Justin Baldoni sued The New York Times for $250 million on Tuesday over its “defamatory” reporting on his alleged smear campaign against Blake Lively.
The “It Ends With Us” director and star is one of 10 plaintiffs on the libel and invasion of privacy suit, which along with publicists Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan accuses the paper of relying on “‘cherry-picked’ and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead” in its bombshell Dec. 21 report, “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.”
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by attorney Bryan J. Freedman and obtained and reviewed by TheWrap, came just shy of two weeks after Lively, Baldoni’s “It Ends With Us” co-star, filed a sexual harassment complaint against the director on Dec. 20, leading to an ongoing media frenzy and swift professional fallout for the accused. Baldoni was quickly dropped by WME, rescinded a prestigious recognition of allyship from a prominent women’s nonprofit, dumped by his podcast co-host and more as Hollywood figures lined up behind Lively against him.
“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, which also accuses the paper of promissory fraud and breach of implied-in-fact contract, says.
But libel claims — especially against a journalistic bastion like the Times — are notoriously hard to win in court. And in the case of Baldoni and the Times’ “We Can Bury Anyone” report, the paper based its reporting on the findings and text messages included within the legal claim filed by Lively.
And according to the Times, Baldoni and his camp have yet to specifically provide “a single error” in its reporting, despite the suit’s claims. In a statement to TheWrap, a New York Times spokesperson said that “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,” the spokesperson continued. “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.”
Tuesday’s lawsuit accuses Times reporters Megan Twohey, Mike McIntire and Julie Tate of misleading their readers to believe, based on Lively’s own complaint, that Baldoni, his publicists, and co-plaintiffs Jamey Heath and Steve Sarowitz, who produced the film, orchestrated a “retaliatory public relations campaign against Lively for speaking out about sexual harassment” — allegations that they claim are “categorically false and easily disproven.”
The suit points to the story’s “defamatory” headline — “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine” — as encapsulating the Times’ intent to mislead.
Whereas Lively’s Dec. 20 claim alleges Baldoni and his crisis PR team helmed a smear campaign against the actress in a preemptive retaliation to her allegations of sexual harassment, Tuesday’s lawsuit argues Lively’s claims were false and themselves part of a “strategic and manipulative” campaign against Baldoni. The suit also claims that Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, came to blows with her co-star and director on set, accusing Baldoni of “fat-shaming” her, and later pressured WME to drop their client.
All was an effort “to assert unilateral control over every aspect of the production,” the suit says — echoing the widespread public assumptions made of Lively around the release of “It Ends With Us” and the beginning of Baldoni’s alleged crisis PR campaign.
“In this vicious smear campaign fully orchestrated by Blake Lively and her team, the New York Times cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful “untouchable” Hollywood elites, disregarding journalistic practices and ethics once befitting of the revered publication by using doctored and manipulated texts and intentionally omitting texts which dispute their chosen PR narrative,” Freedman said in a statement to TheWrap. “In doing so, they pre-determined the outcome of their story, and aided and abetted their own devastating PR smear campaign designed to revitalize Lively’s self-induced floundering public image and counter the organic groundswell of criticism amongst the online public. The irony is rich.
“Make no mistake however, as we all unite to take down The NY Times by no longer allowing them to deceive the public, we will continue this campaign of authenticity by also suing those individuals who have abused their power to try and destroy the lives of my clients. While their side embraces partial truths, we embrace the full truth — and have all of the communications to back it. The public will decide for themselves as they did when this first began.”
Baldoni’s libel lawsuit against the Times is just the latest legal development in this “It Ends With Us” behind-the-scenes saga. On Dec. 24, Baldoni’s former publicist Stephanie Jones of Jonesworks sued the director, his production company Wayfarer Studios and currently publicist team — Abel and Nathan — for breach of contract.
