Lawyers for Justin Baldoni, Blake Lively bicker over media comments in ‘It Ends With Us’ case

MANHATTAN (CN) — Counsel for Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively will have to watch their tongues when talking to the press about the ongoing legal war between the “It Ends With Us” co-stars, a federal judge ruled Monday.

Attorneys met in a packed courtroom for the first hearing in the bombshell Hollywood feud, in which Lively accuses Baldoni of sexual harassment while on the set of the 2024 romance drama. Baldoni, in turn, accuses Lively and her actor husband Ryan Reynolds of civil extortion and defamation, and claims that the couple conspired to smear him by sharing the sexual misconduct claims with The New York Times.

But while the world waits for the case to come before a jury — it has a tentative trial date of March 2026 — Lively’s lawyers accused Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman of trying to unfairly litigate it in the press.

Michael Gottlieb, who represents Lively, told the court on Monday that Freedman made a number of “inflammatory, extrajudicial statements” about his client that call into question her character and motivations.

Among the statements by Freedman that Gottlieb recited in court Monday was a Jan. 7 comment to People Magazine:

“We are releasing all of the evidence which will show a pattern of bullying and threats to take over the movie. None of this will come as a surprise because consistent with her past behavior Blake Lively used other people to communicate those threats and bully her way to get whatever she wanted. We have the receipts and more,” Freedman said.

Gottlieb, a high-profile corporate lawyer for Willkie Farr & Gallagher, accused Freedman of violating a New York State Bar Association rule that bars attorneys from making public statements that “have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding.” He urged the judge to order counsel not to violate that rule during the proceedings.

“You’re not supposed to launch attacks on other people’s character,” Gottlieb said.

Freedman, a Los Angeles-based entertainment lawyer whose past clients include Julia Roberts and Tucker Carlson, decried the assertion that any media war was all his doing.

But Freedman agreed that the court should recognize the state rule in this case to keep things civil.

“This was not started by us,” Freedman said, referring to earlier public statements made by Lively’s team. “It has not been a one-way street in this case at all.”

Freedman also accused Lively and her co-defendants of trying to slow-roll the case by insisting that they need more time for discovery — a request Gottlieb made after Baldoni’s team added The New York Times as a defendant in an amended complaint.

“My clients are devastated financially and emotionally and need this case to move as quickly as it can,” Freedman said.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman, a Donald Trump appointee, pushed back some discovery deadlines by a few days to appease Lively’s team, but largely kept proceedings on pace for a March 2026 trial.

The judge also agreed to hold counsel to the New York rule on pretrial publicity, as to not taint the jury pool.

“My expectation is the parties will comply with their ethical obligations,” Liman said. “I don’t expect this case to devolve into satellite litigation over the comments of a lawyer.”

The legal spat between the Hollywood A-listers kicked off in December 2024 when The New York Times published a story sourced by Lively detailing allegations of sexual harassment against Baldoni on the set of “It Ends With Us.”

On Dec. 26, 2024, celebrity publicist Stephanie Jones sued Baldoni in New York Supreme Court for launching a so-called smear campaign against Lively while trying to discredit the sexual harassment allegations in the Times article. On Dec. 31, Lively sued Baldoni for harassment.

Baldoni responded with a lawsuit against the Times on Dec. 31 in Los Angeles Superior Court, claiming that the newspaper intentionally damaged his reputation with one-sided reporting — allegations the Times denies.

Then, last month, Baldoni took aim at Lively herself in a New York federal lawsuit. He denies ever being inappropriate with Lively on the film set and claims that she and Reynolds weaponized their status as one of Hollywood’s premier power couples to “destroy” him and “hijack” the premiere of the movie, which was backed by Baldoni’s production company Wayfarer Studios.

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