Justin Baldoni breaks silence over Blake Lively ‘It Ends With Us’ legal feud
It Ends With Us star Justin Baldoni has broken his silence over the tumultuous legal battle with his co-star, Blake Lively surrounding the making of the 2024 romantic-drama movie.
On July 8th, Baldoni and his wife, Emily, posted an Instagram video in which they began, “We have not spoken publicly for the better part of the last two years, and it’s not because we haven’t had anything to say, because lord knows we have.”
They added, “But it just felt like every time we went to make a video like this, we wanted to speak, something was telling us not to. It just didn’t feel like the right time, and we were talking about it and feeling into it and praying about it.”
Emily admitted that they were finding it “hard to figure out what is right for this specific moment, but what does feel important is that we can genuinely say that we are sitting here today feeling immense gratitude for so many things and so many people.”
However, though the pair have been “saved by gratitude,” that “doesn’t negate the injustice and the pain that we have also felt in the last few years.”
These comments follow on from the May 4th settlement reached between Baldoni and Lively, which spelled an end to their two-year court battle only two weeks before their trial was set to commence.
Notably, a month before the settlement, a judge threw out ten of Lively’s 13 claims against the actor, including sexual harassment claims.
With an eye on this reality, Emily continued, “We’ve had to wrestle with so many things, and try to understand so many things like… how could something like this even happen? Let alone disguised as a fight for women.”
She went on, “The truth is, the reality is there’s been a lot of trauma for us to move through as a family, which also makes it hard to speak…”
Justin then piped in, “What I will say is that there have been so many painful things that have been spoken to existence over the last couple of years, and that created so much noise.”
Speaking on his decision to stay quiet, he explained, “We didn’t want to add to the noise. So we just wanted to let the justice system run its course.”
As such, the couple shared, they remain committed to healing and spending time with their family.
“The truth and the facts have spoken for themselves, and here we are,” Emily concluded.
The video comes not two weeks after Lively sought for Baldoni to compensate her legal fees to the tune of $8 million. A judge previously ruled that Lively was allowed to take this action, as under California law, victims are typically protected from defamation counter-cases if they have reported sexual harassment.
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