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The mounting controversy surrounding It Ends With Us encounters a new turn after lead actor and director Justin Baldoni's ex-publicist sued him and his PR team for breach of contract. This came days after his co-star Blake Lively filed a complaint against him on December 20, accusing him of s*xual harassment and spearheading a smear campaign against her on social media to tarnish her reputation.
On December 24, Stephanie Jones and her agency Jonesworks, previously employed by Baldoni, sued him and his publicist, Jennifer Abel, for allegedly breaching their contract and running the alleged smear campaign behind her back.
Abel was a former employee of Jonesworks before she was fired for allegedly stealing documents in August 2024. The lawsuit alleged that Abel violated her employment terms by attempting to poach clients from Joneswork and setting up a competing firm.
According to court documents, Justin Baldoni and his production studio, Wayfarer Studios, feared that news of his alleged harassment would reach the public due to the movie's popularity. Wayfarer Studios is the company behind adapting Colleen Hoover's book It Ends With Us, in tandem with Sony Pictures.
Furthermore, the suit alleged Justin Baldoni tried to suppress this information by plotting with Abel and crisis PR executive Melissa Nathan "to formulate a no-holds-barred strategy to discredit and suppress any potential revelations about Baldoni’s on-set behavior” without Jones' knowledge.
“Behind Jones’s back, they secretly coordinated with Baldoni and Wayfarer to implement an aggressive media smear campaign against Baldoni’s film co-star, and then used the crisis as an opportunity to drive a wedge between Jones and Baldoni, and to publicly pin blame for this smear campaign on Jones — when Jones had no knowledge or involvement in it,” the lawsuit states.
Justin Baldoni co-founded Wayfarer Studios in 2020
According to the company website, Wayfarer Studios was co-founded by Justin Baldoni and Steve Sarowitz in 2020. The company is helmed by its CEO Jamey Heath and president Tera Hanks, with the former being named in the complaint filed by Blake Lively.
"Wayfarer Studios is an independent production studio that actively develops, produces, and fully finances a diverse range of highly original content, including feature films, episodic television, documentaries, unscripted series, and podcasts," reads the company description on the website.
Other Wayfarer Studios productions down the pipeline include Errands & Espionage, Empire Waist, a live-action PAC-MAN film, and A Nice Indian Boy. According to Forbes, the studio is also working with Scarlett Johannson on her directorial debut Eleanor the Great. The studio also produces Justin Baldoni's The Man Enough podcast.
In an August 2024 interview with Forbes, Justin Baldoni explained how he decided to take on the film adaptation of It Ends With Us. The Jane the Virgin star said he was first introduced to Colleen Hoover by his book agent Johanna Castillo in 2019 when he asked for a list of books that could be potentially adapted to a movie under his IP.
One of the books she included in the list was It Ends With Us. The actor and director said the book moved him to tears, inspiring him to reach out to Hoover to discuss a possible film adaptation.
"She [Castillo] introduced me to Colleen - we started communicating by email. I was finishing [my other Wayfarer directed film] Five Feet Apart at the time, while acting on Jane [the Virgin] - so, I had a full plate. Five Feet Apart came out - Colleen went to see it. She said [to me after watching], 'You are the right person to make this movie,'" Justin Baldoni said in the interview.
Exploring Stephanie Jones' complaint against Justin Baldoni
In the lawsuit filed on December 24, Stephanie Jones claimed her former employee Jennifer Abel and Justin Baldoni's crisis PR executive Melissa Nathan "leveraged their teams" to create a narrative on Reddit and TikTok that perpetuated "negative content" about Blake Lively.
She further claimed the two worked to allegedly plant "negative stories" about Jones and her agency on social media to defame them.
“At the same time as Abel and Nathan were working to protect Baldoni from negative press attention, they were actively working their media contacts to plant negative stories about Jones and Jonesworks,” the suit claimed.
The court documents also showed several text messages allegedly obtained from Abel's company phone that indicated that Justin Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios wanted to run a smear campaign against Blake Lively. Abel's alleged text messages were also referenced in Lively's complaint.
Jones' lawsuit sought to "finally put a stop to their continued misconduct and to compensate Jones and Jonesworks for the damage Defendants’ conduct and scheme has inflicted,” with her requesting a jury trial.
Blake Lively's accusations of s*xual harassment and fostering a hostile workplace saw Justin Baldoni dropped by his talent agency WME, which also represents Lively. His accolades, including his Voices of Solidarity award, were rescinded in the wake of the complaint.
Meanwhile, Lively garnered support from her A-lister peers, Sony Pictures and SAG-AFTRA, with many praising her for speaking up about her alleged harassment.
