The legal battle between It Ends With Us co-stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni is getting increasingly tense, with both sides now accusing each other of manipulating the narrative. In the latest twist, Blake Lively has moved to withdraw two of her emotional distress claims against Baldoni, but not without pushing back at how his legal team is framing the situation.
Blake Lively Slams Justin Baldoni
According to a June 2 court filing, Blake Lively asked to drop her claims of intentional infliction and negligent infliction of emotional distress, serious allegations she initially made against Baldoni following alleged misconduct on the film set. This decision appears to come in response to Baldoni’s team requesting access to Lively’s private medical and therapy records in an effort to challenge those claims.
Rather than providing those documents, her legal team chose to drop the charges for now, without prejudice, meaning they reserve the right to reintroduce them later.
However, Baldoni’s lawyers were quick to file a motion that suggested Lively was trying to sidestep accountability while keeping the option to revisit the claims when it suited her. In their filing, Baldoni’s team argued that Lively “can’t have it both ways” avoiding the release of medical documentation while still holding the door open to pursue the same allegations in the future.
Blake Lively’s lawyers, however, have strongly pushed back on that framing. In a new letter to the judge, her attorneys, Esra Hudson and Mike Gottlieb criticized Baldoni’s latest filing as a calculated effort to win over public opinion rather than present a genuine legal argument. They called it a “press stunt,” adding that the decision to drop the claims was simply about narrowing the scope of the case and moving forward more efficiently. The tension between the two stars dates back to December 2024, when Lively accused Baldoni of inappropriate behavior and retaliatory actions on the set of It Ends With Us, the film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel. Baldoni, who also directed the film, has denied the allegations and countersued Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, and their PR team earlier this year, claiming defamation and attempted extortion.
With both lawsuits heading toward trial in March 2026, this is unlikely to be the last legal back-and-forth.
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