If Justin Baldoni thought his version of what went on during the making of It Ends With Us and the messy fallout from the film was going to go unchallenged, today Blake Livley gave her former co-star a lesson in hardcore lawyering.
Sending out a series of subpoenas to cell carriers AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon as well as alleged social media manipulator Jeb Wallace, the Gossip Girl vet and Ryan Reynolds want to get a look at the real “receipts,” to cite Baldoni and his main lawyer Bryan Freedman’s assertion of transparency.
“Ms. Lively has initiated discovery that will expose the people, tactics, and methods that have worked to ‘destroy’ and ‘bury’ her reputation and family over the past year,” attorneys Esra Hudson and Michael Gottlieb said Wednesday as the paper flew out the door “Subpoenas went out to the entities below,” the duo added of the telecoms, Walace, AOL, and Cloudflare, Inc. “We will now receive all of the “receipts” that, unsurprisingly, are nowhere to be found on Mr. Freedman’s website, and like Ms. Lively, those ‘receipts’ will have their day in court.”
There was no response from Baldoni’s team on the subpoenas. If they do have a response, we will update this post.
With the role and reach of Texas-based Wallace under the microscope even more of late, the attempt to dive deeper into his affairs, at the keyboard and otherwise could be significant. in the overlap of Livley’s likely to be amended New Year’s Eve filed sexual harassment and retaliation suit against Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios, execs and PR team and Baldoni’s now amended January 16 $400 million defamation and extortion suit against Lively, Reynolds and their publicist Leslie Sloane, Wallace could be the inflection point.
At least that’s what Team Blake are saying.
“In their internal private messages that Baldoni’s team never expected anyone would see, they bragged that thanks to Jed’s work they saw a shift in the narrative to putting a spotlight on Blake and laughed at how sad it was that people so easily want to hate on a woman,” a spokesperson for Lively and Reynolds said to Deadline this afternoon. “We look forward to investigating more about Jed Wallace’s entire business model and what else he was doing to distract from the very real sexual harassment and retaliation claims made by Ms. Lively. We are delighted to be able to start discovery on it.”
With multiple lawsuits, including a $7 million defamation action against Lively by alleged online smear campaign mastermind Wallace, at play, Baldoni and Lively and Reynolds are currently set to go to trial on March 29, 2026 in New York.
