Justin Baldoni rubbishes Blake Lively’s ‘shameful’ sexual harassment claim: Desperate attempt to fix negative reputation | Hollywood

Actor-filmmaker Justin Baldoni has reacted to his It Ends With Us co-star Blake Lively’s allegations of sexual harassment and a smear campaign against him. Through his legal representative, Baldoni denied the claims and called them a ‘desperate attempt’ by Blake to ‘fix her negative reputation’. (Also read: Everything Blake Lively claims: ‘Watching her naked to explicit videos’ in her complaint against Justin Baldoni)

Justn Baldoni’s lawyer responds to sexual harrassment lawsuit

Hours after it became public that Blake Lively had sued Baldoni for sexual harassment, Bryan Freedman, attorney for Baldoni, issued a statement to the Mirror UK, calling the allegations ‘categorically false’ and terming the lawsuit ‘shameful’. The statement called the accusations “a desperate attempt to ‘fix’ her negative reputation which was garnered from her own remarks and actions during the campaign for the film; interviews and press activities that were observed publicly, in real-time and unedited, which allowed for the internet to generate their own views and opinions.”

Among the allegations made by Blake, one claimed that Baldoni hired a PR firm to launch a smear campaign against her to dent her credibility. Freedman acknowledged the engagement of a crisis manager by Wayfarer Studios, owned by Baldoni. He said this was “due to the multiple demands and threats made by Ms Lively during production which included her threatening to not showing up to set, threatening to not promote the film, ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met.”

Freedman also claimed that Blake Lively hired publicist Leslie Sloan ‘to plant negative and completely fabricated and false stories with media’ against Baldoni.

Blake Lively’s allegations

On Saturday, TMZ broke the news that Blake Lively, who starred in It Ends With Us, was suing Justin Baldoni. The lawsuit discussed a hostile work environment on the film’s sets, including sexual harassment and a coordinated effort on Baldoni’s part to destroy Blake’s reputation.

The lawsuit also addressed the following demands because of Justin’s alleged conduct, which included “no more showing nude videos or images of women to Blake, no more mention of Baldoni’s alleged previous pornography addiction, no more discussions about sexual conquests in front of Blake and others, no further mentions of cast and crew’s genitalia, no more inquiries about Blake’s weight, and no further mention of Blake’s dead father”.