Why is Justin Baldoni suing New York Times? Actor files $250 million lawsuit over Blake Lively’s allegations story

Justin Baldoni has filed a $250 million libel lawsuit against The New York Times over an article published on December 21, 2024. The Hollywood star's lawsuit comes amid his It Ends With Us co-star Blake Lively accusing him of alleged inappropriate workplace behavior and s*xual harassment.

On December 31, 2024, Justin Baldoni filed an 87-page lawsuit with the Los Angeles Superior Court against The New York Times, accusing the publication of "promissory fraud and breach of implied-in-fact contract." The lawsuit, signed by Baldoni and nine others, claims that the NY Times "coordinated a smear campaign" with Blake Lively to tarnish their reputation.

The lawsuit has been filed over an article titled We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine written by Megan Twohey, Mike McIntire, and Julie Tate, which was published on December 21. The article was based on Baldoni's co-star Blake Lively's allegations filed on December 20 with the California Civil Rights Department against the actor.

Like Lively's lawsuit, the article reportedly accused Baldoni of hiring publicists to hamper Lively's reputation and orchestrating a smear campaign. Baldoni's lawsuit, in the context of the article, claimed that the publication allegedly did not verify Lively's claims and damaged his reputation for the actress's alleged false claims. It said:

"The Times Story 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 other Plaintiffs listed in the lawsuit apart from Justin Baldoni include It Ends With Us's lead producer, Jamey Heath, its production company, Wayfarer Studios, and PR Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel. Nathan's alleged messages were notably included in NYT's story. It is worth noting that Justin Baldoni has not named Blake Lively as a defendant in the lawsuit.

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Justin Baldoni accuses The New York Times of "cherry picking and altering communication" in their December 21 article

Baldoni at the Vital Voices 12th Annual Voices of Solidarity Awards (Image via Getty)

In Justin Baldoni's lawsuit against The New York Times, the actor and nine other Plaintiffs claimed that the publication “‘cherry-picked' and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead.” The complaints pertain to the publication's December 21 article based on Blake Lively's allegations against Baldoni.

Publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel, who have been named as Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, are suing the NYT for alleged libel and false light invasion of privacy. Nathan and Abel's alleged text conversations were included in the NYT's aforementioned article.

Baldoni's lawsuit claimed that the story reportedly excluded certain parts of Nathan and Abel's messages, which appeared to be celebrating a Daily Mail piece criticizing Lively about being "tone-deaf" during the promotions of It Ends With Us. The NYT article quoted Nathan and Abel's messages in a light that reportedly appeared to be taking credit for Lively's portrayal in the Daily Mail piece. However, they allegedly omitted certain parts of the conversation that proved they did not mean it and were being sarcastic, per the lawsuit.

As per Baldoni, the NYT's article allegedly portrayed Lively in a sympathetic light and indicated that she had to endure months of alleged se*ual harassment from the It Ends With Us team. The article also indicated that Lively allegedly faced retaliation through a smear campaign because she voiced her concerns about the same.

According to Justin Baldoni's lawsuit, it was Blake Lively who allegedly orchestrated a “strategic and manipulative” smear campaign against the actor and the other plaintiffs. The documents also accuse her of making false “se*ual harassment allegations to assert unilateral control over every aspect of the production.”

“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,” the lawsuit claimed.

The lawsuit further details an alleged incident where Blake Lively's husband, Ryan Reynolds, rebuked Justin Baldoni aggressively in the couple's Tribeca penthouse in New York. Reynolds allegedly accused Baldoni of "fat shaming" his wife. Justin Baldoni also accused Reynolds of allegedly pressurizing his agency, WME, to stop working with him in July.

Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively at the "It Ends With Us" New York Premiere (Image via Getty)

However, according to Variety, a representative from WME has denied being pressurized by Ryan Reynolds or Blake Lively for dropping Baldoni as a client. The agency notably dropped the director after Lively filed the complaint against him in December. In a statement to Variety, Justin Baldoni's attorney, Bryan Freedman, said:

"The Times cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful ‘untouchable’ Hollywood elites [Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively], 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."

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A spokesperson for The New York Times, Danielle Rhoades, has vehemently denied Justin Baldoni's claims in a statement. Rhoades claimed their "meticulously reported" story was "based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and emails that they quote accurately and at length in the article." Neither of the Plaintiffs have reportedly been able to point at "a single error" in the story, per Rhoades.