Blake Lively’s lawyers blasted the actress’ “It Ends With Us” co-star Justin Baldoni for launching “more attacks” against her amid their legal battle.
On Monday, the “Gossip Girl” alum’s legal team said in a statement to People that Lively’s “serious claims of sexual harassment and retaliation” are “backed by concrete facts.”
“This is not a ‘feud’ arising from ‘creative differences’ or a ‘he said/she said’ situation,” their statement continued.
“As alleged in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and as we will prove in litigation, Wayfarer [Studios] and its associates engaged in unlawful, retaliatory astroturfing against Ms. Lively for simply trying to protect herself and others on a film set,” the attorneys added.
“And their response to the lawsuit has been to launch more attacks against Ms. Lively since her filing.”
The lawyers added that “sexual harassment and retaliation are illegal in every workplace and in every industry” and that Baldoni is using a “classic tactic” to “distract from allegations of this type of misconduct is to ‘blame the victim’ by suggesting that they invited the conduct, brought it on themselves, misunderstood the intentions, or even lied.”
“Another classic tactic is to reverse the victim and offender, and suggest that the offender is actually the victim. These concepts normalize and trivialize allegations of serious misconduct,” the statement read.
“Most importantly, media statements are not a defense to Ms. Lively’s legal claims. We will continue to prosecute her claims in federal court, where the rule of law determines who prevails, not hyperbole and threats.”
Page Six has reached out to Baldoni’s legal team for comment but did not immediately hear back.
On Dec. 20, Lively, 37, filed a complaint against Baldoni, 40, accusing him of sexual harassment while filming “It Ends With Us” and for engaging in “social manipulation” to “destroy” her reputation.
Lively alleged in the docs that the director made sexual and other inappropriate comments toward her during filming and used a crisis PR expert to launch a smear campaign against her.
In response to the complaint, Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, denied the claims in a statement to Page Six, saying: “These claims are completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media.”
Freedman also said the complaint, which later turned into a formal lawsuit, was “another desperate attempt to ‘fix’ [Lively’s] negative reputation which was garnered from her own remarks and actions during the campaign for the film.”
The following day, the New York Times published alleged texts between the “Jane the Virgin” actor, who was dropped by his talent agency following the complaint, and his publicists.
In response to the article, Baldoni filed a bombshell $250 million lawsuit against the outlet for libel, claiming the NYT “‘cherry-picked’ and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead.”
Last week, the “Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity” author’s attorney said his client would “absolutely” be filing a lawsuit against Lively “soon.”
