Justin Baldoni claims Blake Lively threatened Taylor Swift in escalating 'It Ends With Us' legal battle
Taylor Swift's involvement in the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni legal feud over "It Ends With Us" is questioned amid allegations and denials.
Justin Baldoni’s lawyers have made new bombshell claims in their case against Blake Lively.
On Wednesday, Baldoni’s team filed a document claiming the "It Ends With Us" actress threatened her close friend, Taylor Swift, if she didn’t publicly support Lively during Lively's legal battle against her co-star, People reported.
Lively’s lawyer, Mike Gottlieb, shared a statement with Fox News Digital calling Baldoni’s claim "categorically false."
"We unequivocally deny all of these so-called allegations, which are cowardly sourced to supposed anonymous sources and completely untethered from reality. This is what we have come to expect from the Wayfarer parties’ lawyers, who appear to love nothing more than shooting first, without any evidence, and with no care for the people they are harming in the process," Gottlieb said.
"We will imminently file motions with the court to hold these attorneys accountable for their misconduct here."
On Wednesday, Lively's lawyers filed a motion asking the court to strike the accusations from its docket as "baseless, unnecessary, improper and abusive," they told Fox News Digital.
"It should be unnecessary to respond to anonymously sourced, baseless, allegations recklessly leveled without any supporting evidence. It is worth stating for the record, however, that each of the allegations in the Freedman Letter is unequivocally and demonstrably false. As a legal matter, the Freedman Letter is improper," Lively's legal team wrote.
Baldoni’s team wrote May 14 that it believes subpoenaing Swift is necessary for this case.
"The Lively Defendants' insistence that the Subpoena seeks irrelevant information is wrong," Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, wrote.
Freedman wrote that he received a tip from an anonymous "source who is highly likely to have reliable information." Freedman said that the source shared that Lively asked Swift to delete specific text messages.
WATCH: Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds crack jokes on Time100 carpet as they fight legal battle
Freedman also alleged that Lively’s lawyers contacted Swift’s legal team "and demanded that Ms. Swift release a statement of support for Ms. Lively." He also said they were "intimating that if Ms. Swift refused to do so, private text messages of a personal nature in Ms. Lively's possession would be released."
Fox News Digital has reached out to Baldoni and Swift's reps for comment.
On May 9, Swift was subpoenaed as a witness in the Lively-Baldoni legal battle.
Shortly after the news became public, a spokesperson for Swift denied the pop star had any connection to the 2024 film aside from the licensing of her song "My Tears Ricochet," which was featured in the movie's trailer and used in one scene.
"Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie. She was not involved in any casting or creative decisions. She did not score the film. She never saw an edit or made any notes on the film. She did not even see ‘It Ends With Us’ until weeks after its public release and was traveling around the globe during 2023 and 2024, headlining the biggest tour in history," Swift's representative previously told Fox News Digital.
"The connection Taylor had to this film was permitting the use of one song, ‘My Tears Ricochet,'" the spokesperson added. "Given that her involvement was licensing a song for the film, which 19 other artists also did, this document subpoena is designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case."
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Lively and Baldoni starred together in the romance drama "It Ends with Us," which was based on Colleen Hoover's 2016 book and premiered in August 2024. After a press tour rife with rumors of behind-the-scenes issues between the two, Baldoni and Lively filed lawsuits against each other.
In January, Baldoni accused Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, of civil extortion, defamation and more in a $400 million lawsuit, which mentioned Swift.
The "Jane the Virgin" star's lawsuit followed Lively's December lawsuit accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment while filming "It Ends With Us." However, Baldoni insisted Lively had "falsely" accused him in an attempt to repair her reputation from the fallout from the movie's press tour after she allegedly took control of the film.
In an attempt to prove his claims that Lively had taken control of the movie's production, Baldoni's legal team suggested the actress had used her friendship with the globally famous Swift to threaten him. While working on the film, Lively insisted on rewriting the infamous rooftop scene. Baldoni had been hesitant about the idea, but he told the actress he would "take a look at what she put together," according to the complaint.
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Afterward, Lively invited Baldoni to her New York City home, where the actor said he felt Swift and Reynolds had pressured him into using the rewritten scene.
"Later, Baldoni felt obliged to text Lively to say that he had liked her pages and hadn’t needed Reynolds and her megacelebrity friend to pressure him," the complaint said.
"I really love what you did. It really does help a lot. Makes it so much more fun and interesting. (And I would have felt that way without Ryan and Taylor [emoji] You really are a talent across the board. Really excited nd [sic] grateful to do this together," Baldoni's text said, according to the complaint.
Lively shared a lengthy response, referring to Swift and Reynolds as "dragons" who protect her.
Both sides have given no indication they intend to settle out of court. The legal conflict is scheduled to go to trial before a New York court in March 2026.
Fox News Digital’s Lauryn Overhultz contributed to this report.
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