Justin Baldoni's legal team have accused Blake Lively of inventing "revoltingly false" allegations and of having a "selfish and self-serving" vendetta. Picture: Bang Showbiz
Justin Baldoni's legal team have accused Blake Lively of inventing "revoltingly false" allegations.
The 37-year-old actress filed a lawsuit against her 'It Ends with Us' co-star and director, as well as his publicists and producing partners, on 20 December accusing him of sexual harassment and orchestrating a bid to tarnish her reputation, and last week he and his production company hit back by launching a lawsuit, in which he is seeking $400 million damages for extortion and defamation.
And after Lively’s team branded the lawsuit "another chapter in the abuser playbook", Baldoni's representatives have hit out at her "preposterous" behaviour.
Lawyer Bryan Freedman told “Deadline”: “After my clients filed a comprehensive lawsuit packed with almost 200 pages of undeniable facts and documentary evidence which crushed their false allegations of a smear campaign by providing doctored communications to the ‘New York Times’, Blake and her legal team have just one heinous pivot left, and that is to double down on the revoltingly false sexual allegations against Mr Baldoni ...
“The mere fact that Ms Lively feels that she can publicly destroy Mr Baldoni’s reputation in an attempt to devastate his future career and then deny him or his team their own ability to defend themselves against her is preposterous."
Freedman insisted Baldoni "kindly" addressed Lively's concerns in private despite her "many wongdoings" during the making of the movie as he was determined to "keep the peace".
And the lawyer branded the “Gossip Girl” star "self-serving and selfish".
He continued: "Mr Baldoni never once publicly attempted to call Ms Lively out for her own many wrongdoings during filming, he kindly addressed all her concerns during filming in the correct manner despite the fact that he wholly disagreed, he himself was committed to do things differently and to keep the peace as she specifically admitted to in her own lawsuit.
"We will not only continue to defend our clients against Blake’s power, privilege and all out lies, but we will now fight even harder for the voiceless in the DV community who are unfairly suffering while she continues to push on her own self-serving and selfish vendetta in the media."
Lively’s lawyers had blasted Baldoni's lawsuit in their own statement and insisted it would "fail".
They said: "This latest lawsuit from Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and its associates is another chapter in the abuser playbook.
“This is an age-old story: A woman speaks up with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation and the abuser attempts to turn the tables on the victim.
“This is what experts call DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim Offender.
"Wayfarer has opted to use the resources of its billionaire co-founder to issue media statements, launch meritless lawsuits, and threaten litigation to overwhelm the public’s ability to understand that what they are doing is retaliation against sexual harassment allegations.
"They are trying to shift the narrative to Ms Lively by falsely claiming that she seized creative control and alienated the cast from Mr Baldoni.
“The evidence will show that the cast and others had their own negative experiences with Mr Baldoni and Wayfarer. The evidence will also show that Sony asked Ms Lively to oversee Sony’s cut of the film, which they then selected for distribution and was a resounding success.
"Their response to sexual harassment allegations: she wanted it, it’s her fault. Their justification for why this happened to her: look what she was wearing. In short, while the victim focuses on the abuse, the abuser focuses on the victim.
"The strategy of attacking the woman is desperate, it does not refute the evidence in Ms Lively’s complaint, and it will fail."