Blake Lively‘s friendship with music superstar Taylor Swift is now at the center of her legal battle with her former It Ends With Us co-star Justin Baldoni.
In a new court filing Wednesday, attorneys for Baldoni claim Lively pressured Swift to get involved in the legal back and forth, which first began in December.
That month, Lively filed a complaint against Baldoni with the California Civil Rights Department accusing him of sexual harassment on the set of It Ends With Us, which he also directed. Lively and Baldoni subsequently launched dueling lawsuits against each other, with Lively alleging that Baldoni and key stakeholders of the film sexually harassed her and attempted, along with Baldoni’s production company and crisis PR company, The Agency Group PR, to orchestrate a smear campaign against her.
Baldoni denied the allegations via a statement from his attorney, who called Lively’s actions “shameful” for making “serious and categorically false accusations” against Baldoni.
Baldoni later sued Lively, her husband, Ryan Reynolds, the couple’s publicist, Leslie Sloane, and Sloane’s public relations company, Vision PR, for extortion and defamation, among other things.
Lively’s lawyers called Baldoni’s lawsuit “another chapter in the abuser playbook” and accused Baldoni of “trying to shift the narrative to Ms. Lively by falsely claiming that she seized creative control and alienated the cast from Mr. Baldoni.”
Earlier this month, Swift was subpoenaed by Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman.
Lawyers for Lively and Reynolds responded by trying to block the subpoena, which Baldoni’s attorneys argued was necessary.
Citing “a source,” Baldoni’s legal team claims in Wednesday’s court filing that Lively’s attorney “demanded that Ms. Swift release a statement of support for Ms. Lively” amid the legal scuffle, alleging that “if Ms. Swift refused to do so, private text messages of a personal nature in Ms. Lively’s possession would be released.”
Baldoni’s attorneys allege in the new filing that, “Lively requested that Taylor Swift delete their text messages.” The court filing also claims that “a representative of Ms. Swift addressed these inappropriate and apparently extortionate threats in at least one written communication.”
In response, Lively’s lawyer, Mike Gottlieb, asked the court to strike the documents as “unnecessary, improper and abusive.”
Gottlieb said in a statement to ABC News Wednesday that the allegations made in Baldoni’s court filing are “categorically false.”
“This is categorically false. We unequivocally deny all of these so-called allegations, which are cowardly sourced to supposed anonymous sources, and completely untethered from reality,” Gottlieb said. “This is what we have come to expect from the Wayfarer parties’ lawyers, who appear to love nothing more than shooting first, without any evidence, and with no care for the people they are harming in the process. We will imminently file motions with the court to hold these attorneys accountable for their misconduct here.”
Baldoni’s initial complaint against Lively, filed in January, detailed a text message he allegedly received from Lively in which Baldoni claims Lively referred to Swift and Reynolds as her “dragons.” The complaint claimed Lively leveraged her relationships with high-profile individuals like Swift and Reynolds to exert her influence over the film.
Swift has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment about the latest court filing.
In response to being subpoenaed, a spokesperson for Swift said she was only involved in licensing her song “My Tears Ricochet” for the film and was never on set.
“Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie, she was not involved in any casting or creative decisions, she did not score the film, she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film, she did not even see It Ends With Us until weeks after its public release, and was traveling around the globe during 2023 and 2024 headlining the biggest tour in history,” the spokesperson said. “The connection Taylor had to this film was permitting the use of one song, ‘My Tears Ricochet.'”
The spokesperson added, “Given that her involvement was licensing a song for the film, which 19 other artists also did, this document subpoena is designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.”
Lively and Baldoni are due to appear in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on March 9, 2026.
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