The It Ends With Us lawsuit has just begun and now others are being roped into the drama.
A legal battle between the movie's star, Blake Lively, and her co-star and director Justin Baldoni has begun after the feud between the two of them sent the movie's press tour into a spiral. A complaint filed by Lively's team alleges that Baldoni choreographed an attempt to destroy her career.
In her allegations, Lively says she was retaliated against after Baldoni worried her sexual harassment complaints against him would be made public and entered into a smear campaign to damage her reputation. His messages with his PR team reportedly noted that they can "bury anyone," USA Today reports.
Now, Taylor Swift, and subsequently Scooter Braun have been linked to the legal battle between the movie stars.
Lively has been one of Swift's closest friends and in documents obtained by Lively's lawyer, they allege that Baldoni had employed the services of a crisis PR executive, Melissa Nathan, and the publicist Jennifer Abel.
Nathan owns the company The Agency Group, who is owned by Hybe America, which is owned by Scooter Braun. He became the sole CEO of the company in 2023 after his company, Ithaca Holdings, merged with Hybe in April 2021, Variety reports. The merger gave the company a 100% stake in Ithaca and its properties. These included, at the time, management deals with artists like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande.
Of course, Swift and Braun have been at odds since the latter bought the rights to the old masters of her first six albums, leading the singer to embark on a years-long journey to re-record her old projects such as Red and 1989.
In legal documents obtained by the New York Times in the Lively case, a potential strategy outlined suggested that Baldoni and his team planted stories that use "the weaponization of feminism" and how Swift and Lively have used these tactics in the past in order to get what they want.
Lively's suit against Baldoni includes claims of sexual harassment, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence.
During the press run for the movie, Lively's past was brought up, including her marriage to Ryan Reynolds on a plantation as well as in interview she gave that allegedly made the interviewer want to quit her job.
The latter resurfaced during the uncomfortable press run for It Ends With Us.
However, the interviewer has since denied that she was involved in the alleged smear campaign against Lively.
"This is what I do for a living. I would never accept money to jeopardize my integrity as a journalist," she said in a YouTube video.
"I know nothing about Justin Baldoni. I know nothing about his PR team, and I definitely would never work with a PR team under any circumstances to put hate out there on the internet against someone or to smear someone. I would never ever do that," Kjersti Flaa added.
The interviewer shared that messages sent by members of Baldoni's team were "disgusting."
She went on to criticize Lively and said that the movie star should take accountability for her "tone-deaf" promotion of their movie, including the domestic violence elements of it.
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