Blake Lively has moved to depose a key player whose crisis management firm Street Relations allegedly played a part in the smear campaign initiated by Justin Baldoni.
Lively filed a petition in Texas state court on Jan. 21 seeking a court order for a deposition of Jed Wallace, who was named in the complaint the actress filed with the California Civil Rights Department but not the lawsuit she filed in federal court. The filing is intended to obtain testimony for use in an anticipated complaint or to investigate a potential claim in ongoing litigation.
Lively’s lawsuit against Baldoni accused Wallace of weaponizing a digital army to create and promote content that appeared to be authentic on social media platforms and internet chat forums. Baldoni’s public relations team that allegedly orchestrated the campaign to undermine the actress would then feed pieces of the manufactured content to reporters, with the goal of making it go viral in order to “influence public opinion and thereby cause an organic pile-on.”
Wallace — who described himself as a “hired gun” and purported to have a “proprietary formula for defining artists and trends,” per the complaint — was retained by Melissa Nathan and her PR firm The Agency Group, the lawsuit said. Lively detailed efforts by Wallace to “seed and influence online forums” on Reddit attacking her and defending Baldoni.
And in a decision that signals it could be receptive to a gag order against Baldoni’s legal team, a New York federal judge moved up a hearing to address an escalating request from Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds to bar Bryan Freedman, the lawyer for the It Ends With Us star and director, from trying the litigation in the press and biasing potential jurors.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman ordered that a pretrial hearing set for Feb. 11 be moved up to Feb. 3 hours after Lively and Reynolds’ legal team sent a second letter alleging Freedman continues to violate court rules by making certain comments to the media on behalf of Baldoni and Baldoni’s production company, Wayfarer, among other tactics. Lively and Reynolds are represented by Manatt, Phelps & Phillips and Willkie Farr & Gallagher, who first asked for a gag order last week.
“The endless stream of defamatory and extrajudicial media statements must end. It will not stop without this court’s intervention,” states the Monday filing from Lively. “The Wayfarer Defendants’ efforts are being financed by a billionaire, who has pledged to spend $100 million to ruin the lives of Ms. Lively and her family. Mr. Freedman is using that money, his roster of current and former clients, and a blatant media and social media strategy to assassinate Ms. Lively’s character in advance of trial.”
The actress-producer is accusing Baldoni of alleged sexual harassment on the set of the film, as well as orchestrating a smear campaign following the film’s release. Baldoni later filed his own complaint against the actress and husband Ryan Reynolds, seeking at least $400 million in damages.
Liman also revealed that the court plans to consolidate the separate lawsuits and set a March 2026 trial date.
Monday’s letter to Liman from Lively and Reynolds’ legal team was sparked by a lengthy statement Freedman provided to TMZ and other media outlets on Jan. 25, including that “when you accuse innocent individuals of something so disturbing as sexual harassment without thinking of the destruction it would cause to not only them, but the entire domestic violence community, this is where accountability for such mean-spirited actions must be taken. We will always respect the court; however, we will never be bullied by those suggesting we cannot defend our clients with pure, unedited facts.”
Counsel for Baldoni and his associates have repeatedly argued that the actor-producer and co-founder of Wayfarer, which is backed by billionaire Steve Sarowitz, have been “utterly calamitous,” with the It Ends With Us director and his team being “exiled from polite society” and suffering damages “totaling hundreds of millions of dollars due to Ms. Lively’s scorched-earth media campaign.”
Meanwhile, Lively and Reynolds’ lawyers are also taking issue with a planned website that Baldoni will use to bolster his case by providing certain video, along with text and email exchanges. Lively’s lawyers argue there will be no way of knowing what he has omitted, or even deleted. “Mr. Freedman has made it apparent that he is engaging in this extrajudicial campaign to influence these proceedings and the public perception of legal filings to this Court, and there already is a serious risk that his misconduct is tainting the jury pool. He further has made it clear that his priority is to ‘torpedo Blake Lively’s career for good’ by, among other things, creating a website to release strategically selected documents and communications between Lively and Baldoni,” stated the Monday filing.
Freedman also represents Baldoni in a separate lawsuit against The New York Times, which published a detailed story about Lively’s time on the set of It Ends With Us, which was financed by Wayfarer and distributed by Sony.
Responding to Monday’s letter filed on behalf of Lively and Reynolds, Freedman said, “The irony continues to be rich for team Lively/Reynolds. Our intention with the upcoming website is to do the exact opposite of what they themselves did when they gave provably false information to the New York Times. We will not be selective, we will not cherry-pick and we will not doctor text messages. Both Ms. Lively and Mr Reynolds do not yet understand that there isn’t one rule for them and one rule for everybody else. If they want to unethically gag the truth by threatening to wield their power in Hollywood, we will fight it every step of the way. We are not scared of them, we will not be silenced by them. Defending ourselves is not retaliation, it is a human right.”
“If Mr. Freedman’s conduct is permitted, it will only result in an arms race of selective public disclosures of text messages to the media,” Michael Gottlieb, a lawyer for Lively, writes in the letter. “The Wayfarer parties initiated their own claims in multiple lawsuits against multiple parties, and in doing so, had a full and unencumbered opportunity to include in their pleadings any and all text messages or other context they believed supported their claims.”
English (US) ·