Blake Lively amended her complaint against her “It Ends With Us” co-star/director Justin Baldoni late Tuesday night, detailing similar alleged experiences from two of her female castmates as well as adding a defamation claim.
In the 141-page filing obtained by TheWrap, Lively says multiple other women on set voiced their concerns to Sony and eventually Wayfarer and are willing to testify at trial. That trial is currently set to begin in March 2026.
“Ms. Lively was not alone in complaining about Mr. Baldoni and raised her
concerns contemporaneously as they arose in 2023, not in connection with some imagined power play for control of the film in 2024,” per the court documents. “The experiences of Ms. Lively and others were documented at the time they occurred starting in May of 2023. Importantly, and contrary to the entire narrative Defendants have invented, Mr. Baldoni acknowledged the complaints in writing at the time.”
“There is a woman or two that I in some way made uncomfortable by saying something or doing something that was chauvinistic or sexist. There is one million percent probability that that exists,” Baldoni is quoted as saying in the filing.
“Ms. Lively has filed an amended complaint that provides significant additional evidence and corroboration of her original claims. That evidence includes previously undisclosed communications involving Ms. Lively, representatives of Sony and Wayfarer, and numerous other witnesses,” Lively’s lawyers Esra Hudson and Mike Gottlieb told TheWrap. “The complaint includes significant contemporaneous evidence that Ms. Lively was not alone in raising allegations of on-set misconduct more than a year before the Film was edited; as well as evidence detailing the threats, harassment, and intimidation of not just Ms. Lively, but numerous innocent bystanders that have followed defendants’ retaliatory campaign.”
“The amended complaint has also added a new claim for defamation based on the repeated false statements the defendants have made about Ms. Lively since she filed her original complaint, and adds Jed Wallace and his company as defendants,” they continued. “Over the next several weeks, we will move to dismiss the utterly meritless lawsuits brought against Ms. Lively and Mr. Reynolds, and we will move full speed ahead with discovery that we expect will reveal shocking details about the depth to which the Defendants have sunk in their unending efforts to ‘bury,’ ‘ruin’ and ‘destroy’ Ms. Lively and her family.”
The update comes after Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman said he was “surprised” Lively and Ryan Reynolds mentioned the legal battle on “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend.
“Our clients have been transparent in providing receipts, real time documents and video showing a completely different story than what has been manipulated and cherry picked to the media. Our clients have taken this matter and these issues very seriously notwithstanding the jokes made publicly by the plaintiff and her husband,” Freedman told TheWrap on Wednesday. “Her underwhelming amended complaint is filled with unsubstantial hearsay of unnamed persons who are clearly no longer willing to come forward or publicly support her claims. Since documents do not lie and people do, the upcoming depositions of those who initially supported Ms. Lively’s false claims and those who are witnesses to her own behavior will be enlightening. What is truly uncomfortable here is Ms. Lively’s lack of actual evidence.”
“The amended complaint details the corroboration that backs up Blake’s original sexual harassment and retaliation concerns, including that (1) Justin Baldoni and Jamey Heath made other women uncomfortable on set; and (2) other women confided in Blake about their discomfort and fear of coming forward, and their concern about the current public vitriol,” a spokesperson for Lively added. “The new filing also details that a Sony representative spoke to Baldoni about the concerns, and that Baldoni responded, including by reaching out to one of the other women who complained to reassure her that he heard her and promised to make adjustments. The complaint alleges that Mr. Baldoni didn’t follow through on that promise, but did make the adjustment to hire a crisis management team, digital manipulation experts, litigators, and used those helpers to plan and execute the smear campaign described in her original lawsuit. In doing so, Blake has alleged, Baldoni hoped that if she or any other woman made their grievances public, nobody would believe them.”
“As alleged in Blake’s amended complaint, Mr. Baldoni’s social combat plan has resulted in the viral spread of hateful, threatening, and derogatory harassment and cyber bullying directed towards Ms. Lively, her family, other cast members, and witnesses,” they continued. “Online hate and vitriol have appeared on social media accounts of Ms. Lively, Mr. Reynolds, their numerous businesses, many members of the cast of the Film, and third parties associated with it. Witnesses have been threatened not just with lawsuits, but physical violence, including threats against witnesses’ families. This culture of fear, intimidation, harassment, and threats is the predictable result of an incessant digital campaign to turn social media sentiment as dark and negative as is humanly possible.”
“The Wayfarer defendants don’t seem to care about how many people they ‘bury’ or ‘destroy’ – it’s all apparently in service of protecting Wayfarer’s image. It is because of the continued harassment and targeting of innocent bystanders that Ms Lively’s Amended Complaint does not refer to certain victim-witnesses by name, nor does it quote directly from their texts or include screen shots,” the spokesperson further noted. “Importantly, however, these victim-witnesses have given Ms. Lively permission to share their communications in the Amended Complaint as they are laid out, and they will testify and produce documents in the discovery process.”
Baldoni is currently suing Lively, Reynolds, their publicist and The New York Times for $400 million over what he called “falsified stories” (he dropped his separate $250 million defamation lawsuit against the NYT, and instead amended the above counterclaim to include the paper). Lively first accused Baldoni of sexual harassment in December.
TheWrap has reached out to Baldoni’s team for further comment.
