.

Freedman further alleged that Lively made “multiple demands and threats” while filming It Ends With Us, including “threatening to not show up to set, threatening to not promote the film, ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met.”

Us reached out to Lively’s rep for comment but did not immediately hear back. In a statement to the New York Times regarding her lawsuit, Lively said, “I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted.”