Lively and Baldoni in It Ends With Us.
Photo: Sony Pictures Releasing/Courtesy Everett Collection
Law&Crime Network, the YouTube network that airs “live court video, high-profile criminal trials, crazy crime, celebrity justice, and smart legal analysis,” took questions from the chat room during the federal court proceeding between Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively’s litigation in anticipation of their trial next year. Among the questions that host Jesse Weber answered live on-air were, “Could Blake go to jail for lying?” “Are the parties (a.k.a. Lively, Ryan Reynolds, and Baldoni) in the courtroom for this hearing?” and “Will Taylor Swift be a part of this trial?”
Though a few questions popped up here and there about the legal particulars of this case — why Baldoni (via Wayfarer Studios) is suing Lively for extortion, specifically, along with defamation — most of the curiosity about the case stemmed from the fact that these are celebrities we see on Instagram and in movies who, instead of unfollowing each other on social media, are publicly litigating what may be a very ugly conflict. The feud between Baldoni and Lively sparked interest this summer not only because their movie in question was popular, but because it seemed to mirror the twisty, turn-y, abusive nature of Colleen Hoover’s oeuvre: secrets, abuse, nastiness. It Ends With Us made $351 million at the box office; do people who spent money to see the movie in theaters really want to see its star go to jail — for lying?
Widespread interest in the Baldoni-Lively case started with Lively’s initial suit, but the drama has since escalated with four more lawsuits being filed between both parties. All will ostensibly be decided by judges or juries, but the court of public opinion has also logged on to decide whose reputation should be damaged; there is nothing for either party to really gain here. Over the weekend, Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman (a notably aggressive entertainment lawyer with past clients that include Bethenny Frankel, the Michael Jackson estate, and Megyn Kelly), put up a website — the aptly titled thelawsuitinfo.com — wherein anyone near and far can read both his amended complaint and 150-plus-page timeline of events working with Lively. (On Wednesday, thelawsuitinfo.info appeared, encouraging readers to “support Blake Lively’s effort to advocate for herself.” Whether this site is directly connected to Lively, however, is unknown.) Baldoni’s website, in tandem with a behind-the-scenes video from It Ends With Us and a leaked voice memo of Baldoni apologizing to Lively for some indiscretion, has swayed a number of very online people into supporting his side of the story. Between Baldoni’s info dump and Lively’s Times-published suit, an overwhelming amount of evidence is now available to the public. This case is no longer about allegations of harassment or objectification or even creative control. Everyone is fighting for their name and the money their name makes them. As criminal-defense lawyer Brian McMonagle put it on the Law&Crime livestream, “I thought the idea of Baldoni’s council to put these texts into this complaint to even the playing field was brilliant. It makes everybody now look bad.”
Though Judge Lewis Liman encouraged both legal teams to stop making out-of-court statements that might sway a potential jury, no gag order was put into place. Which is to say: This might keep getting uglier. In fact, only two days after that initial hearing, Jed Wallace, who runs the PR company Lively accused of launching a “digital army” against her, sued Lively for defamation. These two main parties — who already look bad — may continue to make themselves look bad for the foreseeable future. Lively, and by extension her husband, Ryan Reynolds, are certainly the wealthier of the two parties, but that doesn’t make her immune to reputational damage; it just means they’ll be able to afford to litigate this as long as they want.
“This case is as much for public opinion as it is the New York courtroom. This is gonna be Johnny Depp and Amber Heard part two,” said former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani on the livestream. That Rahmani invoked Depp and Heard’s 2022 libel case is prescient, if only because it’s the closest analog we have to the Baldoni-Lively litigation. Both court cases involved initial claims of sexual harassment, if not outright abuse, that after entering into the court of public opinion spiraled into defamation cases better suited for TikTok than a legal audience. Both Depp and Baldoni argued that allegations like these irreparably harm their reputations, making it difficult for them to continue to do their jobs. Both have been stampeded by a latent collective misogyny working in tandem with an onslaught of information: In Depp’s case, this was apparent on social media, where bots flooded newsfeeds with pro-Depp sentiments.
That Depp won his suit three years ago seems of little import now. Do we see much of either Heard or Depp in Hollywood? Heard’s career has been hit the hardest, but she still pops up every now and then in paparazzi updates. For Depp, he was able to enter the European film world with a movie at Cannes, gain back Disney’s good graces, and continue to dabble in music and art. Still, neither can claim the relevance they might have had a decade ago. A “both sides look bad” approach accomplishes one thing and one thing only: Both sides, well, look bad. The innocent-guilty binary gets thrown out the window, exposing cases like this as needless and traumatic for all involved.
Though it may appear like the court of public opinion is pro-Baldoni, it mostly seems like public opinion is pro-celebrities going to court, whatever the verdict may be. That might be appealing in the abstract — Taylor Swift wearing an ugly outfit on the witness stand — but it’s a waste of time and money. To watch this play out sends no message about accountability or abuses in Hollywood; it does not advocate for much beyond the continued excess of Hollywood wealth. If the Baldoni timeline proves anything, it’s not so much his objective innocence as it is that his collaborators — minus Lively — mostly seemed to like working with him. His group chat with his two editors (labeled “Dream Team”) was friendly and engaged; they were all determined to move through this, to take the proverbial high road. Wayfarer Studios — Baldoni’s production company being sued by Lively — produced Will & Harper and it has several projects in various stages of preproduction. Lively’s got four movies lined up over the next few years. Too bad, then, they’ll be wasting their time in court.
