Ari Emanuel has long been known to consider loyalty a top virtue and last night the Endeavor CEO came out unabashedly for Team Blake in the convoluted and sprawling conflict between the It Ends With Us star, Ryan Reynolds and former WME client Justin Baldoni.
I’ve known Ryan and Blake for over a decade,” Emanuel said at a taping of the Freakonomics Radio Live show Thursday night. “They’re really incredible people,” he added. “In Hollywood, they have been incredibly successful. People work with them, they’ve never had any bad mojo out there or treated people badly. They are charitable – we help them with their foundation – they’ve given tons of money away.”
Franchise superstar Reynolds signed with WME in 2014, with Gossip Girl alum Lively inking with the agency in 2015. Baldoni began being represented by WME in 2019.
Bluntly calling what allegedly went down during production of the Sony distributed IEWU and the online smear campaign that Lively says Baldoni, Crisis PR chief Melissa Nathan and their minions subjected her to “a fucked up, bad situation,” the TKO exec also told host Stephen Dubner that it was he who personally dumped the Jane the Virgin vet from WME on December 21.
“I fired him,” Emanuel proclaimed of Baldoni’s pink slipping from his then agency, as Deadline reported, one day after Lively filed a sexual harassment and retaliation complaint with California’s Civil Rights Department.
“She felt that she was not being protected,” Emanuel stated of Lively and concerns the actress seemingly expressed repeatedly during IEWU filming, “She complained and then these people tried to go after her. They should stop. They’re still trying to do it, they should stop.”
Reported at length in the New York Times expose ‘We Can Bury Anyone: Inside A Hollywood Smear Campaign’, the CRD filing was a prelude to the lawsuit Lively hit Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios, its CEO, financier, and publicists Nathan and Jennifer Abel with on New Year’s Eve. Among a flurry of lawsuits, media appearances, leaks and missives, Baldoni sued the Gray Lady for $250 million on NYE and Lively, Reynolds and their PR chief Leslie Sloane in a $400 million defamation and extortion action on January 16. With a recent amended complaint by Baldoni, as well as a $7 million defamation suit against Lively from Texas-based alleged social media manipulator Jed Wallace, an amended complaint is expected from Lively and her Deadpool hubby’s side soon.
Now a media cottage industry, the whole shabang is set to go to trial in March 2026 in New York federal court.
“If what is alleged in her lawsuit that what happened on social media is true, just because she complained to the studio that things were unhealthy on the set, and that he was director and this man was the producer, and they did to her what is being alleged, they’re really bad people,” Emanuel said of the Bryan Freedman represented Baldoni and his professional partner Jamey Heath last night on stage.
“I know Blake, I know Ryan, they’re good people.”
Representatives for Baldoni did not respond to request from Deadline this morning for comment on Emanuel’s remarks. If they do respond, this post will be updated.
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