Justin Baldoni asks New York judge to toss out Blake Lively’s ‘It Ends With Us’ harassment suit

MANHATTAN (CN) — Actor/director Justin Baldoni urged a federal judge on Thursday to dismiss a civil case against him and his production brought by actress Blake Lively, accusing Baldoni of sexually harassing her on the set of the 2024 romantic drama “It Ends With Us” and then engaging in a Hollywood smear campaign to hinder her from coming forward about the misconduct.

Lively, star of the CW teen drama television series “Gossip Girl,” sued Baldoni in December 2024, accusing him of sexual harassment during the production of “It Ends With Us,” a film released earlier that year, based on the 2016 book by the same name, which was directed by Baldoni and produced by Baldoni’s production company, Wayfarer Studios.

Seeking a judge’s dismissal of Lively’s case at the summary judgment stage, Baldoni’s lawyers rebutted Lively’s claims as a “litany of minor grievances” that have not met the requisite level of being “severe or pervasive enough to create an objectively hostile or abusive work environment.”

Jonathan Bach, a lawyer for Baldoni, told U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman that such grievances and “petty slights” asserted by Lively are not actionable to advance further.

“This is a case about making a movie, a movie with highly charged romantic and sexual themes,” Bach said.

Baldoni’s defense argued in Manhattan federal court that Lively’s case should be dismissed because she hadn’t made a sufficient pleading that gender discrimination occurred “in the context of making an adult film with sexual themes.”

“Against the backdrop of a film devoted to achieving a certain sexy aesthetic, a project Lively embraced and advanced, it is impossible to see occasional sporadic references to sexuality as specifically directed toward either gender,” Baldoni wrote in his motion for summary judgment.

Liman did not immediately rule on the summary judgment motion at the conclusion of oral arguments. A trial has been tentatively scheduled to start May 18.

Both sides were scheduled to attend a settlement conference before a separate magistrate judge in Manhattan federal court later on Thursday afternoon, a couple hours after the oral arguments on the motion for summary judgment.

Lively accused Baldoni in her complaint of crossing a line into nonconsensual sexual touching during the filming of a slow dance scene for a montage in which no sound was recorded.

Lively’s attorney Esra Hudson, from Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, said Baldoni at one point caressed Lively with his mouth during the dance shoot in a manner that was removed their characters’ respective roles.

“Consent can be a spectrum of things; it doesn’t have to be at every single moment,” Hudson said, describing Baldoni’s improvised touching without consent during the slow dance was both a surprise and violation to Lively that was recorded in behind-the-scenes video footage.

“He leans in, puts his face on her face, kisses her, nuzzles up against her, strokes her,” Hudson said. “You can see the look on her face in the video. … She is clearly having her boundaries pushed.”

According to Lively, after she later objected to Baldoni’s behavior during the dance scene shoot, his response was, “I’m not even attracted to you.”

Lively also claims Jamey Heath, Wayfarer’s CEO and one of the film’s producers, peeked at her naked upper body after she permitted him to come into her trailer while she was having body makeup removed.

Lively, then wearing only a thong in the trailer, says she instructed Heath not to look at her, but at some point during their brief conversation, he glanced at her through a mirror.

“When she called him out, Mr. Heath brushed it off as a habit of wanting to look at a person while speaking to them,” Lively wrote in her complaint. “Ms. Lively and her hair and makeup artists were all deeply disturbed by this interaction on just the second day of filming.”

Lively also accused Baldoni of personally inserting improvised, gratuitous sexual content and scenes involving additional nudity — including a scene in which Lively was to climax on camera — after Lively signed on to the movie based on a draft of the script.

“Mr. Baldoni graphically changed the script to include things that would require her, as a person, to crawl on all fours to have an oral sex scene that was not scripted,” Hudson said during oral arguments.

Liman questioned Lively’s attorney whether Baldoni changing the script constituted sexual harassment or was just “all part of the creative process.”

“This is for a jury to decide,” Hudson said.

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