“It Ends With Us” star Blake Lively lost her claims against director and co-star Justin Baldoni when a judge dismissed a number of them. Lively filed a lawsuit last year against Baldoni, his production companies, and a crisis communications expert, claiming that she experienced sexual harassment and retaliation afterward for reporting it.

Lively and Baldoni Lawsuit 

Lively alleges that while on the set of the 2024 movie “It Ends With Us,” she endured multiple instances of sexual harassment by her co-stars. Baldoni also countersued the Gossip Girl for $400 million, but that lawsuit was dismissed in June 2025.

In the decision to dismiss several charges, U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman detailed what led to his decision. Lively initially signed an offer letter that brought her onto the movie. The plan was to have her sign a longer contract, known as an Actor Loanout Agreement (ALA), that had a more exhaustive list of contractual obligations.

Judge’s Decision

Since Lively never signed the ALA, her team went back and forth with the production company for about a year. “It is clear that the ALA is not, and has never been, a validly formed and binding contract,” Liman wrote in his opinion. 

“Lively argues that her withholding of her signature suggests at most that the parties continued to disagree over a limited subset of terms (in her estimation, about twenty percent), not that they disagreed over the formation of the contract in general. But twenty percent of an agreement’s provisions is not an insubstantial amount, and the specific provisions at issue also are not insignificant or immaterial to issues of formation. One of the contested provisions is the very one under which Lively now sues: Paragraph 7, which prohibits sexual harassment and retaliation.”

Sexual Harassment Allegations

The movie started filming in May 2023, but was put on pause during the writers’ strike, and while that went on, Lively claims that several incidents ocurred reaching levels of sexual harassment that created a hostile work environment. 

Lively alleges that Baldoni and other members on set discussed their personal sexual experiences and pornography addictions, leading to an uncomfortable work environment. Additionally, she claims that others came into her trailer while she was nude or breastfeeding her newborn and watched her.

Contract Agreements

After the first phase of filming concluded, Lively gave a list of 17 demands, threatening not to return if they were not met. Some included hiring an intimacy coordinator and executing nudity riders before rehearsing or filming intimate scenes. 

Both parties signed a Contract Rider Agreement (CRA) after a January 4, 2024, meeting at Lively’s home, which she shares with her husband, Ryan Reynolds, and four other children. Baldoni and other defendants filed a motion to dismiss, citing that the CRA was invalid if the ALA was invalid because its language relied heavily on the other.

However, Liman disagreed, saying the document was signed; therefore, it was valid and allowed Lively’s cause of action for breach of the CRA to proceed.

Lively claimed that she was Baldoni’s and the production studio’s employee while filming the movie, insinuating that she is protected against sexual harassment, but Liman disagreed. He said the law was designed to protect employees from independent contractors who have more control over their employment. Liman states that Lively’s economic independence makes her an independent contractor.

Smear Campaign

To address Lively’s claims of retaliation for reporting the sexual harassment claims, Liman deferred to California law since the alleged smear campaign against the actress was “planned, coordinated, and implemented” in the West Coast state.

Lively argued that Baldoni and the production companies launched a smear campaign against her to discredit the sexual harassment claims. Her team submitted text from one of the defendant’s notes into evidence, showing the alleged campaign was coordinated.

The defendant was “out to dinner with a friend of 12+ years who writes for People magazine, Fox News, In Touch, US Weekly, and she is fully briefed of the situation and is armed and ready to take this story of Blake weaponizing feminism to any of her outlets the moment we give her the green light. She hates Blake, has heard this story before, and will do anything for us. Just fyi. 🙂.”

Lively says that her reputation and career have been tarnished due to the alleged smear campaign. She said she has not received any “meaningful or real offers” since the film premiered at the end of 2024.

Judge Liman is allowing the allegations of retaliation and aiding in retaliation to proceed to trial, suggesting California law has been violated. A final pretrial conference has been set for April 28, 2026, and the trial is scheduled for May 18.