Blake Lively Co-Star Justin Baldoni Dropped by Agent After Lively Sues for Sexual Harassment

Blake Lively has sued Justin Baldoni, her co-star and director of their film together, It Ends With Us, for sexual harassment, according to reports.

On Saturday, after the suit became public, Baldoni was dropped by his talent agency, WME. Deadline was the first to break the news, and reports that their decision was influenced by Lively’s complaint.

The actress also alleges that Baldoni and his public relations team undertook a preemptive smear campaign to destroy her reputation, fearing that her on-set discontent would be made public.

According to the lawsuit, Baldoni’s conduct was so bad that the cast and crew had an all-hands meeting to address it. Lively’s husband, Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds was also in attendance, according to TMZ.

During the meeting, Lively said she requested that Baldoni refrain from showing her videos of nude women, inquiring about her weight, and mentioning her dead father, as well as discussing his prior pornography addiction, his sexual exploits, and the cast and crew’s genitalia, reported TMZ.

Lively also asked that there not be any sex scenes added to the movie, which is about domestic violence, that were not in the original script.

In the suit, Lively said that the studio acquiesced to her list of requests—but it was not the end of her mistreatment. During the run-up to the film’s release in August, she alleges that she was targeted in smear campaign that caused her “severe emotional distress,” per TMZ.

A Saturday report in The New York Times highlighted messages exchanged by Baldoni and the PR team as they sought to insulate their client and the film from Lively’s potential criticism.

One of the messages, sent by Melissa Nathan—a crisis management expert who has previously worked for Johnny Depp, Drake, and Logan Paul—assured Baldoni, “You know we can bury anyone.”

The PR team’s efforts successfully brought a wave of negative press and online commentary against her, claimed Lively, citing a digital forensic review she had performed by a marketing consultant, reported NYT.

In another of the messages, sent to Jennifer Abel, another PR executive working on the campaign, Nathan celebrated how she kept allegations against Baldoni out of the press.

“We’ve confused people so much mixed messaging It’s actually really funny if you think about it,” she wrote, according to the Times.

In August, shortly after the film released, Nathan sent Abel an article from The Daily Mail headlined, “Is Blake Lively set to be CANCELLED?,” according to the NYT.

“Wow. You really outdid yourself with this piece,” Abel wrote back.

“That’s why you hired me right?” Nathan responded. “I’m the best.”

A lawyer for Baldoni, Bryan Freedman, told the NYT that Lively’s allegations about the smear campaign were “false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt,” adding that the suit was “another desperate attempt to ‘fix’ her negative reputation.”

He did not address Lively’s claims of sexual misconduct against Baldoni.

Baldoni has yet to respond to Lively’s allegations, or to his agency dropping him.