Los Angeles, Jan 22 (IANS): Hollywood actress Blake Lively has reacted through her legal team at director-actor Justin Baldoni’s recently released video proof quashing the actress’ claim of sexual harassment.
Her legal team fired back after attorneys for Justin Baldoni released footage shedding light on the actors’ behind-the-scenes conflict on ‘It Ends with Us’, reports ‘People’ magazine.
On Tuesday, January 21, Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman released a video, obtained by TMZ, in an effort to refute some of Lively’s claims made in her December 20 sexual harassment complaint against her director-actor.
As per ‘People’, the footage depicts Baldoni, 40, and Lively, 37, filming a dialogue-free scene in the hit 2024 movie, speaking out of character to joke about his nose and her spray tan.
The actress-producer’s lawyers now say in a statement shared with ‘People’ that “every frame of the released footage corroborates, to the letter”, what Lively included in her lawsuit about that scene.
In her December 20 complaint suing Baldoni and some of his associates, alleging sexual harassment and a retaliatory smear campaign against her, Lively claimed he exhibited “disturbing" and “unprofessional” behavior on the set of the hit Colleen Hoover adaptation, causing a "hostile work environment" and “grief, fear, trauma, and extreme anxiety”.
In Lively’s complaint was the accusation that during a “slow dance scene”, Baldoni “leaned forward and slowly dragged his lips from her ear and down her neck as he said, ‘It smells so good’”.
After “caressing” Lively “with his mouth in a way that had nothing to do with their roles,” Baldoni later allegedly responded to her objection by saying, “I’m not even attracted to you”, according to the filing.
Baldoni countered with a December 31 lawsuit against The New York Times for libel, false light invasion of privacy and more over an article covering her allegations.
He then filed a $400 million lawsuit on January 16 against Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and their publicist, claiming defamation and extortion.