{"id":115496,"date":"2025-05-19T22:47:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T22:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/115496\/"},"modified":"2025-05-19T22:47:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T22:47:10","slug":"blake-lively-mocks-justin-baldonis-delayed-hr-probe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/115496\/","title":{"rendered":"Blake Lively Mocks Justin Baldoni\u2019s Delayed HR Probe"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDays after a federal judge quickly shot down<\/a> a Taylor Swift<\/a> circus of sorts that seemed poised to take took over the multiple lawsuits battle<\/a> between Blake Lively<\/a> and Justin Baldoni<\/a>, the Another Simple Favor<\/a> actress is calling out her It Ends With Us co-star for using an investigation on her sexual harassment claims to gum up the legal works.<\/p>\n

\n\tLively lawyer Esra Hudson sent a letter to Judge Lewis J. Liman Monday seeking \u201cdocuments and witness recordings concerning Wayfarer\u2019s purported \u2018neutral\u2019 workplace investigation into Ms. Lively\u2019s sexual harassment and retaliation claims<\/a> (the \u2018Investigation\u2019).\u201d Telling the federal judge something he likely already knows, the Manett attorney added: \u201cWayfarer is withholding such documents and recordings, claiming (at least for now) attorney-client privilege and work product.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tInsisting the \u201cso-called \u2018Investigation\u2019 is a disingenuous charade,\u201d Hudson explained that \u201cthe Investigation Materials are highly relevant, are necessary for Ms. Lively and the Court to ensure that witness engagement has been proper, and have been put at issue by Wayfarer. They must be produced.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWith reference to the now tossed out Swift bullying accusations of May 14<\/a>, Lively\u2019s team are also seeking sanctions against Baldoni\u2019s Wayfarer Studios<\/a>, his execs and PR teams for an amended complaint that supposedly has \u201cno reasonable basis in law or fact and clearly were brought for an improper purpose.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement released Monday mere minutes after the probe-mocking letter hit the federal court docket, a spokesperson for Lively took a further kick at Baldoni and Wayfarer\u2019s credibility when it comes to looking clear-eyed into their own alleged actions.<\/p>\n

\n

Does anyone believe that Wayfarer is genuinely investigating a film set workplace that no longer exists? Since Wayfarer is now suddenly interested in conducting a workplace \u201cinvestigation,\u201d here\u2019s a reminder of some of the things Ms. Lively raised years ago during the filming of the movie, all of which are alleged in her amended complaint:<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0The boss, Mr. Baldoni, described his pornography addiction to his employee, Ms. Lively.<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0The boss, Mr. Baldoni, described his sex life in detail to his employee, Ms. Lively, including instances where he had sex without asking for consent or ignored someone saying no.<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0The boss, Mr. Baldoni, made degrading and sexual comments to his employee, Ms. Lively, including descriptions of his genitalia and remarks that she looked \u201csexy\u201d and \u201chot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0The boss, Mr. Baldoni, asked his employee, Ms. Lively, about her sex life and her orgasms with her partner.<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0The boss, Mr. Heath, showed his employee, Ms. Lively, a video of his naked wife in labor\u2014without first asking for her consent.<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0The boss, Mr. Baldoni\u2014head of the studio, director of the film, and co-star\u2014improvised intimate physical contact with his employee and co-star, Ms. Lively, without warning or consent. This included sucking and biting her lip, kissing her forehead, rubbing his face and mouth against her neck, putting his thumb to her mouth and flicking her lower lip, and caressing her.<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0The boss, Mr. Baldoni, cast his best friend to place his face between the legs of his employee, Ms. Lively, for an intimate birth scene.<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0The boss, Mr. Heath, refused to turn around when asked to, while his employee, Ms. Lively, was having body makeup removed\u2014and instead stared at her while she was topless.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n\tWhat was going on during the production of the domestic violence themed IEWU and the alleged astroturfing campaign that followed last year has seen Lively claiming she was smeared to shut her up about Baldoni\u2019s misbehavior on set and beyond.<\/p>\n

\n\tEven as Baldoni\u2019s publicists state they never had to do any smearing or anything else against the actress because the Internet unprompted hated Lively, the actress has said there were threats against her, husband Ryan Reynolds<\/a> and their four children, and her hair product launch was financially disrupted, So,\u00a0on December 20, Lively filed a sexual harassment and retaliation complaint with California\u2019s Civil Rights Department against Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios, execs, and PR chiefs Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel with California\u2019s Civil Rights Department<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Justin<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t(L-R) Justin Baldoni & Blake Lively in It Ends With Us<\/a> (Sony)<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSony<\/p>\n

\n\tWithin just over a week, the lawsuits started flying \u2014 including evidence retention letters to Deadpool & Wolverine distributors Disney and $400 million defamation and extortion claims from Baldoni against Lively, Reynolds, the couple\u2019s PR chief Leslie Sloane and the New York Times. As everyone has now filed for dismissal and the case has slightly stepped back from the headlines due to Sean \u201cDiddy<\/a>\u201d Combs\u2019 ongoing sex-trafficking trial<\/a>, this case is set to start its own trial on March 9, 2026.<\/p>\n

\n\tNone of this needed to happen, and if Baldoni\u2019s company had done its job, almost none of it would have happened. \u00a0\u201cIf her complaints were promptly investigated, as the law requires, she may also have been spared the retaliatory smear campaign by Wayfarer and its Co-Defendants,\u201d the four-page letter Hudson send to Judge Liman today declares. \u201cInstead, Wayfarer waited years, until late January 2025, to initiate this Investigation. By that time, Wayfarer had already forcefully publicly denied Ms. Lively\u2019s allegations and sued her and several others for $400 million for making the very same allegations that are now the subject of this \u201cneutral\u201d investigation (for a workplace that no longer exists, the Film set).1 What\u2019s more, by January, its counsel had repeatedly called Ms. Lively a liar in widely-circulated media interviews.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHudson\u2019s letter for Lively goes on to say: \u201cUnder the guise of the Investigation\u2019s \u201cneutrality,\u201d Wayfarer is conducting one-sided interviews of unsuspecting third parties\u2014potentially tainting the ongoing litigation while reserving for itself the option of whether it will release its findings or bury them behind a cloak of attorney-client privilege. Meanwhile, the Investigation has dragged on for nearly five months, conveniently providing a pretextual basis for Wayfarer to refuse to produce otherwise patently discoverable information.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tReps for Baldoni and his Wayfarer inner circle did not respond to request for comment from Deadline on today\u2019s filing and claims.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn terms of the now sought sanctions, Lively\u2019s Manett and legal team say in that filing<\/a>: \u201cAs to an improper purpose, that the FAC (First Amended Complaint) was filed principally as a vehicle to seed harassing media narratives against Ms. Lively is obvious. The examples are legion \u2013 from its legally meaningless 178-page \u2018Exhibit A,\u2019 to Counsel\u2019s ghoulish taunt that Ms. Lively should testify about her degrading experience of sexual harassment at Madison Square Garden before\u00a020,000 spectators and streamed for the world, to using the Court\u2019s docket to level baseless allegations of extortion and spoliation of evidence against Ms. Lively and her counsel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, with no one interested in any mediation or settlement talks here , expect a lot more of this scorched docket approach in the months to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Days after a federal judge quickly shot down a Taylor Swift circus of sorts that seemed poised to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3940],"tags":[52050,14497,4080,16337,77,52051,16279,52052,52053,2312,1674,46290,8733,16,15,52054],"class_list":{"0":"post-115496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-another-simple-favor","9":"tag-blake-lively","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-diddy","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-it-ends-with-us","14":"tag-justin-baldoni","15":"tag-lively-baldoni","16":"tag-melissa-nathan","17":"tag-ryan-reynolds","18":"tag-sean-diddy-combs","19":"tag-sean-combs","20":"tag-taylor-swift","21":"tag-uk","22":"tag-united-kingdom","23":"tag-wayfarer-studios"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114536935781132147","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}