The marketing for It Ends With Us was already struggling prior to its release and much of the blame was put on Blake due to her tone-deaf promotion of the film along with her supposedly taking over production. However, in her sexual harassment lawsuit against co-star Justin, she also included an accusation against the actor claiming he ran a smear campaign against her which made her look a whole lot worse. Now it's been revealed that the catalyst for Baldoni's supposed crusade against Lively may have been spurred by Ryan Reynolds blocking him on Instagram.
Supposed text messages between Baldoni and his publicist obtained by Page Six showed that the actor was concerned after discovering that the Deadpool star blocked him along with his production company Wayfarer Studios on Instagram. This allegedly happened months before Lively filed her sexual harassment complaint against Baldoni.
The conversations show that the actor was concerned that Lively would follow suit and block him once the movie was released, prompting him to concoct a "plan" for that possibility. Baldoni allegedly texted his publicist saying, "We should have a plan for IF she does the same when [the] movie comes out." And reportedly, the said plan was to make Lively look so bad that her words against him wouldn't mean squat.
Rumors of a serious on-set feud between the pair had been making the rounds for a while prior to the film's release. The two actors did not interact with each other at the New York City premiere and the Jane the Virgin actor allegedly hired a PR crisis Management team back in August. If Lively's accusations and the texts are to be believed then it would certainly prove he had planned to ruin her reputation so the backlash she received could be attributed to him in part.
Lively claimed that her co-star was behaving inappropriately and had made her incredibly uncomfortable on numerous occasions. In fact, she felt so uncomfortable that she called an "all hands" meeting where she tried to establish boundaries. She asked him to stop showing her nude images and videos of women and stop mentioning his past porn addiction as well as cease talking about the "cast and crew's genitalia."
The complaint filed also alleges that Baldoni improvised kissing scenes, and added "gratuitous sexual content," as well as made inappropriate comments. The lawsuit also claims that the supposed social media campaigns against Lively allegedly came from Baldoni.
The actor has since been dropped as a client by WME while Lively continues to be represented by the talent agency. The actor and Wayfarer Studios lawyer, Brian Freedman denied the accusations, asserting that "these claims are completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media." Meanwhile, Lively is hopeful that the lawsuit filed against Baldoni will help "pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics" as well as protect others who may be targeted.