Actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni have reached a settlement in their contentious, highly publicized legal battle over their 2024 film “It Ends With Us.”
Attorneys for both stars said in a joint statement Monday that they hope the settlement “brings closure and allows all involved to move forward constructively and in peace, including a respectful environment.”
“The end product — the movie “It Ends With Us” — is a source of pride to all of us who worked to bring it to life,” Bryan Freedman and Ellyn Garofalo, who represented Baldoni, and Michael Gottlieb and Esra Hudson, who represented Lively, said in the statement. “Raising awareness, and making a meaningful impact in the lives of domestic violence survivors — and all survivors — is a goal that we stand behind.”
Lively and Baldoni went head-to-head in lawsuits filed after the movie’s release. Lively, one of the film’s producers, accused Baldoni, who directed, of sexual harassment, while Baldoni accused Lively of defamation and extortion.
A judge tossed out Baldoni’s lawsuit, and later tossed most of Lively’s claims as well, but her accusations of breach of contract and retaliation were headed for trial this spring before Monday’s settlement.
Lively went public with her claim of sexual harassment just a few months after “It Ends With Us” was released. According to her complaint, Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and Baldoni met to discuss issues Lively had previously brought up with production, including Baldoni making “sexual comments” to her and other female cast or crew members, asking about Lively’s weight and telling Lively about the “pornography addiction” he allegedly had. Everyone in the meeting agreed that Baldoni would stop that behavior, stop adding sex scenes to the script and stop showing nude images of women to Lively, the complaint said. The complaint also accused Baldoni of participating in a “social manipulation” campaign to “destroy” Lively’s reputation.
While promoting “It Ends With Us,” Lively faced backlash for how she marketed the movie. Lively often told the press and audiences to “grab your friends, wear your florals, and head out to see” the film, which centers on domestic violence.
About a month after Lively filed her lawsuit, Baldoni countersued Lively for defamation, civil extortion and invasion of privacy, alleging that Lively and her husband, actor Ryan Reynolds, tried to extort and defame him with sexual harassment accusations. Judge Lewis J. Liman dismissed the countersuit a few months later, as well as Baldoni’s libel suit against The New York Times over its article “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine,” which details allegations that Baldoni waged a campaign to ruin Lively’s reputation.
The legal battle created buzzworthy headlines, with celebrities like Taylor Swift, Ben Affleck and others mentioned in court documents. Texts between Lively and Swift were released as part of the lawsuits, offering a peek into their friendship.
“I have no reason to ask, but I donno, I’ve been feeling like I should… is everything ok?” Lively texted Swift on Dec. 4, 2024, according to the court documents. “I felt like a bad friend lately because I was such a sad sack who only talked about my own s―t for months. You were generous to not only be the key person there for me during all of it, but also to let me off the hook for being so in it.”
Swift responded, “I think I’m just exhausted in every avenue of my life and in recent months had been feeling a little bit of a shift in the way you talk to me. Yes, there has been a lot of Justin stuff but I’ve been through things like this before and I know how all consuming it is.”