Of Course Justin Baldoni’s Lawyer Saw Ryan Reynolds’s SNL Cameo
No cultural institution is safe from somehow being implicated in the Blake Lively x Justin Baldoni drama. This week, it’s Saturday Night Live. Next week, we presume, it will be the Metropolitan Opera. Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, made an appearance on SNL50, which aired on February 16, during a sketch helmed by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in which they answered audience members’ questions. In the sketch, Fey asks Reynolds how it’s going. “Great,” Reynolds responds. “Why? What have you heard?” Fey replies, “Good stuff only,” as Reynolds launches into a question about the Coneheads. A source on Baldoni’s legal team told “Page Six,” in response to the sketch, “Justin is taking this lawsuit in all seriousness and isn’t making a public mockery out of it.”
On February 17, Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, responded. “I’m unaware of anybody, frankly, whose wife has been sexually harassed and has made jokes about that type of situation,” Freedman said on the podcast Hot Mics With Billy Bush. “I can’t think of anyone who’s done anything like that. It surprised me.”
The legal drama stems from Baldoni and Lively’s time filming It Ends With Us, which Baldoni directed and both starred in. Lively filed a lawsuit in December 2024 against Baldoni and his crisis-PR team, alleging that Baldoni “improvised physical intimacy that had not been rehearsed,” then hired a crisis-PR team to retaliate against her in the press. Baldoni then filed a separate lawsuit against the New York Times as well as Lively, Reynolds, and their PR team, alleging defamation and civil extortion. The updates on the drama have since been never-ending, and SNL now gets to be a footnote in yet another crucial moment of the past half-century. Congrats to Lorne!
Related