Adedokun Waliyu 
Justin Baldoni has scored a legal victory in his ongoing court battle with Blake Lively when a judge ruled the actor can obtain messages between his It Ends With Us co-star and her pop star pal Taylor Swift.
Lively had been seeking to prevent Baldoni from accessing her personal communications with Swift, but U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman ruled that his legal team can access communications between the two as it pertains to their work on It Ends With Us.
Last December, Lively, 37, accused Baldoni, 41, of sexual harassment on the set of their 2024 romantic drama and claimed he tried to damage her reputation as part of a smear campaign after a meeting in which she and her husband Ryan Reynolds addressed “repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behaviour” by the Jane the Virgin star and producers on the film.
The New York Times also published an article with the headline “We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine,” which was an account of how Baldoni’s PR team allegedly tried to ruin Lively’s reputation.
Baldoni denied the allegations and countersued Lively accusing her, Reynolds and the Times of defamation and extortion.
But his suit hit a snag last week when Liman pronounced Baldoni couldn’t sue for defamation because allegations in a legal claim are exempt from libel lawsuits. Liman also nixed Baldoni’s claim that Lively stole creative control of the film.
The Times were let off the hook because Baldoni had not shown that the paper “acted with actual malice.”
The judge, however, said Baldoni could revise the lawsuit if he wanted to pursue different claims, which he intends to do.
But as part of his defence against Lively’s lawsuit, Baldoni will be able to obtain access to communications between the actress and Swift.
“Given that Lively has represented that Swift had knowledge of complaints or discussions about the working environment on the film, among other issues, the requests for messages with Swift regarding the film and this action are reasonably tailored to discover information that would prove or disprove Lively’s harassment and retaliation claims,” Liman wrote.
A representative for Lively denounced the decision in a statement to NBC News.
“Baldoni’s desire to drag Taylor Swift into this has been constant dating back to August 2024 … a strategy to influence the ‘TS fanbase,’” the spokesperson said.
“We will continue to call out Baldoni’s relentless efforts to exploit Ms. Swift’s popularity, which from day one has been nothing more than a distraction from the serious sexual harassment and retaliation accusations he and the Wayfarer parties are facing,” the spokesperson added, referring to the film’s production company.
The Cruel Summer hitmaker had been subpoenaed by Baldoni’s lawyers as a possible witness in the case, but the legal tactic was dropped last month.
Baldoni alleged that Lively referred to Swift as one of her “dragons” and he has accused the singer of trying to force him to accept Lively’s changes to the film’s script, which was based on the bestselling novel by Colleen Hoover.
After Swift was subpoenaed, a firm representing the Grammy winner said she was irrelevant to the case and insisted her only involvement with It Ends With Us was to allow the use of her song My Tears Ricochet in the trailer and one scene from the movie.
“Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie, she was not involved in any casting or creative decisions, she did not score the film, she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film, she did not even see It Ends With Us until weeks after its public release, and was travelling around the globe during 2023 and 2024 headlining the biggest tour in history,” a representative for Swift told Fox News.
But Liman said that Lively’s claim that Baldoni is trying to use Swift to help craft a “public relations narrative outside of court” doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have access to the messages as it pertains to their movie.
“The mere fact that the request has been discussed in the press does not render it illegitimate,” the judge wrote.
As the he said/she said legal drama continues to unfold ahead of a 2026 trial date, sources tell the Daily Mail that Swift has pulled away from Lively.
“Right now, if Taylor had one wish it would be that she never met Blake,” an insider claimed to the outlet.
“Although there have been good times during their relationship, the issues now concerning the Baldoni case have outweighed them.”
Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce, also recently unfollowed Reynolds on Instagram.
“Taylor and Travis are disgusted with Blake and Ryan and how they tried to use Taylor in their fight against Justin Baldoni,” the source added. “They’re vowing their break from the acting couple is permanent.”
Lively’s reference to Swift as one of her “dragons” also didn’t sit well with the musician.
“She will forever be furious at how Blake quite clearly was using her for clout and leverage in her dealings with Justin. She really hates that Blake would even think like that, let alone write the things she did in that text,” a source told Page Six.
The insider added that they were never even really close.
“They were baking pals, travel pals, home decor pals… and to be totally honest, billionaire pals. They got along because they each lived their lives with the sort of trappings and access and privilege that tons of money brings.”
