Why is Blake Lively making claims of a smear campaign against her? 

Hollywood star Blake Lively has filed a legal complaint against her It Ends With Us director and co-star Justin Baldoni, accusing him of “repeated sexual harassment” on set and of an intensive smear campaign against her after the movie’s release.

Lively filed the complaint, which precedes a lawsuit, on Friday with the California Civil Rights Department, according to reports by The Associated Press news agency. Baldoni, his publicists and senior executives of Wayfarer, Baldoni’s studio behind the 2024 movie, have all been named as defendants in the complaint.

“I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted,” Lively said in a statement to journalists.

Baldoni, who is known for speaking up about “toxic masculinity” and for supporting women, has not personally responded to the claims. His legal team, however, has called them “completely false”.

Here’s what we know about the dispute:

The August 2024 drama is based on author Colleen Hoover’s bestselling 2016 novel of the same name. Set in Boston, Massachusetts, the film follows the tale of florist Lily Bloom, played by Lively. Lily was raised by an abusive father who often hit her mother and ends up falling for and marrying neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid, played by Baldoni.

When her first love, Atlas, played by Brandon Sklenar, re-enters her life, Lily begins to see Ryle’s abusive side. She eventually finds the courage to leave the marriage, strengthened by the need to protect her baby girl and promising that the cycle of violence would end with her.

Lively co-produced the film while Baldoni directed it. The movie was met with mixed reviews as some critics accused the makers of romanticising domestic violence. Still, it was a box office hit, raking in $351m worldwide while costing $25m to make. Other big Hollywood names in the movie include Jenny Slate and comedian Hasan Minhaj.

What happened on the film set?

During the film’s shoot from April 2023 to early 2024, Lively made complaints that Baldoni and Wayfarer CEO Jamey Heath were violating physical boundaries and were directing sexual, inappropriate comments at her, according to the legal complaint, which was obtained by The New York Times.

According to the complaint, Lively expressed concerns about Baldoni before shooting began and said she objected to sex scenes he wanted to add and that she felt were unnecessary.

Later on, she said, Baldoni spoke to her about his sex life, pressured her about her religious beliefs and called her fitness trainer regarding her post-pregnancy weight behind her back. The actress gave birth to her fourth child in February 2023.

In November 2023, Lively approached Wayfarer, demanding safeguards be implemented on the film set.

During a meeting with Baldoni, Heath and other producers, she complained that Baldoni had improvised unwanted kissing on set and discussed his sex life, revealing details of encounters when he may not have received consent.

Heath, Lively alleged, showed her a video of his naked wife and watched the star in her trailer while she undressed. Both men, she added, entered her trailer unannounced while she was undressed, including while she was breastfeeding.

Wayfarer agreed that both men would not be allowed into Lively’s trailer and they would no longer show or talk to Lively about nude videos or images of women or sexual experiences, genitalia or pornography. Baldoni was barred from improvising sex scenes, asking about Lively’s weight, pressing her on her religious beliefs or mentioning her late father. The studio also brought on an intimacy coordinator to monitor Baldoni and Lively’s scenes.

According to The New York Times, Lively later told people whom she worked with that the men’s behaviour had changed.

Why does Lively say she was subject to a smear campaign?

However, Lively also alleged in Friday’s legal complaint that Baldoni and Wayfarer targeted her after the film’s release in a “sophisticated and well-financed” plan to damage her reputation in retaliation for speaking up on set. Wayfarer co-founder Steve Sarowitz was also named in the complaint.

The actress backed up her complaint with thousands of pages of text messages and emails between Baldoni and his team that she obtained through a subpoena, according to The New York Times report.

Lively said in the complaint that Baldoni had hired publicists to plant theories about her online and place news stories criticising her. Baldoni’s team “created, planted, amplified, and boosted content designed to eviscerate Ms Lively’s credibility”, the complaint read. “They engaged in the same techniques to bolster Mr Baldoni’s credibility and suppress any negative content about him.”

According to the text messages included with the complaint, Wayfarer and Baldoni hired Melissa Nathan, a public relations crisis manager with high-profile clients, including actor Johnny Depp and the rapper Drake.

In their initial communication, Baldoni told Nathan he wanted a stronger PR plan than the one she had presented. “He wants to feel like she can be buried,” Jennifer Abel, Baldoni’s publicist, later texted Nathan, according to the records in the legal complaint.

Later, the PR team agreed to work on an “untraceable” social media strategy that would work to “change narrative” around Lively, painting her as a bully on set and portraying Baldoni as her victim. The team also worked to bury stories that hinted at Baldoni’s alleged inappropriate behaviour on set, according to the text documents.

Was Lively’s reputation damaged in any way?

Lively did experience negative comments online after the movie’s release although it is unclear how much of that was engineered or boosted by external forces. A marketing firm Lively hired produced a report in August that concluded she was likely the subject of a “multichannel online attack”.

Critics accused her of being “tone-deaf” because in several appearances, she wore floral colours in line with the style of her character in the film. Many also accused her of failing to promote advocacy against domestic violence in the media campaign for the movie.

Social media users began reposting instances of Lively being rude or ungracious in the past. In one instance, Norwegian entertainment reporter Kjerssti Flaa reuploaded a 2016 interview she conducted with Lively on YouTube. In the clip, Lively had snapped at the reporter for commenting on the actor’s baby bump. Flaa has since said her actions were not part of an orchestrated campaign.

Baldoni has not responded personally to the allegations. Bryan Freedman, an attorney representing him, Wayfarer and its top executives, has pushed back against Lively’s claims, saying they are “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious”.

Freedman said Lively had threatened not to appear on set or promote the film if her requests were not attended to. Wayfarer, he added, had hired a crisis manager to “proactively” address what he described as “multiple demands and threats”.

Lively’s complaint alleges that Baldoni played a key role in the PR campaign against her, encouraging his team and flagging sample social media posts for it to use.

At times, however, the texts reviewed by The New York Times showed he also voiced concerns about articles critical of Lively. “How can we say somehow that we are not doing any of this – it looks like we are trying to take her down,” he said in one text.

Baldoni was missing from several appearances during the film’s media campaign and was never photographed with Lively.

On Monday, global nonprofit Vital Voices, which focuses on empowering women, rescinded a December 9 award it had presented Baldoni for his solidarity with women. Baldoni’s podcast co-host Liz Plank also announced on Tuesday she is leaving his Man Enough show.

What are other stars saying?

After the film’s release, internet sleuths noticed very quickly that the It Ends With Us author, Colleen Hoover, was not following Baldoni on Instagram. Furthermore, in a statement posted on the social media site on Saturday, Hoover described Lively as “honest, kind, supportive, and patient”. She stopped short of commenting directly about the allegations against Baldoni.

Co-star Sklenar defended Lively in an Instagram post, saying it was “disheartening to see the amount of negativity being projected” on the women in the movie, adding that the negative coverage was distracting from the film’s message.

America Ferrera, Amber Tamblyn and Alexis Bledel who co-started with Lively in the 2005 film The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants have, meanwhile, also backed her in a joint statement issued on Instagram on Sunday.

“Throughout the filming of ‘It Ends with Us’, we saw her summon the courage to ask for a safe workplace for herself and colleagues on set, and we are appalled to read the evidence of a premeditated and vindictive effort that ensued to discredit her voice,” the statement read.