Blake Lively Fires Back at Justin Baldoni’s $400 Million Lawsuit, Calls It a ‘Desperate Strategy’

The It Ends With Us war rages on. Blake Lively fired back at Justin Baldoni’s $400 million lawsuit and slammed the move as “desperate.”

“The strategy of attacking the woman is desperate, it does not refute the evidence in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and it will fail,” a representative said in a statement to In Touch on Thursday, January 17.

Baldoni’s lawsuit came in response to one Lively, 37, filed against him in December 2024 and accused the Five Feet Apart director, 40, of inappropriate behavior on the set of It Ends With Us.

The Gossip Girl alum alleged that Baldoni’s behavior had led to an all hands staff meeting where specific conditions were laid out for him to follow that included prohibiting him from showing Lively nude photos of women, talking about his genitalia, and “no more adding of sex scenes, oral sex or on camera climaxing by BL outside the scope of the script BL approved when signing onto the project.”

Bryan Freedman, Baldoni’s lawyer, vehemently denied the claims, calling them “false, outrageous and intentionally salacious.”

Baldoni filed his suit against Lively on Thursday, January 16, and accused her, along with her husband, Ryan Reynolds, and publicist Leslie Sloane of a “year-long campaign of intimidation, harassment and civil extortion.”

In Baldoni’s lawsuit, the former Jane the Virgin star claimed that Lively went as far as to try and prevent him from attending the premiere of the film.

“Long story short, but [Blake and I] won’t be in the same room. I was asked to not even attend the premiere,” a screenshot of an alleged conversation between Baldoni and an unnamed editor read.

The court documents claim that “Wayfarer persuaded Lively to ‘permit’ Baldoni and the Wayfarer team, along with their friends and family, to attend — though only under demeaning and humiliating conditions.” Along with being excluded from the celebratory afterparty, the suit alleged that Baldoni was “relegated to a separate theater to view the Film, required to arrive at a different time than the rest of the cast and instructed to leave the red carpet immediately once Lively arrived.”

Once Lively arrived at the red carpet, Baldoni claimed that he and his friends and family were “quickly ushered away” to “a makeshift holding area surrounded by concession stand stock, with only fold-out tables and chairs arranged in a square.” The documents included a photo of Baldoni and several others sitting in a room with a drop ceiling, fluorescent lighting and bags of popcorn. Another image showed Baldoni and his presumed friends and family posing next to crates of water bottles.

Baldoni also included screenshots of alleged conversations between himself and Lively. In one of the messages that allegedly came from Lively, she compared herself to Khaleesi, the ruthless dragon queen from George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones.

“If you ever get around to watching Game of Thrones, you’ll appreciate that I’m Khaleesi, and like her, I happen to have a few dragons. For better or worse, but usually for better. Because my dragons also protect those I fight for. So, really, we all benefit from those gorgeous monsters of mine. You will too, I promise you,” the message read.