Justin Baldoni has escalated his legal battle against Blake Lively, The New York Times, and others by amending his counterclaim, now alleging a coordinated effort to damage his reputation. The lawsuit, which now seeks at least $400 million in damages, accuses Lively and her PR team of collaborating with The New York Times to tarnish his image before she filed her lawsuit against him.
According to the 224-page amended counterclaim, Baldoni contends that Lively and her team strategically fed misleading information to the newspaper, allowing it early access to her civil rights complaint. He further alleges that The Times’ article, published on December 21, was based on misrepresented evidence aimed at framing him as retaliating against Lively for her allegations of sexual harassment on the set of It Ends With Us. Lively later filed a federal lawsuit against Baldoni on December 31.
Baldoni’s lawsuit claims The Times deliberately manipulated communications, stripping them of crucial context to mislead the public. The complaint argues that the publication’s companion video, produced on December 12, suggests the story had been in progress long before the newspaper sought comment from Baldoni’s legal team on December 20—just hours before publishing the report.
The New York Times has strongly denied Baldoni’s claims. Danielle Rhoades Ha, SVP of External Communications at The New York Times Company, dismissed the allegations as inaccurate, attributing the timing confusion to Google software-generated timestamps. She characterized Baldoni’s assertions as reliant on misinformation from amateur internet sleuths.
Further intensifying the conflict, the amended suit introduces new claims against Ryan Reynolds. Baldoni alleges that Reynolds’ portrayal of Nicepool in Deadpool & Wolverine serves as a personal attack. The lawsuit asserts that the character, depicted as a ‘woke’ feminist who meets a violent end at the hands of a character voiced by Lively, was intended as a mocking caricature of Baldoni.
Neither Lively, Reynolds, nor their representatives have responded to these latest accusations. The first federal hearing related to these lawsuits is set for February, while the trial for Lively’s suit against Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios, is scheduled to begin on March 9.
