Today in It Ends With Us: Justin Baldoni’s legal team accused Blake Lively of trying to extort Taylor Swift. Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman alleges in a letter filed to court today that Lively’s lawyer Michael Gottleib “demanded that Ms. Swift release a statement of support for Ms. Lively, intimating that, if Ms. Swift refused to do so, private text messages of a personal nature” would be published. Gottleib called the accusation “categorically false,” per The Hollywood Reporter.
Freedman claims that Swift “addressed these inappropriate and apparently extortionate threats” in writing and that he would like to see those messages, citing reportedly little more than an anonymous individual “highly likely to have reliable information.” Gottleib responded, “We unequivocally deny all of these so-called allegations, which are cowardly sourced to supposed anonymous sources, and completely untethered from reality. This is what we have come to expect from the Wayfarer parties’ lawyers, who appear to love nothing more than shooting first, without any evidence, and with no care for the people they are harming in the process.” He ended by saying he would file a motion to hold Baldoni’s attorneys accountable for their “misconduct.”
Last week, Swift was dragged into the legal mess when Baldoni’s team subpoenaed her as a witness. Swift and Lively have had a friendship for years, though the pop star had little involvement with It Ends With Us outside of licensing her song “My Tears Ricochet.” Lively also referred to Swift as one of her “dragons” in texts sent to Baldoni. (Lively is Khaleesi in this scenario.) Baldoni has alleged for a while that Swift has something to do with his lawsuit, alleging in his earliest lawsuit that a “megacelebrity friend” praised Lively’s changes to Baldoni’s script. Lively first accused Baldoni of sexual harassment in December 2024; Baldoni responded with a flurry of lawsuits, accusing The New York Times of libel for printing the allegations and suing Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds for $400 million for defamation.
