Justin Baldoni Confuses Publicity With Litigation. Again.

Dude. Stop.

Justin Baldoni is the pettiest bitch in LA, and he wants to make sure we all know it.

Or as the Hollywood news site Deadline put it, “Having been dropped by WME [his agents] and sued by Blake Lively for sexual harassment and an alleged online smear campaign, Justin Baldoni has now made it clear he never ever wants to work on a Disney project.”

Who are these people, and why do you care?

The It Ends With Us actor and director is in a trench war with his co-star Blake Lively over allegations that he and producer Jamey Heath created a hostile work environment during filming, and then preemptively set out to ruin Lively’s name in case she came forward and talked about it. As we discussed on the show, the allegations were first aired in a December 21, 2024 New York Times story titled “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.”

On New Years Eve, Lively filed a sexual harassment complaint in federal court in New York against Baldoni, Heath, their publicists, their movie studio Wayfarer, and their billionaire backer Steve Sarowitz. She alleges that they illegally retaliated against her harassment claims with a coordinated smear campaign that damaged her brand just as she was launching her hair care line Blake Brown in August of 2024.

At the exact same time that Lively was filing her claim, Baldoni filed a libel suit of his own, this one against the New York Times in California state court. Baldoni’s claims rest on the theory that it is defamatory to: print partial quotes (no); rely on a public legal filing (no); and print something after the subject has denied it (again, no).

“The Times participated actively in the legal maneuvering at the heart of Lively’s strategy” Baldoni’s complaint blustered. “Notably, Lively chose not to file a lawsuit against Baldoni, Wayfarer, or any of the Plaintiffs—a choice that spared her from the scrutiny of the discovery process, including answering questions under oath and producing her communications.” Oops.

Clearly Baldoni misjudged the situation. And while his pit bull lawyer Bryan Freedman has been around the block plenty, he may come to regret taking on the company that actually established the legal standard for defamation of a public figure. Did he forget that the New York Times is THE New York Times from New York Times v. Sullivan? Does he understand that California has a strong anti-SLAPP law, and that it will be applied even if the case is removed to federal court? Does he understand that lawsuits can be great publicity and still ruin your career?

Sue more people, it makes you look super righteous, Mister Manbun!

Lively is married to actor Ryan Reynolds, who accompanied his wife to a January 2024 meeting in New York at which Baldoni and Heath committed to clean up their act as a condition of Lively returning to the set. And one of the first tipoffs to fans that something was amiss among the cast and crew of the movie was when Reynolds unfollowed Baldoni on social media. But now Baldoni, whose fans haven been calling Reynolds a bully, is trying to draw the actor further into the dispute.

As reported by Deadline and Variety, Freedman fired off a litigation hold letter last week to Marvel president Kevin Feige, Disney CEO Bob Iger, and Tim Miller, director of the Deadpool movies. Reynolds anchors the franchise, playing the titular role and multiple other characters (or multiverse variants, please, don’t make us explain it).

In the most recent installment, Deadpool & Wolverine, Reynolds briefly plays a variant called Nicepool, who serves as a sort of Goofus to Deadpool’s Gallant. Baldoni alleges that the character is based on him and demanded that the studio retain “any and all documents relating to or reflecting a deliberate attempt to mock, harass, ridicule, intimidate, or bully Baldoni through the character of ‘Nicepool,’” along with documents relating to the character’s development, and communications “reflecting any deliberate attempt to link the character of ‘Nicepool’ to Justin Baldoni.”

Parties to a legal dispute, or even a potential legal dispute, have a duty to preserve evidence which may be relevant to the case. (Lookin’ at you, Rudy G!) Officially, a “litigation hold letter” tells the recipient what claims may be raised and which documents are likely to be responsive to those claims.

Unofficially, a litigation hold letter is meant to scare the shit out of the recipient. The average person tends to panic when they open up the mail to find a seven-page nastygram on law firm letterhead announcing that litigation is imminent and describing the penalties for spoliating evidence. But Marvel and Disney are not the average person, and you may infer from the fact that Variety and Deadline got their hands on these letters that Baldoni’s lawyers had some other purpose in mind.

At first blush, admitting that you resemble the doofus character would appear to be the classic “telling on yourself.” But on the facts, Baldoni does seem to have a point.

During the film, Nicepool shouts “Where in God’s name is the intimacy coordinator?” Lively alleges that the set of It Ends With Us had no intimacy coordinator and that Baldoni improvised several sex scenes. While shooting the scene where she gives birth, she says Baldoni insisted that she be naked from the waist down, failed to close the set so as to prevent the footage being streamed to every production member’s iPad, and parked his (non-actor) buddy between her legs to play the role of the obstetrician.

But Deadpool was filmed in 2023, long before the complaint was filed. (The two movies were shot roughly simultaneously, both interrupted by the writers’ and SAG-AFTRA strikes). And so, if the intimacy coordinator were the only similarity, it might be written off as a coincidence.

But then there’s the scene where the Nicepool character gushes that his wife, played by Blake Lively in a cameo role, has snapped back postpartum: “Oh, my goodness, wait until you see Ladypool, she is gorgeous. She just had a baby too, and you can’t even tell.”

In her suit, Lively alleges that Baldoni pestered her about her weight, just after she’d given birth to the couple’s fourth child:

On the second day of filming, for example, Mr. Baldoni made the rest of the cast and crew wait for hours while he cried in Ms. Lively’s dressing room, claiming social media commentators were saying that Ms. Lively looked old and unattractive based on paparazzi photos from the set.

She says that he “secretly called her fitness trainer, without her knowledge or permission, and implied that he wanted her to lose weight in two weeks” and sent her up with a holistic therapist who turned out to be a weight-loss specialist.

Onscreen, the Deadpool character frowns that “I don’t think you’re supposed to say that.”

“That’s okay,” Nicepool responds, with his hand on his heart in exaggerated sincerity, “I identify as a feminist.”

That one’s a bit on the nose.

Baldoni and Heath co-host a podcast called “Man Enough,” dedicated to “reframing masculinity” and “building a movement around healthy manhood and greater equity for all.” Baldoni has referred to himself as “male feminist.” All of which tracks with the description of shooting the birth scene, where Baldoni told the mother of four “that women give birth naked, and that his wife had ‘ripped her clothes off’ during labor” and that it “was ‘not normal’ for women to remain in their hospital gowns while giving birth.”

Heath then stuck a phone with what Lively initially thought was pornography in her face:

Mr. Heath explained that the video was his wife giving birth. Ms. Lively was alarmed and asked Mr. Heath if his wife knew he was sharing the video, to which he replied “She isn’t weird about this stuff,” as if Ms. Lively was weird for not welcoming it. Ms. Lively and her assistant excused themselves, stunned that Mr. Heath had shown them a nude video.

And Variety got the granular social media details:

In the end credits of “Deadpool & Wolverine,” the actor who plays Nicepool is listed as “Gordon Reynolds” and not Ryan Reynolds. In a strange twist, Lively thanked Gordon Reynolds in the end credits of “It Ends With Us,” drawing a seeming line to Nicepool. And in July 22 Instagram post that tagged @deadpoolmovie and @itendswithusmovie, Lively wrote “about Nice men who use feminism as a tool.”

So … yeah. If Nicepool wasn’t modeled on Baldoni personally, it was based on a very specific kind of male ally who ignores boundaries and condescends to women under the guise of identifying with them.

Fine, say it’s you, bro. So what?

On January 7, Freedman went on rightwing shitstirrer Megyn Kelly’s podcast to stir up shit, of course.

“There’s no question it relates to Justin. I mean, anybody that watched that hair bun,” he vamped, referring to the Nicepool character. He added that the sexual harassment claims were obviously false because, “If somebody is seriously sexually harassed, you don’t make fun of it. (Kelly was portrayed by the actress Charlize Thereon in Bombshell, the movie about pervasive sexual harassment at Fox by Roger Ailes. Irony is dead.)

Baldoni has not, as of this writing, sued Marvel, Disney, Blake Lively, or Ryan Reynolds for tortious making fun of his man-bun. Perhaps because that’s not a tort, in California or anywhere else. It’s not harassment, or defamation, or appropriation of likeness, or any other bullshit claim that Baldoni’s fanboys want to fling around on Reddit. Just ask Jerry Falwell, Sr., who absolutely did not lose his virginity to his mother over a glass of Campari in the outhouse after kicking out the goat. And he never got a penny out of Hustler Magazine!

Baldoni was reckless enough to file that SLAPP suit against the New York Times, though, so perhaps he actually will take on the Mouse. He probably won’t win, but after alienating every studio in California, he can go off to a second act as a holy martyr of the Manosphere, bro-ing it up with Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk. It’ll make a hell of a movie one day!