Last week Justin Baldoni filed his biggest response to Blake Lively‘s horrible allegations — in the form of a $400 million lawsuit against the star, her publicist, and her hubby Ryan Reynolds.
Throughout the 179-page filing, the It Ends With Us director attempts to rebut most of what his leading lady said about him, putting the alleged sexual harassment incidents in context and giving his version of the supposed fat-shaming. Ultimately he’s arguing she’s mischaracterizing innocuous moments between a director and actor who were friendly at the time. Why? He contends she and Ryan were just trying to take his movie away from him — so Blake could control the brand — and when the internet saw what a bully she was, she played victim and said it was all a smear campaign he started.
Related: Who Does The Internet Believe — And Why??
Whether his evidence will outweigh her allegations remains to be seen. But she wasn’t about to wait for a jury to decide. In a PR chess move of a statement, her legal team said in response to the action on Thursday afternoon:
“This latest lawsuit from Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and its associates is another chapter in the abuser playbook. This is an age-old story: A woman speaks up with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation and the abuser attempts to turn the tables on the victim. This is what experts call DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim Offender… In short, while the victim focuses on the abuse, the abuser focuses on the victim.”
They called his lawsuit an example of DARVO?! Wow. Kind of takes away any chance he has to deny the allegations, doesn’t it? Saying his denial is an abuser tactic?
Justin’s lawyer Bryan Freedman did more than raise an eyebrow at the counterpunch. He responded to Deadline with his own quote blasting the fact she was essentially accusing him of being an abuser again in her statement:
“After my clients filed a comprehensive lawsuit packed with almost 200 pages of undeniable facts and documentary evidence which crushed their false allegations of a smear campaign by providing doctored communications to the New York Times, Blake and her legal team have just one heinous pivot left, and that is to double down on the revoltingly false sexual allegations against Mr. Baldoni.”
Freedman then doubled down himself — on Justin’s argument:
“The mere fact that Ms. Lively feels that she can publicly destroy Mr. Baldoni’s reputation in an attempt to devastate his future career and then deny him or his team their own ability to defend theirselves against her is preposterous. Mr Baldoni never once publicly attempted to call Ms. Lively out for her own many wrongdoings during filming, he kindly addressed all her concerns during filming in the correct manner despite the fact that he wholly disagreed, he himself was committed to do things differently and to keep the peace as she specifically admitted to in her own lawsuit.”
He finished by turning this around, referencing the point made in the lawsuit about Blake making the It Ends With Us marketing about herself and her brand. He says she may be talking the talk, but he and Justin are the ones who are actually focused on real victims of abusers:
“We will not only continue to defend our clients against Blake’s power, privilege and all out lies, but we will now fight even harder for the voiceless in the DV community who are unfairly suffering while she continues to push on her own self-serving and selfish vendetta in the media.”
Damn.
Plenty of book fans already have the sense Blake was more focused on herself than on victims of domestic violence, so bringing that back up was really smart here. Of course, she opened the door with the DARVO talk. Hmm.
What do YOU think, Perezcious readers??
[Image via CBS Mornings/YouTube/Lia Toby/WENN.]
Related Posts
CLICK HERE TO COMMENT-
Categories