The battle between Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively continues as Baldoni takes a major dig at his previous co-star. The director’s latest remark has caused more tension between the two, where Justin Baldoni calls out Blake Lively for playing the victim on the set of It Ends With Us, calling it “the Taylor Swift playbook.”
New documents obtained by Page Six revealed details of the aftermath of the January 3 meeting Baldoni had with Lively over the conditions needed for her to return to the It Ends With Us set. The two were in a tense dispute over Baldoni’s alleged on-set conduct, which later escalated to Lively filing a sexual harassment lawsuit against the actor in 2024.
While the meeting was to help resolve the issue, Baldoni found the meetup to be “traumatizing.” Details in the document found that Baldoni commented about Lively having the “nuclear bomb” and referenced Lively’s best pal, Swift.
“If she doesn’t promote the movie, she can leak that I’m a bad person or that she felt unsafe with me and all the stuff she has on me. Then she’s the victim. It’s the Taylor Swift playbook,” Baldoni said about his co-star. “So she can ask for whatever she wants because she knows I know.”
At the time, Baldoni also stated that Lively, as well as Ryan Reynolds and Swift, were more influential in Hollywood than he was and, therefore, they controlled the movie’s success.
Baldoni also confessed to Michael Gottlieb, who represents Lively and was questioning him during the depositinos, to which Baldoni commented, “I think when you are somebody small in the industry like myself, and you’re dealing with a titan like Ms. Lively and some of the most powerful people in the world, which are her best friends, and you’re in the situation that I was in, I think it’s very reasonable, espeiclaly at this point, to be concerned about what’s possible and what’s not. I – I was spinning at this point.”
The documents also went over Lively’s demands to return to the set, saying that she asked that an “intimacy coordinator must be present at all times when [she] is on set,” as well as that the set be closed with any nudity and sex scenes being filmed.
She also demanded that there would be no improvisation when it came to intimate scenes and that she would not be touched when she was not filming a scene. And no comments could be made about her appearance outside of her character portrayal.
Lively is seeking more than $160 million in damages with the lawsuit she filed. According to the court filing, Lively claims that she suffered severe financial and reputational losses, including damages from past and future acting work, speaking engagements, and other ventures. The trial is set for March 9, 2026.