Blake Lively files official federal lawsuit against Justin Baldoni, looks forward to day in court
Blake Lively officially filed a lawsuit Tuesday against her "It Ends With Us" co-star Justin Baldoni for sexual harassment and retaliation, according to documents obtained by Fox News Digital.
Lively, 37, initially recorded a complaint against Baldoni with the California Civil Rights Department on Dec. 21, and accused Baldoni (who also directed the film) of sexual harassment while working on the drama.
She also claimed that after raising concerns, he, along with a crisis PR team, orchestrated a retaliation campaign aimed at ruining her career.
Lively's federal suit was released Tuesday shortly after Baldoni filed his own $250 million defamation suit against the New York Times, which he claimed published an article "rife with inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and omissions."
"Nothing in this lawsuit changes anything about the claims advanced in Ms. Lively’s California Civil Rights Department Complaint, nor her federal complaint, filed earlier today," Lively's representatives told Fox News Digital.
"This lawsuit is based on the obviously false premise that Ms. Lively’s administrative complaint against Wayfarer and others was a ruse based on a choice ‘not to file a lawsuit against Baldoni, Wayfarer,’ and that ‘litigation was never her ultimate goal.’ As demonstrated by the federal complaint filed by Ms. Lively earlier today, that frame of reference for the Wayfarer lawsuit is false. While we will not litigate this matter in the press, we do encourage people to read Ms. Lively’s complaint in its entirety. We look forward to addressing each and every one of Wayfarer’s allegations in court."
The "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" actress alleged in her federal filing that Baldoni, the Wayfarer Studios film production company and a handful of associates were involved in a "carefully crafted, coordinated, and resourced retaliatory scheme to silence her, and others, from speaking out."
Lively claimed Baldoni, along with a crisis PR company, crafted a "multi-tiered plan" to ruin her reputation after she (along with her husband Ryan Reynolds) addressed "repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behavior" by Baldoni and producer Jamey Heath (who is named in the lawsuit).
She also alleged Baldoni and Heath "discussed their personal sexual experiences and previous porn addiction" on set, according to documents.
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Representatives for Baldoni did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. He previously told the Times that Lively’s initial claims were "completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media."
Baldoni filed a $250 million libel lawsuit against the New York Times after they published a story headlined, "We Can Bury Anyone:" Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine, which reported that private emails and text messages show a "playbook for waging a largely undetectable smear campaign in the digital era" about Lively.
However, Baldoni and other plaintiffs, including Hollywood public relations gurus, assert that the Times article "deliberately omitted portions of text exchanges and other information that contradicted the actress’s version of events." They claim the Times defamed them in the process, leaving out critical context from communications that dispute many of Lively’s claims.
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"The article’s central thesis, encapsulated in a defamatory headline designed to immediately mislead the reader, is that plaintiffs orchestrated a retaliatory public relations campaign against Lively for speaking out about sexual harassment — a premise that is categorically false and easily disproven," the 87-page lawsuit, which was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court by attorney Bryan Freedman, claimed.
Freedman told Variety that the 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."
"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," Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha told Fox News Digital.
"We published their full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well," she continued. "We plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit."
Fox News Digital's Brian Flood contributed to this report.