Justin Baldoni is suing the New York Times after reports that he and his PR team were behind a smear campaign against his It Ends With Us co-star Blake Lively.
In the 87-page lawsuit, filed Tuesday, Dec. 31, and reported by People, Baldoni and a group of nine other plaintiffs, including his production company Wayfarer Studios, business partners and his team of public relations, are suing the New York Times, seeking $250 million in damages. They accuse the media of defamation and fraud.
After actress Blake Lively filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Baldoni, The Times published the article "'We Can Bury Anyone': Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine" on Saturday, December 21.
The plaintiffs, including Baldoni and "It Ends With Us" producers Jamey Heath, Steve Sarowitz, along with Jed Wallace, publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel, accuse The Times of using "carefully selected and altered communications , taken out of the necessary context and deliberately elaborated to deceive” in the article.
In response, the New York Times defended the article as "carefully and responsibly reported."
“The main thesis of the article, summed up in a defamatory headline designed to immediately mislead the reader, is that the plaintiffs orchestrated a vendetta public relations campaign against Lively because of her speech on sexual harassment—a premise that is categorically untrue. and easy to prove,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit then lists several examples that refute the claims that were taken out of context.
For example, the Times article wrote that "[Baldoni] entered [Lively's] makeup room several times, uninvited, while she was naked, including while she was nursing her child."
However, Baldoni's lawsuit points to alleged text messages from Lively in which she writes, "I'm pumping in my trailer if we're going to work." Baldoni replies, “Okay. I'm eating with the team and I'm going there,” which the lawsuit claims shows Baldoni didn't walk in uninvited.
The lawsuit also contains text messages between Baldoni's PR team expressing concern over reports that they were "making up a story." The plaintiffs claim that these exchanges refute the idea that they have mounted a smear campaign against the actress. The lawsuit says Baldoni "repeatedly expressed his desire to avoid harm to Lively and to protect the film, but also acknowledged a legitimate need for public relations protection in light of Lively's false and damaging claims."
"In this vicious smear campaign, completely orchestrated by Blake Lively and her team, the New York Times bowed to the whims and whims of two powerful Hollywood 'untouchable' elites, ignoring journalistic practices and ethics that once suited them a respected publication, using manipulated and altered texts and deliberately excluding texts that contradict the chosen PR narrative,” said the lawyer Baldoni, Bryan Freedman, in a statement to "People".
The statement continued:
"In doing so, they predicted the outcome of their story and aided and abetted their destructive PR campaign to revive Lively's self-damaged image and counter the organic tide of criticism among to the online public.”
In a statement to People, a New York Times representative said they plan to "vigorously defend" Baldoni's lawsuit.
"The role of an independent news organization is to follow the facts where they lead," the Times representative said. "Our story was reported with care and responsibility. It was based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including text messages and emails that we quote in detail in the article. So far, Wayfarer Studios, Mr. Baldoni, the other subjects of the article and their representatives have not pointed out a single error. We published their full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well.”
Lively's 80-page lawsuit contained allegations that Baldoni sexually harassed her and waged a public vendetta against her.
The actress claimed she suffered fear, trauma and extreme anxiety as a result of Baldoni's alleged behavior, including showing her explicit images and videos, asking her for details about her sex life and trying to add intimate scenes to the film that she hadn't agreed to it at first.
The actress also claimed that Baldoni, along with his publicist Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan's crisis firm TAG PR, were trying to manipulate social media and work with the press to "destroy" her reputation.
On Tuesday, December 31, Lively's lawyers filed a lawsuit against Wayfarer Studios, Baldoni and other parties in the Southern District of New York.
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