"She certainly is keeping true to the company's shady history" — Zack Peter says Blake Lively was not the original owner of Vanzan Inc

Podcaster Zack Peter recently weighed in on the controversy surrounding actress Blake Lively and her alleged ties to the company Vanzan, which has surfaced at the center of the Blake Lively vs. Justin Baldoni lawsuit.

Citing an investigative article published by the Daily Mail on April 23, 2025, Peter shared a video on X on April 24, stating that Lively was not even the original owner of the company.

"But regardless of how she is connected to the company, she certainly is keeping true to the company’s shady history," the podcaster added.

In the video, Peter referenced findings by senior Daily Mail reporter Josh Boswell, who had dug into Vanzan’s background.

"So senior reporter Josh Boswell from Daily Mail did some digging..and he didn’t even need to look inside of any crystal balls to find it. He just used his good old investigative skills. So apparently Vanzan has a shady history, which includes other lawsuits and it all links back to a man named Eric Rothchild,” Peter explained.

According to Boswell’s April 23 report, Vanzan was originally incorporated in Delaware in 2008 and first registered to conduct business in California in 2010. The firm’s California filings from that year listed Eric Rothchild, a San Diego-based businessman, as the company’s agent.

A former associate of Rothchild, who spoke to DailyMail.com on the condition of anonymity, recalled the company’s origin:

"I remember sitting around with Eric Rothchild when we came up with the name. We thought it sounded official and cool and old east coast money or whatever."

However, as per the report, the company’s history soon turned problematic. Vanzan and Rothchild became entangled in multiple legal disputes, including a lawsuit for allegedly breaching an office lease agreement. Court records also show the company was sued by several other parties in San Diego between 2010 and 2011.

By 2013, California state records indicated that Vanzan had become inactive. It wasn’t until 2021 that the company reappeared in public filings, this time listing "Blake Reynolds"—Lively’s married name—as the CEO, secretary, and chief financial officer.

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Zack Peter alleges Blake Lively used Vanzan to obtain confidential text messages

It Blake Lively at the "It With Us" Photocall - Source: Getty

In the video, Zack Peter explained the alleged connection between Blake Lively and Vanzan Inc. Referring to the Daily Mail investigative article from April 23, Peter reiterated that after Vanzan was registered in California in 2021, with Blake Lively listed as CEO, the company’s address traced back to her husband Ryan Reynolds’ business management firm.

According to Peter, this was no coincidence.

"And the only known business dealings that involved this company seemed to have some sort of connection with a Taylor Swift music video that Blake Lively directed," Peter added.

Peter also pointed to a similarly named entity, Vanzan Inc., registered in New York, which shared the same business address as Reynolds’ firm.

"(Its) unclear if these are sort of the same company—just filed in two different states or what the connection between the two companies is exactly. But it ultimately was the company that Blake Lively used to obtain Justin Baldoni’s text messages," he said.

As reported by the Daily Mail on April 18, 2025, Blake Lively used a covert legal strategy to access confidential text messages from It Ends With Us co-star Justin Baldoni. Months before her legal feud with Baldoni became public, Lively filed a secret lawsuit via Vanzan in Manhattan Supreme Court on September 27, 2024.

As per the report, the move allowed her legal team to issue a subpoena for the sensitive messages, and once obtained, the case was dismissed without any further action on December 19, 2024—before Baldoni’s side even knew it existed.

In his video, Peter also speculated that Blake Lively may have used “Vanzan” for her shady lawsuit, probably because she liked the name of the company itself.

"So maybe Blake just thought that she was behind a defunct company and possibly chose this company because of the name being 'Vanzan', which was linked to Vancouver, where Ryan Reynolds is from, and Tarzana, where she was born. So Vancouver–Tarzana: Vanzan," the podcaster explained.

At present, Blake Lively is engaged in a heated legal battle with Justin Baldoni, with the trial scheduled to begin in New York on March 9, 2026.