'Exhausted' Justin Baldoni Talks 'Intense Year' Of 'Emotional Stress' In New Interview Recorded Right Before Blake Lively Legal Battle Began!

Justin Baldoni had been going through it shortly before his messy legal battle with Blake Lively began.

The 41-year-old actor got candid about the emotional toll the “stress” from the past year took on him on a new episode of the Gent’s Talk Podcast that dropped on Monday. If you’ve been following the It Ends With Us, you already know why he had such a challenging time! Justin recorded the podcast one month before Blake filed a lawsuit against the director, accusing him of sexually harassing her while working on the movie and launching a smear campaign to “destroy” her reputation in retaliation for speaking up. However, the rumors of their on-set feud had been running rampant by the time of the recording!

He has since vehemently denied her allegations, claiming she was the one to orchestrate a smear campaign against him — not the other way around. He also accused Blake and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, of using their star power to take control of the movie from him. In January, he sued the couple and their publicist, Leslie Slone, for $400 million, claiming civil extortion, defamation, and more. After what we’ve learned about what happened during It Ends With Us from Justin’s perspective, you can understand why he said he was so stressed! And if the filmmaker felt burnt out back then, imagine how he must feel now!

Before the lawsuits, Justin told podcast host Samir Mourani he had such “an intense year” that he had to message his friend and Wayfarer Studios CEO Jamey Heath and Tera Hanks, the president of the production company, that he needed to take time for himself:

“This morning, I sent a text message to my best friend Jamey and the president of my company, Tera, and I told them that I wasn’t in the best place. I told them that I was exhausted, that I haven’t given myself time to recover or time to heal.”

Oof…

Justin recalled that during the “intense year,” he experienced “a lot of material success” but “a lot of emotional stress was very hard” on him and his family as well, adding:

“I wear a lot of hats, and I carry a lot because I love what I do. I love the company I built. The brand that we’ve built. I love the people that work for us. I love the movies that we make. I love the impact that we have and yet sometimes it’s easy to, as you said earlier, fall back into our programming and be swept away in the current of self and be kind of overtaken by the wave of success and opportunity.”

So, the Jane The Virgin alum felt he needed to reach out to Jamey and Tera to tell them what was going on with his mental health. Justin explained to the pair that he woke up at 4:30 in the morning that day with his “heart racing” and he was not “feeling great” and recognized he was experiencing “some anxiety.” Basically, the Clouds director was “not in the best place.” Once he checked in with himself, he realized he needed to “prioritize” his time and limit the projects they moved forward with since he hadn’t “given myself the time to heal from this year that I needed.”

Then “in the spirit of vulnerability,” Justin said he shared the same text with his assistant and his publicist, Jennifer Abel. The Will & Harper executive producer went on to point out that he is a “work in progress” who is “always trying to be radically sincere and authentic to myself” and “have the most impact.” He continued:

“And sometimes I can get lost in the same way that everybody gets lost, but healing isn’t linear, and growth isn’t linear, and if you don’t have setbacks and if you don’t have plateaus, then you don’t have the opportunity to group and to push forward.”

Unfortunately for Justin, he won’t be getting a break from all the tension since he is in the middle of a legal dispute with Blake, which won’t head to trial until March 9, 2026. It’s just another “intense” year for him. Yikes. Hopefully, he is prioritizing his mental health as much as possible through this. We’d hate to see him end up in that no-so-great place again. Watch the podcast interview (below):