Amid the fallout of the sexual harassment complaint filed against him by Blake Lively over incidents tied to their time filming It Ends With Us, Justin Baldoni has responded with a lawsuit of his own.
On December 31, the actor, who co-starred in and directed It Ends With Us, filed a $250 million lawsuit against The New York Times for its reporting on what he says are Lively's "false" allegations—and his legal filings for the lawsuit include new allegations against Lively's husband, Ryan Reynolds.
In court documents, Baldoni describes a confrontation with Reynolds in which he says the Deadpool star was "aggressive" while defending Lively.
"Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, had aggressively berated Baldoni during a meeting at their penthouse in New York, accusing him of 'fat shaming' Lively," the lawsuit reads (per E! Online). "Baldoni, in an effort to avoid further confrontation with Lively and Reynolds and rebuild rapport with his co-star, continued to bend to her will."
While Baldoni admits he did ask a trainer "how much Lively weighed," the actor insists that he didn't intend the question as "fat-shaming" and that he had asked because of concern about his own "back issues" ahead of a scene in which his character was going to lift hers.
Baldoni's lawyers said that the trainer "relayed this information to Lively, who then informed Reynolds," which led to the "confrontation, according to People, which also reported that the actor's legal team described the incident as an "inappropriate and humiliating berating of Baldoni — delivered, perhaps intentionally, as other celebrity friends were coming in and out of their penthouse."
Lively described the incident (which she noted occurred four months after she gave birth to her fourth child), differently in her complaint, which stated that she "humiliated to learn" that Baldoni "secretly called her fitness trainer, without her knowledge or permission, and implied that he wanted her to lose weight in two weeks. Mr. Baldoni told the trainer that he had asked because he was concerned about having to pick Ms. Lively up in a scene for the movie, but there was no such scene."
For its part, the New York Times is standing behind its reporting on the piece and plans to "vigorously" defend against Baldoni's lawsuit.
"Our story was meticulously and responsibly reported," a spokesperson for the Times said in a statement to People. "It was based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article."
