Days after the bombshell New York Times reporting about It Ends With Us star and director Justin Baldoni’s alleged smear campaign to destroy co-star Blake Lively’s reputation, the former has decided to fight back by filing a lawsuit against the newspaper. On Tuesday, the Jane The Virgin star was suing The Times for $250 million in Los Angeles Superior Court for libel and false light invasion of privacy.
The lawsuit alleges that the December 21 article titled ‘‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine” used “cherry-picked and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead.”
“The Times story relied almost entirely on Lively’s unverified and self-serving narrative, lifting it nearly verbatim while disregarding an abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims and exposed her true motives,” the suit said.
The 87-page complaint also counters the article’s claim by asserting that it was Lively who embarked on a “strategic and manipulative” smear campaign of her own and used false “sexual harassment allegations to assert unilateral control over every aspect of the production.” It also alleged that the actress’ husband, Deadpool and Wolverine actor Ryan Reynolds, accused Baldoni of “fat shaming” his wife during one heated meeting in New York and later on in July, pressured Baldoni’s agency, WME, to drop the director, long before Baldoni enlisted crisis PR.
In response, New York Times representative has released a statement:
“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.”
The whole situation began when Lively filed an 80-page civil complaint against Baldoni and his production company Wayfarer Studios on December 20. In it, she accused Baldoni of sexual harassment and fostering a toxic workplace environment during the making of It Ends With Us. In retaliation, according to Lively’s camp, the director launched a coordinated smear campaign against the actress for speaking up.