Justin Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, has spoken out about his client's ongoing lawsuit against Blake Lively in a new podcast.
Freedman, who has given multiple interviews in the months since both Lively and Baldoni filed multi-million-dollar claims against one another, spoke on the newest episode of Matthew Beloni’s The Town podcast.
In this interview, Beloni, who is a former entertainment lawyer himself, grills Freedman over the current state of the legal situation between the pair.
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The situation between Lively and Baldoni is at this point a deeply complicated one – so read here if you want to be caught up on the competing lawsuits the stars of It Ends With us have filed against one another.
Freedman made several claims in the podcast, in which he stated that the facts in Lively’s lawsuit, which allege sexual harassment and a retaliatory smear campaign against her It Ends With us co-star and director, Baldoni, reportedly 'didn't make sense'.
Disagreement over claims of ‘PR retaliation’
One of the core issues that will be debated in the upcoming trial is whether or not, following a return to work meeting post-strike in which Baldoni was given a 17-point list of behaviour he must adhere to, he hired a PR team to work on a smear campaign and create negative press for Lively.
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Freedman says in the podcast: “The issue is ultimately number one: Did anyone even engage in any type of behaviour that was in any way retaliatory at all to start with or is this something where organically negative press started coming out about Blake Lively.”
The filing by Lively’s team claims that Justin Baldoni hired a crisis management PR team, who planted negative stories about the actor and influenced social media to create a narrative against her.
Baldoni denies this, stating that the negative press was a result of Lively’s own actions.
Claimed that the ‘17-point list’ Baldoni signed was the first he had heard of those complaints
Freedman also made the claim in the interview that the 17-point list Baldoni was made to sign upon returning to work post-strike was the first he had heard of the complaints listed.
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He said, when Beloni claimed that Freedman’s client was made to sign an agreement due to his conduct on set prior: “She didn’t get [Baldoni] to sign an agreement saying they would stop. What they agreed to was a 17-point bullet point list that came out of the blue from her lawyer and it was a return to work document as alleged in the pleadings and many of those things have nothing to do with harassment at all.”
Within the 17-point list was a demand that he wouldn't come in to her trailer whilst she was breastfeeding, with Beloni challenging Freedman, saying: "There is somewhat of an assumption that if you take the time to put it in a 17-point agreement that it is an issue that has come up in the past."
Freedman stood his ground however, reiterating his claim that all the issues in the list were the first time they were brought up.
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Freedman claimed that Lively’s own filing stated that: “Once the 17-point list was agreed to everything from then on was fine. There were no issues.”
Freedman said that the filming of all the sex scenes took place after this. In addition to this, he stated that Baldoni was unaware of any issues prior to the agreement being put in front of him.
Lively’s lawsuit claims that Baldoni sexually harassed her, stating that he added ‘gratuitous sexual content’ to the script after she had signed on. She also claims in her lawsuit that he would ‘improvise’ intimacy on set in a way that made her uncomfortable and that Baldoni and producer Jamey Heath showed a ‘lack of boundaries’.
Lively's claims that Baldoni harassed her
The issue of ‘harassment’ is a key one, with Freedman addressing this.
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When asked whether his client harassed Lively, Freedman said: “I can say with certainty that my client [Justin Baldoni] is one of the most honourable people I’ve ever met, is true and genuine, that without question he did not.
“Whether she felt harassed or not is one thing, but does it rise to the legal definition of harassment? The answer to that is no. I can’t speak to how people feel.”
This is again, one of the key battles that will be fought in court between Baldoni and Lively’s teams. Lively’s lawsuit claims the situation caused her ‘severe emotional distress’.
Topics: Blake Lively, Celebrity, Entertainment, Film, Justin Baldoni, TV and Film, Podcast
Michael Slavin