Justin Baldoni files $250M lawsuit against New York Times over Blake Lively claims

The legal drama surrounding "It Ends With Us" is never-ending: The film's director Justin Baldoni has sued The New York Times for libel after the news organization published his co-star Blake Lively's smear campaign accusations.

In an 87-page complaint filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court and obtained by USA TODAY, Baldoni is suing The New York Times for $250 million. Baldoni and a group of nine other plaintiffs, including publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel and "It Ends With Us" producers Jamey Heath and Steve Sarowitz, allege libel, false light invasion of privacy, promissory fraud and breach of implied-in-fact contract.

Variety was the first to report the news.

The New Year's Eve lawsuit is a response to a Dec. 21 report published by The New York Times under the headline, "'We Can Bury Anyone': Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine." The article detailed Lively's claims − which were also outlined in a legal complaint filed with the California Civil Rights Department − that Baldoni coordinated a PR campaign against her.

In her 62-page complaint, which served as a predecessor to a formal lawsuit, Lively alleged she had been sexually harassed by Baldoni, claiming he instigated unwanted discussion of his genitalia and criticized her weight, including calling her personal trainer four months after the birth of her fourth child.

On Tuesday, Lively also formally filed a lawsuit against Baldoni. The lawsuit, which was filed in New York federal court and obtained by USA TODAY, mirrors Lively's earlier claims that Baldoni — along with his Wayfarer Studios CEO Jamey Heath — engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct in and out of the workplace.

What went wrong? 'It Ends with Us' was supposed to be a BookTok Hollywood success story.

Justin Baldoni's lawyer vows to take down New York Times

Attorney Bryan Freedman, who filed the lawsuit on Baldoni's behalf, told USA TODAY: "In this vicious smear campaign fully orchestrated by Blake Lively and her team, the New York Times cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful 'untouchable' Hollywood elites, disregarding journalistic practices and ethics once befitting of the revered publication by using doctored and manipulated texts and intentionally omitting texts which dispute their chosen PR narrative.

"In doing so, they pre-determined the outcome of their story, and aided and abetted their own devastating PR smear campaign designed to revitalize Lively’s self-induced floundering public image and counter the organic groundswell of criticism amongst the online public. The irony is rich," Baldoni's attorney said.

In her Dec. 21 legal complaint, Lively claimed Baldoni coordinated a PR campaign with a crisis firm, which her lawyers called "'social manipulation' designed to 'destroy' Ms. Lively's reputation" after she took issue with Baldoni's alleged behavior on the set. The filing contained copies of text messages allegedly sent by Baldoni that offered an inside look at the off-screen controversy.

In Tuesday's complaint against The New York Times, Baldoni claims the publication relied on " 'cherry-picked' and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead."

Baldoni's attorney concluded in the Tuesday statement, "Make no mistake however, as we all unite to take down The NY Times by no longer allowing them to deceive the public, we will continue this campaign of authenticity by also suing those individuals who have abused their power to try and destroy the lives of my clients. While their side embraces partial truths, we embrace the full truth − and have all of the communications to back it. The public will decide for themselves as they did when this first began."

Inside Baldoni's lawsuit: Actor says Ryan Reynolds accused him of weight-shaming Blake Lively

NYT says 'our story was meticulously and responsibly reported'

In a statement to TMZ on Tuesday, a spokesperson for The New York Times said, "Our story was meticulously and responsibly reported" and based on a review of "thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and email that we quote accurately and at length in the article."

The spokesperson also added that "to date," Baldoni, his production company Wayfarer Studios and the slew of publicists mentioned in the article "have not pointed to a single error."

"We published their full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well," the spokesperson for The New York Times said. "We plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit."

Lawyers claim NYT relied 'almost entirely' on Blake Lively's 'unverified' narrative

In Baldoni's complaint, his legal team alleges that New York Times reporter Megan Twohey requested the plaintiffs' response to the "imminent 4,000-word bombshell story concerning their alleged orchestration of a smear campaign targeting" Lively.

They were asked to provide a comment on the record and given the chance to "notify the Times of any 'inaccuracies' " in Lively's claims "by noon (EST) the next day, on December 21, 2024 − a mere 14 hours overnight," suggesting they weren't given sufficient time to respond.

Further, Baldoni's legal team alleges that despite the NYT's claim to have "reviewed" his team's evidence "along with other documents," the publication "relied almost entirely on Lively’s unverified and self-serving narrative, lifting it nearly verbatim while disregarding an abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims and exposed her true motives."

"But the Times did not care," the legal complaint adds. "Given the breadth of the Article and the coordinated 'drop,' it is readily apparent that the Times had been quietly working in concert with Lively’s team for weeks or months. The Times participated actively in the legal maneuvering at the heart of Lively’s strategy."

The complaint also claims that Lively choosing not to file a lawsuit against Baldoni at first was "no accident." It was "a choice that spared her from the scrutiny of the discovery process, including answering questions under oath and producing her communications," the complaint claims.

Blake Lively hits back with official lawsuit against Justin Baldoni

Lively's legal team also addressed Baldoni's lawsuit in a statement to USA TODAY.

They noted that "nothing" in Baldoni's lawsuit "changes anything about the claims advanced in Ms. Lively's California Civil Rights Department Complaint."

Lively's formal lawsuit also claimed that "as a direct, foreseeable, and proximate result of this unlawful discriminatory conduct" by Baldoni and others named, the actress has "suffered, and continues to suffer, substantial damages."

The damages listed include but are not limited to "severe emotional distress and pain, humiliation, embarrassment, belittlement, frustration, and mental anguish," and Lively "is entitled to an award of punitive damages, in an amount to be determined at trial."

Justin Baldoni claims Blake Lively's claims are 'false and easily disproven' in NYT lawsuit

In Baldoni's libel suit against the NYT his legal team claims, "The Article's central thesis, encapsulated in a defamatory headline designed to immediately mislead the reader, is that Plaintiffs orchestrated a retaliatory public relations campaign against Lively for speaking out about sexual harassment — a premise that is categorically false and easily disproven."

In the Dec. 21 article and Lively's complaint, she claimed Baldoni invaded her privacy by "entering her makeup trailer uninvited while she was undressed, including when she was breastfeeding her infant child," in reference to her and Reynolds' 1-year-old son Olin.

In Baldoni's complaint, his legal team includes alleged text messages from Lively that say, "I'm just pumping in my trailer if you wanna work out our lines."

To which Baldoni responded, "Copy. Eating with crew and will head that way."

The complaint also included screenshots between Baldoni and his publicists that paint a different picture than that reflected in Lively's.

"How can we say somehow that we are not doing any of this - it looks like we are trying to take her down," reads a message from Baldoni in response to publicist Melissa Nathan. Her response: "It doesn't. They are doing all of this themselves and it's really obvious."

"If the Times truly reviewed the thousands of private communications it claimed to have obtained, its reporters would have seen incontrovertible evidence that it was Lively, not Plaintiffs, who engaged in a calculated smear campaign," Baldoni's complaint reads.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Justin Baldoni sues New York Times over Blake Lively accusations