Blake Lively accuses It Ends with Us director Justin Baldoni of harassment, smear campaign
The actress says her co-star waged a campaign to destroy her reputation after she spoke up about his ‘disturbing behaviour’ on the film set
Blake Lively has accused her It Ends with Us director and co-star Justin Baldoni of sexual harassment on the set of the movie and a subsequent effort to “destroy” her reputation in a legal complaint.
The complaint obtained by Associated Press, which The New York Times reported was filed Friday with the California Civil Rights Department, precedes a lawsuit. It names Baldoni, the studio behind the romantic drama It Ends with Us and Baldoni’s publicists among the defendants.
In the complaint, Lively accuses Baldoni and the studio of embarking on a “multi-tiered plan” to damage her reputation following a meeting in which she and her husband Ryan Reynolds addressed “repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behaviour” by Baldoni and a producer on the film.
The plan, the complaint said, included a proposal to plant theories on online message boards, engineer a social media campaign and place news stories critical of Lively.
Baldoni enlisted publicists and crisis managers in a “sophisticated, coordinated, and well-financed retaliation plan” meant to “bury” and “destroy” Lively if she went public with her on-set concerns, the complaint alleges.
“To safeguard against the risk of Ms Lively ever revealing the truth about Mr Baldoni, the BaldoniWayfarer team created, planted, amplified, and boosted content designed to eviscerate Ms Lively’s credibility,” the complaint states.
