Blake Lively accuses It Ends With Us director Justin Baldoni of sexual harassment

In what can’t help but feel like the shoe finally dropping after a very long fall, Blake Lively has formally accused her It Ends With Us director and co-star Justin Baldoni of sexual harassment on the film’s set. In a complaint filed with the California Civil Rights department, Lively accuses Baldoni of improvising unwanted kissing and discussing inappropriate sexual topics with her on the movie’s set. She also accused a producer on the film, Jamey Heath (CEO of the studio Baldoni co-founded, Wayfarer Studios), of acting in similarly inappropriate ways.

Here’s a description from the complaint, per The New York Times, of a meeting Lively held during the movie’s production to address the issues: “She claimed Mr. Baldoni had improvised unwanted kissing and discussed his sex life, including encounters in which he said he may not have received consent. Mr. Heath had shown her a video of his wife naked, she said, and he had watched Ms. Lively in her trailer when she was topless and having body makeup removed, despite her asking him to look away. She said that both men repeatedly entered her makeup trailer uninvited while she was undressed, including when she was breastfeeding.” Lively’s complaint also (per Variety) says Sony Pictures signed off on a request from her that Baldoni not add any instances of “sex scenes, oral sex or on camera climaxing” to the movie that weren’t already in the script that she’d approved before filming began, and of instigating a campaign of “social manipulation” to “destroy” her reputation.

Rumors about a troubled production on It Ends With Us began circulating well before the film even came out, although Lively and Baldoni both made at least minor efforts to give things a smooth appearance while the movie actually premiered. (To fairly massive success, making $350 million, a rarity for an inexpensive romantic drama.) Since then, though, The New York Times reports that Lively was apparently collecting receipts: Her complaint contains “excerpts from thousands of pages of text messages and emails that she obtained through a subpoena,” documenting communications with publicists allegedly hired by Baldoni and Heath “to prevent stories about Mr. Baldoni’s behavior and reinforce negative ones about Ms. Lively.” Publicity “crisis management experts” (also named in the complaint—a precursor to a lawsuit—along with Baldoni, Heath, and Wayfarer itself) are quoted as being ordered to “bury” Lively. The words “social combat” appear in texts between the publicists, some of whom previously worked with Johnny Depp in his conflicts with ex-wife Amber Heard; The Times piece has a lot of details and quotes that allege to show how people in PR management talk to each other about how to manipulate the public narrative, and it’s fascinating in a very queasy way.

All of this was playing out while Lively and Baldoni were also in a semi-public tug-of-war over the film itself; although the Times article says Baldoni and Heath’s behavior on the set improved after the above meeting, Lively also decided to create her own cut of the film and present it as an alternative to Baldoni’s. (Sony ultimately went with Lively’s version, which is apparently why she had a producer credit on the film.) All of the above situations began to boil up into public view shortly before the film’s release, when it was noticed that Lively and Baldoni weren’t following each other on social media, and the director wasn’t being photographed with most of the movie’s stars.

An attorney for Baldoni and Wayfarer has issued a lengthy statement denying all of Lively’s claims, calling the complaint “a desperate attempt to ‘fix’ her negative reputation” and calling her claims “completely false, outrageous, and intentionally salacious.” The statement claims that the text messages quoted in the complaint (and the Times piece, which notes that some of them seemed to detail plans to potentially, unofficially, leak stories about Lively to press outlets) were simply “internal scenario planning and private correspondence to strategize.” In her own statement to press, Lively wrote that, “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.”