Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds want Justin Baldoni’s attorney to stop talking to the media.
On Tuesday, the power couple filed a letter in court and asked a judge to put a gag order in place to prevent Baldoni’s lawyers from engaging in “improper conduct.” Lively and Reynolds accused Baldoni’s legal team, led by Bryan Freedman, of issuing “inflammatory written statements” and leaking “information” to the press, according to E! News.
Lively and Reynolds’s filing comes one day after Freedman released raw footage from It Ends With Us that he claimed refuted the actress’s allegations of sexual harassment. Freedman said a website will be launched that shows all of Lively and Baldoni’s correspondence along with “relevant videos that quash her claims.”
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In a statement late Monday, Lively’s attorneys argued that the footage showed Baldoni engaging in “unwanted touching” and said that the actress appeared visibly uncomfortable. Baldoni’s lawyers said that he has “nothing to hide” and that the clip shows the actors “are clearly behaving well within the scope of the scene and with mutual respect and professionalism.” The scene was first called out in Lively’s complaint against Baldoni.
Many legal experts say that Lively and Baldoni’s dispute should be settled out of court ASAP.
“Some jury or judge is gonna have to call somebody a liar. These accounts — this is not like somebody is misremembering,” defamation attorney Jeff Lewis told Yahoo Entertainment. “These are black-and-white, opposite recollections of what happened. And someone’s lying.”
The video released on Tuesday showed Lively and Baldoni filming a slow-motion montage as their characters, Lily and Ryle, dance without dialogue. However, the two are seen talking as themselves, not in character. At one point, Baldoni leans in to Lively and asks, “Am I getting beard on you today?” Lively laughs and replied, “I’m probably getting spray tan on you.” Baldoni said, “It smells good.”
In Lively’s lawsuit, she cited this as an example of alleged sexual harassment and claimed that Baldoni “leaned forward and slowly dragged his lips from her ear and down her neck as he said, ‘It smells so good’ … When Ms. Lively later objected to this behavior, Mr. Baldoni’s response was, ‘I’m not even attracted to you.'”
Baldoni disputed this allegation in his $400 million lawsuit against Lively and Reynolds. After he was confused by Lively talking as herself, he “continued acting, slow dancing as he believed his character would with his partner, which requires some amount of physical touching,” according to the lawsuit.
“Lively took them out of character again and began to joke about Baldoni’s nose, which he laughed off and joked in turn, even as Lively joked that he should get plastic surgery,” his lawsuit stated. (The nose comments are in Tuesday’s video.)
Hollywood attorney and mediator Angela Reddock-Wright believes that the release of the video was an attempt for Baldoni “to win the battle of public opinion” and less about making a case in the courtroom.
“This is the kind of evidence best left for pretrial discovery. The move forced Lively’s lawyers into a corner where they almost had to respond,” she told Yahoo.
Attorney Camron Dowlatshahi, partner at MSD Lawyers, told Yahoo that it’s “pretty unusual” for a video like this to be released.
“This whole case is a battle of PR, more so than substantive legal issues,” he said. “This litigation is going to continue to play out in the court of public opinion, and so this is one of the steps in that — to release evidence that Baldoni claims favors him.”
Does the video bolster Baldoni or Lively’s case?
Many legal experts agree that, in the eyes of the court, this video doesn’t do much either way.
“I can see how Blake Lively can say she was uncomfortable, but I can also see how that’s not obvious in the video, and it seems like they have a decent chemistry and they’re sort of working together and acting like they’re in love, because that’s what their characters are supposed to do,” Dowlatshahi said. “In the same spirit that this case has been proceeding in, this seems like more back-and-forth, but with no really damning or clear evidence supporting one side over the other.”
Reddock-Wright agreed: “The video itself doesn’t necessarily prove anything and can be interpreted differently depending on whose side you’re on.”
How will the website affect the case?
If no gag order is put in place, and Baldoni’s lawyers put their evidence online for all to see, it likely won’t help or hurt his case in court — just the court of public opinion.
“I think it’s a wash both ways. I don’t think the website does anything to help his case in court. All of the admissible evidence will come out in discovery anyway,” Dowlatshahi said. “This is just another pure PR play.”
Dowlatshahi expects that “this video will be just another one of the examples of evidence that will be released.”
“We first saw it in the text messages that were in the complaints,” he said, adding, “They want everything out in the open. I would also expect depositions or other sorts of witness testimony to come out into the open, and each side will try to leverage the other to ultimately settle — or we could just be on a freight train headed for trial.”
Where do things go from here? Experts urge a settlement.
Over 90% of cases settle out of court, Lewis pointed out.
“Is this gonna settle in the first 15 minutes of the lawsuit or is it going to settle as many cases do, on the courthouse steps right before a jury is sworn in,” he said. “I think they’re gonna have to go a few rounds here in court — in terms of motions to dismiss, procedural motions — before these parties get real in terms of settlement.”
Both sides seem dug in and the lawsuits appear to be less about money and more about restoring Lively and Baldoni’s reputations.
“It’d be crazy to take this case, but I would’ve said the same thing about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard,” Lewis added.
Reddock-Wright also believes that a settlement is the best outcome.
“This entire episode is a case of he said, she said, and both actor and director stand to lose if things continue to escalate. This entire matter needs to be settled instead of further getting out of hand,” she said.
