Yahoo Lifestyle Justin Baldoni Says Blake Lively’s Publicist Leslie Sloane Made Him Scapegoat For Client’s “Woes” And Shouldn’t Be Permitted To Exit Case
Blake Lively’s longtime publicist Leslie Sloane wants out of her client’s legal battle with Justin Baldoni. However, the It Ends With Us director says no way.
On the same day the federal judge in the Lively-Baldoni melee called the matter a “feud between PR firms,” lawyers for Baldoni submitted paperwork in the court docket drawing a line on the Vision PR boss’ wish to exit the whole thing.
More from Deadline
“As alleged in the Wayfarer Parties’ First Amended Complaint, the Sloane Parties played an active and integral role in a conspiracy to inflict harm on the Wayfarer Parties,” said a March 6-filed memorandum of opposition from Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios, execs and his own PR team of Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel against Vision PR founder Sloane’s motion to have herself and her firm dismissed from the sprawling suit.
In many ways the memo intentionally or not sums up most of now-axed WME client Baldoni and the Wayfarer Parties’ perspective on the entire high-profile brawl over what happened during the making of It Ends With Us and the alleged astroturfing attacks against Lively that followed.
“In a desperate effort to salvage Lively’s reputation and to escape her wrath, the Sloane Parties conspired with Lively and Consolidated Defendants Ryan Reynolds (“Reynolds”) and The New York Times Company (“New York Times”) to make scapegoats of the Wayfarer Parties for Lively’s woes,” they say with vivid language perhaps more suited to a sword and sorcery saga.
“On information and belief, the Sloane Parties worked for months to drop breadcrumbs and hints of sinister allegations to the public while secretly feeding defamatory falsehoods to any reporter who would listen, including Megan Twohey of the New York Times,” the document adds with a swipe at the NYT‘s December 21 article ‘We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.” Centering on Lively’s sexual harassment and smear campaign complaint filed December 20 with California’s Civil Rights Department, the article became the crux of a lawsuit filed against the newspaper by Team Baldoni for $250 million on New Year’s Eve.
“As a direct result of the actions of the Sloane Parties and their co-conspirators, the Wayfarer Parties have been damaged beyond measure: Their reputations are destroyed, their businesses lie in tatters, and their own Film was taken from them,” the filing from the lawyers for Baldoni and gang (which includes billionaire Wayfarer backer Steve Sarowitz) goes on to say. “These are the facts underpinning the Wayfarer Parties’ allegations against the Sloane Parties, and this is what the evidence will prove at trial.”
On January 16, Baldoni, Wayfarer, CEO Jamey Heath, Sarowitz, Nathan and Abel official sued Lively, Reynolds, Sloane and Vision PR for defamation and extortion in a $400 million action. In early February, Team Baldoni filed an amended complaint adding the NYT to the suit. Sloane put a dismissal motion in the federal docket February 20. Unsurprisingly from their POV on being dragged into the case of what happened during the making of IEWU and the aftermath, the NYT on February 28 filed its own motion to be cut loose from the case.
With Lively launching her own sexual harassment and retaliation suit against Baldoni and his inner circle on December 31 and amending it with allegations of other women suffering from her co-star’s misconduct, the whole thing is heading towards a March 29, 2026 trial start. In the motion of late last month, Bois Schiller Flexner lawyers for industry vet and A-lister rep Sloane took aim at what they called Baldoni’s “bizarre and abusive practices.” Their filing adds: “The Amended Complaint does not — and cannot — identify anything Ms. Sloane did that comes anywhere close to the damning communications between Baldoni and his own publicists concerning an explicit campaign to ‘destroy’ and ‘bury’ the woman employee who accused him of sexual harassment.”
Long repped by Sloane, Lively declared that a vicious social media campaign was set up against her by Nathan’s TAG firm and Abel in the lead-up to IEWU’s August 2024 debut to defang possible stories of alleged misconduct by Baldoni and others on the Sony-distributed film. The blast radius of that alleged coordinated attack was to derail Lively’s new Blake Brown Beauty hair product launch — a hit mentioned in the actress’ filings but that has often been downplayed in the frenzy of the past few months.
Despite obvious tensions on IEWU, differing perspectives (to put it politely) and Lively’s edit of the film being the one that was released, Baldoni, his company, crisis PR veteran Nathan and Abel have all denied any such smearing. In fact, even over what Lively’s lawyers say are damning texts between Baldoni’s publicists, Abel herself in a now-deleted posting admitted that while strategies against Lively were considered as a protective move, they never hit the button because “the internet was doing the work for us.”
To that, it was almost funny (almost) when Sigrid McCawley, an attorney representing Sloane and her Vision PR firm, said, “this is a unique case, certainly,” early in the occasionally contentious protective order hearing Thursday in New York.
Judge Lewis J. Liman has not issued a ruling on the protective order and whether he’ll go with a standard such notion or the Attorney’s Eyes Only version Team Blake want. There is also no date on the court calendar for either Sloane’s or the NYT’s motions to leave the case.
Sloane, Baldoni, Reynolds and Lively were all absent from Thursday’s virtual hearing. However, Lively walked the red carpet today in Austin for the premiere of Another Simple Favor at SXSW. Not surprisingly, Lively did not discuss the IEWU matter.
Best of Deadline
Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
