On New Year’s Eve, Justin Baldoni and nine other plaintiffs sued the New York Times for $250 million, all because of the Times’ bombshell exclusive about Blake Lively’s California Civil Rights complaint. The Times story was heavy on Blake’s narrative of “social manipulation,” using texts and messages between Justin Baldoni’s publicist and crisis manager, painting a picture of Baldoni as a sexual predator who publicly smeared his victim. In Baldoni’s suit against the Times, he provided some receipts of texts and emails, enough to show that there is more nuance to some of Blake’s claims. In one interesting section of Baldoni’s lawsuit, there’s talk of a January 2024 meeting at Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ Tribeca apartment. From Variety:

But according to [Baldoni’s] lawsuit, it was Lively who embarked on a “strategic and manipulative” smear campaign of her own and used false “sexual harassment allegations to assert unilateral control over every aspect of the production.” And according to the suit, Lively’s husband, actor Ryan Reynolds, allegedly berated Baldoni in an aggressive manner during a heated meeting at their Tribeca penthouse in New York, “accusing him of ‘fat shaming’” his wife. The suit claims that the A-list actor also pressured Baldoni’s agency, WME, to drop the director during the “Deadpool and Wolverine” premiere in July, well before Baldoni enlisted crisis PR.

The lawsuit also pushes back on a major component of Lively’s CRD complaint and the Times’ reliance on it for its story. It’s a list of 30 items that were allegedly agreed upon during a January meeting that included Baldoni, Heath, Lively and Reynolds and a Sony executive. But today’s lawsuit claims that “no such document was ever presented to Baldoni, the Wayfarer team, or, to their knowledge, anyone else — whether during that meeting or at any other time — and therefore, could not have been agreed to.” The suit adds: “In reality, many of these items were encountered for the first time in the CRD Complaint itself and include references to highly disturbing events that never occurred. The repeated use of the phrase ‘no more’ before each demand falsely suggests that these alleged incidents had previously taken place and needed to cease. This implication is not only misleading but entirely untrue.”

As for the meeting at Lively and Reynolds’ penthouse apartment in Tribeca, everyone was “in shock” by Reynolds’ outburst, the lawsuit claims. According to the lawsuit, one of the film’s producers who was present said that “in his 40-year career he had never seen anyone speak to someone like that in a meeting, [while] the Sony representative mentioned that she would often think of that meeting and her one regret is that she didn’t stop Reynolds’ berating of Baldoni.”

Back in August, when coverage of a mysterious feud between Lively and Baldoni began to spiral on social media and in the press, Variety inquired of Sony whether any HR complaints had been filed against Baldoni during production and was told “no.”

[From Variety]

So in just one week, we’ve gone from Blake’s narrative that “there was a January production meeting in which Ryan acted as her representative and the studio acquiesced to all of her demands in writing to protect her from a predatory director” to “actually, this was a meeting at Ryan and Blake’s home and Ryan berated Baldoni in front of multiple witnesses, including reps from Sony, and nothing was put in writing and given to Baldoni.” So now Team Lively-Reynolds is backtracking a bit – yes, the meeting was at their Tribeca home, but no, Ryan didn’t “berate” Justin.

Justin Baldoni’s accusation Ryan Reynolds berated and screamed at him in a house full of stars in an ambush meeting is way overblown … this according to a source who was in the meeting. Baldoni made several accusations against Blake Lively and husband RR in a $250 million lawsuit against The New York Times … claiming the “Deadpool” star was aggressive toward JB at a meeting that took place in the couple’s NYC home, as celeb pals came and went.

Our source tells TMZ … the meeting did go down last January, as “It Ends With Us” was to resume production after it was stalled by industry strikes … and everyone in attendance knew Baldoni’s alleged behavior would be addressed … so, there was zero blindsiding.

The source says RR was not screaming and berating JB, although the source concedes he was “angry and stern,” adding Reynold’s spoke in an “impassioned” way but it did not rise to the level of screaming or berating.

Baldoni said in his lawsuit the encounter he had with Reynolds was “traumatic” and he had “never been spoken to like that in his life.”

The source also took issue with the way the meeting was characterized in the lawsuit … in particular the mention of the penthouse where other stars were randomly milling around. The meeting was at the home of Reynolds and Lively, but our source says other celebs were not coming and going.

Baldoni isn’t alone in suing the Times … he is one of 10 plaintiffs, including publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel, who were mentioned at length in Lively’s initial complaint and in the paper’s story. Lively has filed a lawsuit making a formal demand for money, suing Baldoni and others — including the publicists — for mental pain and anguish, severe emotional distress, and lost wages.

[From TMZ]

I said this week that the story of what Ryan said to Justin and how Ryan said it seemed like a crucial element to the larger story of what the hell happened between all involved. Blake’s side will say that Ryan is a loving, protective husband who was standing up for his wife. Justin’s side will say that the husband of an actress-producer completely overstepped and raged out during what was supposed to be a professional production meeting. Also, Variety’s coverage of Baldoni’s suit didn’t say that celebrities were milling around. Everyone agrees on the fact that this was supposed to be a production meeting, and yet no one can agree on what was actually said.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.