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Justin Baldoni filed an enormous $400 million lawsuit against Blake Lively on Thursday, the latest shot fired in what’s become a vicious legal battle.
Once again, he used the filing to communicate his side of everything to the public. Blake accused him last month of sexually harassing her and others on the set of It Ends With Us. But that wasn’t all. She said the skewering she received online over the summer wasn’t the organic work of fans turning on her… it was a smear campaign orchestrated by Justin to retaliate against her as she stood up to his unprofessional treatment. Per her lawsuit, he used his crisis PR team to make her look like the bad guy before she could say anything against him publicly.
Justin responded first by suing The New York Times and then Blake herself, as well as her publicist and Ryan Reynolds. He contends it all started because Blake wanted to take over the movie so she’d have a franchise like her hubby. He says she spent the production pushing him around and using tricks to take control. Not only that, he’s accusing her of logging innocent interactions to later present out of context as though they were inappropriate — all to discredit him as she stole his movie.
OK, so… who’s telling the truth??
Related: Blake Lively’s Game Of Thrones Text Is An All-Timer Whether You Love Or Hate Her!
We mean, this isn’t really a case where it can be somewhere in between, is it? So naturally folks are already picking sides. We were curious how the general public was reacting to all the claims, and it looks pretty darn even! But what’s really interesting with some of the takes is why they’ve chosen their side. Let’s start with the pro-Blake folks!
“I’m sorry but Baldoni’s complaint against Blake Lively is SO FUNNY. She complains of prolonged sexual harassment, misogyny, and provides evidence that he hired a team to exact a targeted smear campaign. He has 179 pages of ‘yeah well she is annoying and her husband is mean'”
“I do not care if Blake Lively was mean and took charge of a movie. They had to have a meeting to get Justin Baldoni to stop sexually harassing people. He needs to be held accountable. I’m tired of people acting like being a mean girl is equal to or worse than sexual harassment”
“Some people just keep saying “Mean girl”, completely ignoring the real issue here. And that 179 page lawsuit Justin released doesn’t really address the sexual harassment. He is just DEFLECTING from the main issue. Ppl are responding & it shows he’s not fooling everyone.”
“justin baldoni saying nothing about the sexual harassment claims, but trying to shift the narrative back to “blake lively is a mean girl” tells me a lot actually”
“blake lively said he sexually harassed her and justins response was that her husband made fun of him and she made him watch a movie in a basement… buddy, if my wife was being harassed on set i’d do a lot more than mock you.”
“if yall let your internalised misogyny do the same shit to blake lively as amber heard i will never forgive anyone if you. Second times not a mistake, it’s a choice.”
It seems like the prevailing opinion on #TeamBlake is to accept the truth of the sexual harassment claims as a given. It makes sense as it’s prevalent in most jobs, not just in Hollywood, unfortunately. Even after #MeToo.
But when you do that, anything he says is the word of a sex pest and therefore automatically untrustworthy. Hence they are not buying any of his versions of events, even if he provides text or video or other documentation. Hmm.
On the other hand, we have Justin supporters — who are, in many cases, just Blake haters. We mean, it makes sense they aren’t Baldoni stans, who even knew this guy existed before this case, are we right?
Anyway, let’s hear from #TeamJustin:
“They got Blake lively in 4K telling Justin Baldoni he needs a nose job but she cited body shaming in her complaint cuz he asked how much she weighed for a scene he had to lift her in.. yikes… He has a back injury. She’s not even close to fat but she’s still a whole ass person lmao”
“This whole Justin Baldoni and Blake lively thing is f**king my brain up. When it all first came out, I was so team Blake, but then hearing her say it made her uncomfortable for him to come in and see her breast-feed when he has evidence she invited him and is so weird and icky? All I know is typically innocent people don’t have to lie and doctor evidence. Her attorneys doctored text messages. This is a lot.”
“Blake Lively is the biggest bully in Hollywood. And everyone knows it.”
“Blake Lively is a straight-up mean girl. I know mean girls – I was raised by one. They *never* change. They marry men who shrug off their behavior. If caught, they are good at playing victim because they honestly believe they’ve done nothing wrong. Makes me sick.”
“I read Justin Baldoni’s lawsuit. I don’t know how Blake Lively ever works again. Who’s gonna hire her.”
“At first I believed Blake Lively’s story, but since then it is obvious that what was presented in the New York Times was cherry picked to match her story. The more receipts we see, the more her story starts to fall apart. At this point in the storyline, Justin Baldoni really was an unknown, so Blake had all the power. She had already gotten everything she demanded, but apparently that wasn’t enough. It looks like a power play designed to steal this movie and the sequel away from him. “
What do YOU think, Perezcious readers??
[Image via CBS & NBC/YouTube.]
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