Justin Baldoni Dropped from WME After Blake Lively Accusing Him of Sexual Harassment
The actor’s attorney denies the allegations against Baldoni.
Justin Baldoni was dropped by WME after Blake Lively’s accusing him of sexual harassment in a complaint filed on Friday.
The news comes hours after news broke that Lively was taking legal action against her It Ends With Us co-star and director.
In the filing, the actress not only accused Baldoni and his coworkers at Wayfarer Studios of sexual harassment but also of an alleged coordinated effort to destroy her reputation.
Baldoni’s lawyer fired back at the allegations, calling them “shameful,” “serious and categorically false.”
The actress and her team brought forth demands for Baldoni and his team in order to begin production again after the actors strike. Some of the 30 demands included: “No more showing nude videos of women, including producer’s wife, to BL and/or her employees”; “No more mention of Mr. Baldoni’s or Mr. Heath’s previous ‘pornography addiction’ or BL’s lack of pornography consumption to BL or to other crew members”; “No more descriptions of their own genitalia to BL”; and “No more improvising of kissing.”
However, Baldoni veered from that in the days leading up to the film and focused on the film’s more serious, domestic violence content. Per the filing, the actor-director and his team did so in an effort to explain why many of the film’s cast and crew had unfollowed him on social media and did not appear with him in public. The filing claims that he and his team used domestic violence “survivor content” to protect his image.
Lively said, “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.”
The statement continued, “These claims are completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media. Wayfarer Studios made the decision to proactively hire a crisis manager prior to the marketing campaign of the film, to work alongside their own representative with Jonesworks employed by Stephanie Jones, due to the multiple demands and threats made by Ms. Lively during production which included her threatening to not showing up to set, threatening to not promote the film, ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met. It was also discovered that Ms. Lively enlisted her own representative, Leslie Sloan with Vision PR, who also represents Mr. Reynolds, to plant negative and completely fabricated and false stories with media, even prior to any marketing had commenced for the film, which was another reason why Wayfarer Studios made the decision to hire a crisis professional to commence internal scenario planning in the case they needed to address.