Blake Lively deems Justin Baldoni's strategy "desperate" in response to lawsuit

Following Justin Baldoni’s whopping $400 million lawsuit, Blake Lively’s legal team has issued another scathing response. The two have been locked in a public battle for about a month now, and a private one since filming the romantic drama It Ends With Us. The film is about a woman (Lively) who experiences domestic abuse at the hands of her partner (Baldoni). Now, Lively is accusing Baldoni of retaliating against her harassment complaints in terms that align with Baldoni’s character in the movie. 

Lively’s lawyers from Manatt, Phelps & Phillips and Willkie Farr & Gallagher released a statement on Thursday evening calling Baldoni’s lawsuit “another chapter in the abuser playbook” and citing the concept of DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim and offender).  They went on to say that Baldoni’s production company Wayfarer “has opted to use the resources of its billionaire co-founder to issue media statements, launch meritless lawsuits, and threaten litigation to overwhelm the public’s ability to understand that what they are doing is retaliation against sexual harassment allegations” (via Deadline).

Lively’s team argues that she is not the only person involved with It Ends With Us who had “negative experiences” with Baldoni. And in response to claims that Lively “seized creative control” of the movie, “The evidence will also show that Sony asked Ms. Lively to oversee Sony’s cut of the film, which they then selected for distribution and was a resounding success,” the statement said.

“Their response to sexual harassment allegations: she wanted it, it’s her fault. Their justification for why this happened to her: look what she was wearing,” the statement concluded. “In short, while the victim focuses on the abuse, the abuser focuses on the victim. The strategy of attacking the woman is desperate, it does not refute the evidence in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and it will fail.”