Justin Baldoni has reportedly been dropped by his talent agency after Blake Lively filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him.
WME is said to have made the decision on Saturday, while Gossip Girl star Blake is still being represented by the company, according to Deadline. The Mirror has contacted Justin's reps for further comment.
It comes after Blake, 37, accused the 40-year-old of inappropriate behaviour on the set of their recent film It Ends with Us, which she says caused her 'severe emotional distress'. In the lawsuit, Blake alleges Justin created a 'hostile work environment that nearly derailed the production of the film'.
She claims he walked into her trailer 'uninvited' while she was undressed, improvised kissing scenes and added sex scenes that included oral sex and her climaxing on camera to the script, which were not approved when she signed on to the project.
Blake further claims he showed her and other employees nude images and videos of women and talked to her about his previous addiction to porn, as well as talked about his sexual conquests in front of Blake and the cast and crew's genitalia. She says he also made comments about her dead father.
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CTMG, Inc./Nicole Rivelli. All Rights Reserved)In legal papers, seen by TMZ, Blake also claimed she felt 'fat-shamed' by Justin as they filmed a particular scene on set of the film, which is based on author Colleen Hoover's popular novel. Blake plays Lily Bloom to Justin's Ryle Kincaid. While it's initially a love story, Lily begins to see sides of Ryle that remind her of her parent's relationship and there is a domestic violence theme.
During a scene where he was to lift Blake up, Justin - who is said to have a history of back problems - allegedly asked his on-set trainer how much Blake weighed and how he could protect himself from injury. At the time Blake had recently given birth to her fourth baby - a son named Olin - just months prior and is said to have felt 'fat-shamed' by the comments.
While promoting the film, which Justin also directed, the pair are said to have had conflicting opinions on how it should be portrayed. While Justin wanted to concentrate on the domestic violence, Blake reportedly favoured a 'hopeful, uplifting' approach, which was later slammed by fans as 'tone deaf'.
Blake has now claimed there was "a coordinated effort" by Justin's PR team "to destroy her reputation". Justin has denied all the claims against him calling them "completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media."
A statement via his lawyers called it a "desperate attempt to ‘fix’ her negative reputation which was garnered from her own remarks and actions during the campaign for the film". It added: "It is shameful that Ms. Lively and her representatives would make such serious and categorically false accusations against Mr. Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and its representatives.
"Wayfarer Studios made the decision to proactively hire a crisis manager prior to the marketing campaign of the film, to work alongside their own representative with Jonesworks employed by Stephanie Jones, due to the multiple demands and threats made by Ms. Lively during production, which included her threatening to not show up to set, threatening to not promote the film, ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met.
"It was also discovered that Ms. Lively enlisted her own representative, Leslie Sloan with Vision PR, who also represents Mr. Reynolds [Blake's husband, Ryan Reynolds], to plant negative and completely fabricated and false stories with media, even prior to any marketing commencing for the film, which was another reason why Wayfarer Studios made the decision to hire a crisis professional to commence internal scenario planning in the case they needed to address."
In a statement to the New York Times, Blake said: "I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted."
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