Blake Lively is 38 and a mother of four — but it’s clear that she never graduated from being a middle-school mean girl who thinks she is untouchable.
She’s imperious. She’s cruel. Like a catty tween, she won’t hesitate to rally all of her cool-kid friends against those who she believes have crossed her.
But, unlike with many of the narcissists in Hollywood, Lively’s acting cannot redeem her character. (See: her performance in “The Town.”)
Her worst sin? Making me defend an avowed male feminist.
But that’s how bad her smear campaign has been against Justin Baldoni. And now we have a trove of newly released text messages, allegedly between Lively and her onetime best friend Taylor Swift, that seemingly reveal the depths of the actress’s efforts to ruin the director and co-star of “It Ends with Us.”
Unsealed court papers detailed the pair’s plot to essentially bully Baldoni, whom Lively called the “doofus director of my movie.”
In April 2023, Lively lobbied Swift to influence Baldoni to use her script revisions.
“I’ll do anything for you,” Swift replied. (This, of course, clashes with a claim by Swift’s rep that she had nothing to do with the movie.)
Afterward, Lively raved about the singer’s intervention.
“You were so epically heroic today,” Lively wrote. “You making s–t up about me and lenses. And referring to yourself as my doll. This clown falling for all of it … You are the world’s absolute greatest friend ever.”
Is it any wonder that the unsealed messages also reveal how an executive from Sony, the film’s distributor, called Lively a “f–king terrorist”?
Swift apparently lent more support as the pair texted about using her song “My Tears Richochet” for the trailer. The two saw it as a coup — a victory of their ruthless scheming.
“If Justin was strategic,” Swift wrote, he would have said no to her music because it only gave more leverage to Lively.
“You are so right … He should’ve run from your music … How stupid. This was his only shot at having the appearance of an upper hand,’” Lively texted back.
It’s all rather strange that a woman who so relished her dominance over this beta man would then melt into victimhood mode just a year and a half later, when she filed a December 2024 complaint with the California Civil Rights Department — accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment, orchestrating a smear campaign and creating a hostile work environment.
You might not remember this part. Lively was pilloried around the time of the movie’s August 2024 release for using a movie about domestic violence to plug her booze and hair brands. Her reputation was further battered when a 2016 interview with a Norwegian journalist surfaced, showing her treating the poor woman like a speck of dirt.
But when she filed her civil rights complaint, followed by a lawsuit against Baldoni asking for $161 million in damages, Lively became a feminist hero — with many other celebrities rallying behind her, lamenting the trials that females face in Hollywood. Baldoni’s name was mud.
His countersuit for defamation was dismissed, but not before his bulldog lawyer made mincemeat of Lively’s complaints, releasing video and text evidence to refute many of her most damaging claims.
These latest disclosures are perhaps the worst yet.
Lively clearly weaponized the #MeToo movement to paint herself as a victim and smear Baldoni, even as she was plotting behind the scenes.
All she had to do was finish the movie, smile on the red carpet, and move on to another project. She could have simply resolved to never work with this “clown” again.
Instead, the vindictive blonde got very cocky. She and husband Ryan Reynolds asked A-lister friends like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck to watch her version of the movie — yes, she made her own cut of a movie she did not direct, because she had to “troubleshoot through [Baldoni’s] taste.”
“The director/costar/producer/financier/head of the studio (yes all one person) had zero experience,” she wrote to the Damons. “But the good news is he also has no taste, and an enormous ego, but only because he’s in a cult and believes he’s our century’s prophet. I wish even one of these things was hyperbole.”
It’s almost like Lively was projecting.
But her mask has dropped completely.
Call it hubris or call it karma. But definitely call it self-inflicted.
