Blake Lively
Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC ImagesForward Blake Lively filed a lawsuit against her It ends with Us Costar and director Justin Baldonialleging sexual harassment, retaliation and more, the actress spoke out about the vital importance of intimacy coordinators.
“I think it’s critical to have an intimacy coordinator,” Lively, 37, said DigitalSpy in an August 2024 interview published three months before she filed her lawsuit against Baldoni in the Southern District of New York.
“You coordinate the stunts, you coordinate the dancing, it’s the choreography,” she continued. “So it’s being able to say, ‘This is what happens here, here and here in a stunt,’ and ‘This is what happens here and here in a dance,’ but like, ‘Now you guys put your bodies together , and your mouths and whatever’ and just action and cutting.”
Lively went on to say that she believes “being choreographed” during intimate scenes is “critical to everyone’s safety.”
Lively officially sued Baldoni on Tuesday, December 31, 2024. Us Weekly previously confirmed, alleging sexual harassment, retaliation, breach of contract, infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy and lost wages. In addition to Baldoni, Lively has also sued publicists Melissa to Natasha AND Jennifer Abelas well as Wayfarer Studios.
Lively also filed a complaint with the California Department of Civil Rights, citing similar allegations.
“I hope my legal action will help draw back the curtain on these evil retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and help protect others who may be targeted,” Lively said in a statement. ABOUT us.
In response, Baldoni filed a $250 million countersuit New York Times on the same day and for her reporting on Lively’s sexual harassment allegations. In the lawsuit, Baldoni accuses the publication of defamation and false invasion of privacy, alleging the newspaper “cherry-picked” the communications and omitted context to mislead readers.
The lawsuit also alleges that Lively pursued a “strategic and manipulative” smear campaign against Baldoni, using “false allegations of sexual harassment to claim unilateral control over every aspect of the production.”
Baldoni also claims that Lively never met with an intimacy coordinator during filming It ends with Us.
“In this vicious smear campaign completely orchestrated by Blake Lively and her team, New York Times bowing to the whims and whims of two powerful Hollywood ‘untouchable’ elites, flouting the journalistic practices and ethics once befitting the venerable publication, using edited and manipulated texts and deliberately removing texts that contradict their narrative chosen PR,” Baldon’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, said in a statement to Us on Tuesday, Dec. 31.
“In doing so, they predetermined the outcome of their story and aided and abetted their own destructive PR smear campaign designed to revive Lively’s self-induced battered public image and counter the organic basis of criticism in the public online,” Freedman continued. . “The irony is rich.”
