Hollywood can’t get sufficient of the ever escalating battle of accusations, media bites and court docket filings in Blake Lively‘s sexual harassment and retaliation claims over what went down with Justin Baldoni on the set of It Ends With Us and main as much as the Sony distributed movie’s premiere final summer season.
Now, with simply a few days till the very first listening to within the multi-pronged matter earlier than an precise decide, Baldoni, Disaster PR boss Melissa Nathan and legal professional Bryan Freedman have made good on their lengthy boasted risk to place every little thing up on-line.
Kinda.
Regardless of guarantees of full transparency, the much-vaulted web site merely incorporates the primary amended grievance Baldoni’s staff filed Friday in the January 16 $400 million defamation and extortion suit in opposition to Energetic and Ryan Reynolds, and a textual content message wealthy timeline of occasions within the IEWU saga.
To say it’s underwhelming and blatantly one-sided is an understatement of the apparent.
Working from January 1, 2019 with Baldoni’s preliminary emails to IEWU creator Colleen Hoover to a January 29, 2025 “deeper evaluation” of metadata on when precisely the New York Occasions began engaged on their December 21 ‘We Can Bury Anybody’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine’ article on Baldoni, Nathan and publicist Jennifer Abel’s alleged efforts to taint Energetic. On the high of the timeline doc it says: The next timeline is meant to be learn together with Consolidated Plaintiffs’ First Amended Grievance and is expressly included therein by reference; this doc supplies a summarized account of the sequence of key occasions.
OK, however moreover the metadata claims and a few gushing texts earlier than IEWU began filming that seem like between Reynolds and Baldoni, (“I’m excited so that you can work collectively. I’m excited for Blake to crack open her artistic piggy financial institution with somebody as dynamic as you … I occur to adore you, Justin”) it is a traditional case of don’t consider the hype – – as there’s not rather a lot there right here on the oddly titled thelawsuitinfo.com locale.
Having mentioned that, on a web site that reeks of 1995 in its on-line sophistication, each paperwork are downloadable.
By way of sentiment, the brand new web site, the timeline, and the amended grievance stick to the counter I-didn’t-smear-you-you-are-smearing-me messaging Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios, Nathan, and Abel have been offering since Energetic filed her sexual harassment and “astroturfing” retaliation grievance with California’s Civil Rights Division on December 20 and the detailed NYT story of a day later. In any other case, what the location incorporates is exactly what Freedman submitted to the federal court docket on January 31.
Representatives for Energetic and Reynolds, who sued Baldoni and gang on New Year’s Eve, and the New York Occasions, who Baldoni sued for $250 million on the finish of 2024, didn’t reply to request for touch upon this long-anticipated transfer by Freedman and the opposite Wayfarer social gathering attorneys. If both spokespeople for the Gossip Lady alum and Deadpool star and the Grey Girl get again to us, this put up will likely be up to date.
Making the media rounds on Megyn Kelly and Chris Cuomo and with TMZ the previous few weeks, plus an IMPACT x Nightline: Blake vs Justin docu that debuted on January 30 (full disclosure: I’m within the ABC Information docu too), the media ahead Freedman did have one thing to say this weekend as he prepares for court docket on February 3. “The choice to amend our lawsuit was a logical subsequent step as a result of overwhelming quantity of recent proof that has come to mild,” the tough and tumble lawyer mentioned of the most recent strikes within the now consolidated circumstances of Baldoni suing Energetic, Reynolds and their publicist Leslie Sloane and Energetic suing Baldoni, his PR staff, Wayfarer CEO and financier Steve Sarowitz.
“This recent proof corroborates what we knew all alongside, that on account of purely egotistical causes Ms. Energetic and her total staff colluded for months to destroy reputations by way of a fancy internet of lies, false accusations and the manipulation of illicitly obtained communications,” Freedman provides. “The continuing public curiosity on this case on-line has mockingly make clear the simple information pertaining to The New York Occasions and the way closely Ms. Energetic and her representatives weren’t solely deeply concerned within the tried take down and smear marketing campaign of Mr. Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and their groups however that they themselves initiated it”
In fact, among the many matters which can be on the agenda for Monday’s listening to in entrance of Decide Lewis J. Liman (sure Doug Liman’s older brother) are makes an attempt by Energetic and Reynold’s deep pocketed authorized staff to each discipline Freeman from extra “extrajudicial statements” on the opposite facet within the media and to cease him from taking the actress’ deposition within the case. Nearly, evidently, the Ladypool facet additionally need Baldoni’s $400 million swimsuit tossed out.
Whereas the latter is unlikely subsequent week, the twin problems with Freedman, who will likely be within the courtroom on February 3, often is the first gadgets Decide Liman offers with.
Welcome to the present that appears to by no means finish.
