Justin Baldoni sues the New York Times over a Blake Lively piece
The Justin Baldoni vs. Blake Lively case continues on. On New Year’s Eve, an exclusive report from Variety stated that Baldoni was launching a lawsuit against The New York Times for their piece on Lively.
In the lawsuit, Baldoni shares texts that show that on one occasion, Lively told him she was pumping in her trailer if he wanted to come in to go over lines. Lively’s suit alleges that Baldoni would come in unannounced while she was breastfeeding. These two instances are not the same. Baldoni’s case goes on to refute sections of The New York Times piece against him.
Baldoni and his team claim that the outlet cherry picked stories and moments to benefit their narrative. The outlet pushed back, saying that it fact checked the story and had access to the messages between Baldoni and Lively. Another claim that producer Jamey Heath refuted was that he showed naked pictures of his wife to Lively. Heath claimed it was a video of his wife’s at home water birth and was not sexual in nature. It did not state whether or not Heath asked Lively if she wanted to see the video.
Heath and fellow It Ends With Us producer Steve Sarowitz claim that The New York Times piece “‘cherry-picked’ and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead.”
A representative for the outlet responded to the claims, saying, “The role of an independent news organization is to follow the facts where they lead. Our story was meticulously and responsibly reported. It was based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article. To date, Wayfarer Studios, Mr. Baldoni, the other subjects of the article and their representatives have not pointed to a single error. We published their full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well. We plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”
Justin Baldoni’s claims don’t really seem to change much
In his rebuttal to The New York Times, he shares texts that show one time moments between him and Lively. Not a continued back and forth or an open door policy. So Lively’s claims are not exactly inaccurate given what Baldoni produced. Allegedly, Reynolds yelled at Baldoni for fat-shaming Lively, which doesn’t seem to reflect particularly negatively on Reynolds.
In her claim, Lively stated that Baldoni continually made comments about her weight while filming. Baldoni doesn’t dispute that claim but rather uses another witness to talk about Reynolds yelling at him, claiming it was unprofessional.
Another claim was that there was more to Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel’s text exchange. Baldoni provided texts that showed Nathan joking that she wasn’t responsible for The Daily Mail piece on Lively but still had the two celebrating the attack on Lively by the publication.
Lively filed a federal lawsuit against Baldoni
Shortly after Baldoni’s suit against The New York Times was published, Lively filed a federal lawsuit against Baldoni. In Baldoni’s original lawsuit, his representatives made remarks about Lively saying that she did not file a lawsuit on a federal level against Baldoni.
“Nothing in this lawsuit changes anything about the claims advanced in Ms. Lively’s California Civil Rights Department Complaint, nor her federal complaint, filed earlier today,” Lively’s representatives told Fox News Digital.
“This lawsuit is based on the obviously false premise that Ms. Lively’s administrative complaint against Wayfarer and others was a ruse based on a choice ‘not to file a lawsuit against Baldoni, Wayfarer,’ and that ‘litigation was never her ultimate goal.’ As demonstrated by the federal complaint filed by Ms. Lively earlier today, that frame of reference for the Wayfarer lawsuit is false. While we will not litigate this matter in the press, we do encourage people to read Ms. Lively’s complaint in its entirety. We look forward to addressing each and every one of Wayfarer’s allegations in court.”
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