Blake Lively And The Court Of Opinion

It seems a long, long time since Blake Lively hit the headlines for suing the director and co-star of her film ‘It Ends With Us’; Justin Baldoni. A lot has happened in just six months, and although she filed the lawsuit, it is Blake’s reputation which has arguably taken the biggest battering.

This is largely because she of course had a bigger, more established reputation to lose. A teen star who had developed into a fully-fledged Hollywood darling, marrying one of the industry’s good guys in Ryan Reynolds. Developing into one half of a hugely influential power couple, going on to have three children whilst both sustaining massively successful and high-earning movie careers. And although they seemed annoyingly perfect… they were also somehow annoyingly likeable. Their relationship smacked of genuine depth, respect and affection.

However Lively’s goofy, fun, ‘girls girl’ persona has been scrutinised and somewhat dismantled in the months since she first lodged a sexual harassment complaint against Baldoni in December 2024. From the way she speaks to interviewers, to the way she promoted her own brand whilst apparently advocating for domestic violence charities whilst promoting the film, there have been several less than favourable exposes.

In the aftermath of #metoo, Wenstein and Epstein, it’s usual in the world of celebs for a male star accused of an offence against females to be immediately cancelled, and at the beginning of 2025, that’s certainly how it looked like it might go for Justin Baldoni. He was of course a way smaller star in the celebrity sky, and many expected him to buckle under the pressure of Lively and Reynold’s heavyweight presence and knock-out allegations.

But Baldoni came back swinging. In return for Lively suing him for sexual harassment and unprofessional on-set behaviour, he immediately countersued for reputational damage, defamation of character, invasion of privacy and civil extortion.

One thing Blake had seemed to have in her favour was the stable of Hollywood friends who she surely must’ve assumed would protect her. Baldoni of course, having only recently broken through into the major league, had way less of those. But Lively’s famous pals have now become embroiled in the saga, and they’re not pleased about it one little bit. When the news broke that none other than Taylor Swift was being subpoenaed to give evidence in court on Blake’s behalf, the media went wild.

One of Swift’s songs, ‘My Tears Ricochet’, was used in the film; a film which surely Baldoni and Lively now both wish they’d never seen the script for. However although there were 19 other songs in total used in the film soundtrack, only TayTay is being brought to the court case, leading many industry commentators to assert that Blake has ‘thrown Taylor under the bus’ in order to elevate her status and put the frighteners on Baldoni.

If that was her plan; it seems to have hugely back-fired. Taylor’s representatives immediately issued a statement minimising Swift’s involvement in the film to purely giving the rights to one song, but saying she had no creative input whatsoever and didn’t even see the film until weeks after its release. Ouch.

An avalanche of podcast episodes, viral videos and blogposts followed from furious Swifties around the globe. As everyone from Trump to Kanye has learned to their detriment, Taylor’s fans do not take kindly to their Queen being criticised or accused of anything she hasn’t done.

And it’s not just TayTay. Lively and Reynolds have for many years been at the centre of a new wave Hollywood dynasty. But now it seems heavyweight hitters in the industry are distancing themselves from the pair until they see how this whole thing is going to pan out.

There’s also the issue of the shared friends Swift and Lively have in common. The girl-squad of dreams has been fractured and now there is speculation about where loyalties will ultimately lie for the likes of Cara Delevigne, Gigi Hadid and Karlie Kloss. Who will be Team Blake? And who will sit at the table of Team Taylor?

The problem with the apparent disintegration of their friendship, and also with the case between Baldoni and Livel’s lawsuits, is that everything has been so chewed over by both the mainstream media and social media, that the truth is so dog-eared it’s hardly recognisable. Even the judge presiding over the case thinks so. Judge Liman, the lucky guy who gets to sit and listen to the ‘he said, she said’ spectacle, issued a statement restricting public statements by both parties, stating that they were adversely affecting the judicial process.

In amongst all this, one has to wonder what Lively herself makes of how this is all panning out. Does she wish she’d never started it or does she still feel that a wrong has been done to her which needs to be righted? With no sign of the drama abating, it seems to be the latter.

It will always be true in showbusiness, and in real life, that what happens in court is very different to what happens in the court of public opinion. It may well be that legally Lively still emerges as the victor, but the loss of her reputation may prove a lot more costly than her mammoth legal fees.