After more than a month in the court of public opinion, the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni battle finally entered an actual courtroom Monday in New York.
Attorneys for both “It Ends With Us” stars appeared in Manhattan Federal Court before Judge Lewis Liman. Even before the hearing, Liman said he expected to combine Lively’s initial $250 million sexual harassment lawsuit with Baldoni’s $400 million defamation claim.
Lively, 37, and Baldoni, 41, were not in attendance for the status conference. Neither was Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, who is named as a defendant in Baldoni’s suit along with Lively’s publicist, Leslie Sloane.
Lively claimed that Baldoni, who also directed “It Ends With Us,” sexually harassed her while they were filming the movie, which itself chronicles an abusive relationship between Lively and Baldoni’s characters. She filed her lawsuit on Dec. 22 in California.
Baldoni, who built a brand challenging traditional norms of masculinity and even wrote a book titled “Man Enough,” denied Lively’s claims and countersued for defamation shortly afterward. Baldoni’s suit was filed in New York and included the New York Times as a defendant, as the paper was the first to publish Lively’s allegations.
Following the suits, Lively and Baldoni both engaged in extensive antagonistic publicity campaigns, which reached a new level on Saturday when one of Baldoni’s lawyers created an entire website to tell his side of the story.
As the public feud escalated, Lively requested a gag order in the case. Her legal team had also asked that Baldoni’s most aggressive attorney, Bryan Freedman, be barred from deposing her later in the legal process.
Lively has additionally accused Baldoni’s PR team of astroturfing a social media campaign to make his story the dominant one on the internet, including across TikTok, Reddit and Instagram. Various publicists are also named as defendants in both lawsuits.
Monday’s status conference was moved up from a mid-February date at Lively’s request. A trial in the case is scheduled to begin on March 9, 2026.
