A voice message in which Blake Lively makes a personal request to Justin Baldoni is among the unsealed court documents in their ongoing legal dispute.
Baldoni and Lively have been involved in lawsuits against each other since 2024, following the production of It Ends With Us, which was directed by Baldoni and starred the pair of them in the leading roles.
However, Lively later accused her co-star of sexual harassment and attempting to launch a smear campaign against her, with him denying doing either of those things, and the ongoing legal battle since then having several public twists and turns.
She sued him, he countersued her accusing Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds of hijacking the production of It Ends With Us, and last year his countersuit was dismissed by a judge.
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The matter is due to go to trial in May, but more exchanges between them have been unsealed. These include messages in which Baldoni claims he thought Lively was attempting to 'trap' him, and her telling Matt Damon that Baldoni had claimed he spoke to her dead dad.
Messages where Reynolds called Baldoni a 'thoroughbred, predatory fraudster', an 'inexplicably toxic mess' and a 'controlling b***h' are also there.
Now People reports that another piece of evidence uncovered is a voice message from Lively to Baldoni sent on 8 February 2023, where she spoke about feeling overwhelmed before returning to work after giving birth.
"Hey. I hope you’re so well. Just wanted to connect just to put something on your radar. So, between us. Like, this is so premature for me to even share this with you. All good, all good stuff. Headline is great, good, great stuff," Lively said at the start of the message.
She explained she was set to film something else before It Ends With Us, telling Baldoni 'I gave them my word and I wouldn’t go back on that', but this meant she only had a one-week break between shooting the projects.
She went on to say she didn't have a baby nurse and talked about having more time to shoot the movie, she said: "Shooting in April, shooting in March is just too soon after having a baby and not sleeping and wanting to be in my best shape."
Elsewhere in the message, Lively brought up the idea of changing the production timeline and said spending a month apart from Reynolds was difficult, saying 'the most we've ever done is less than two weeks'.
Lively added that she was 'talking to you as a friend at this point more than anything' as she spoke for just over four minutes and wrapped up with a joke that what she'd said to Baldoni in that time could probably have been done in 30 seconds, but 'this is my social interaction these days - just talking into voice memos'.
Given what has happened since then, it seems unlikely that they'd be talking to each other as friends at this point, with unsealed messages showing she'd later call him a 'doofus director' and a 'clown'.
It's all heading towards that court date in May.
Topics: Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, Celebrity
Joe Harker