A lawyer for Blake Lively is fighting back against a claim from Justin Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, that a member of Lively’s legal team tried to extort Taylor Swift into releasing a statement of support for the “A Simple Favor” star.
According to Freedman’s letter, filed with the court and Judge Lewis J. Liman on Wednesday, “Michael Gottlieb of Willkie Farr, counsel for the Lively Defendants, contacted a Venable attorney who represents Ms. Swift and demanded that Ms. Swift release a statement of support for Ms. Lively, intimating that, if Ms. Swift refused to do so, private text messages of a personal nature in Ms. Lively’s possession would be released.”
More from Variety
-
Benson Boone, Taylor Swift, Universal Music Publishing Group Win Top Honors at 2025 BMI Pop Awards
-
Taylor Swift Subpoenaed by Justin Baldoni’s Attorney in Blake Lively Suit
-
Paul Feig Says ‘Outrage’ Against Blake Lively and ‘Another Simple Favor’ Drama Is ‘Boring’: ‘You Don’t Know What You’re Talking About’
Freedman’s accusation is impossible to independently verify since it is solely based on information from an unnamed “source who is highly likely to have reliable information.” No other sources in support of the claim were provided in Freedman’s filing.
In a statement shared with Variety, Gottlieb slammed the accusation as “categorically false” and “cowardly sourced to supposed anonymous sources, and completely untethered from reality.”
“This is what we have come to expect from the Wayfarer parties’ lawyers, who appear to love nothing more than shooting first, without any evidence, and with no care for the people they are harming in the process,” Gottlieb said. “We will imminently file motions with the court to hold these attorneys accountable for their misconduct here.”
Lively’s camp went on to file a scathing letter of its own to Judge Liman, asking Freedman’s accusation to be struck from the record.
“On behalf of our client, Blake Lively, we respectfully move to strike the letter signed by Mr. Bryan Freedman and filed earlier today,” read the letter from lawyer Esra Hudson. “That letter, which was not filed with any evidentiary support of any kind, much less anything under oath, falsely accuses Ms. Lively, and her counsel, of engaging in ‘witness tampering and evidence spoliation’ based on an undisclosed anonymous source.”
The letter continued, “It should be unnecessary to respond to anonymously sourced, baseless, allegations recklessly leveled without any supporting evidence. It is worth stating for the record, however, that each of the allegations in the Freedman Letter is unequivocally and demonstrably false. As a legal matter, the Freedman Letter is improper. It does not seek any form of relief, is irrelevant to any motion currently pending before the Court, and serves no legitimate purpose. It is not useful to the Court in any respect.”
This back and forth stems from a motion by Swift’s camp at Venable LLP to quash a subpoena to produce documents, which was served on May 9. The subpoena was in relation to Baldoni’s defamation lawsuit, which was filed in January. The suit contained texts between Lively and Baldoni in which Lively appears to refer to Swift as “one of her dragons.” After news broke of the subpoena, a representative for Swift denied any involvement in Lively and Baldoni’s film “It Ends with Us,” from which the litigation between them stemmed.
The statement read, “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 traveling around the globe during 2023 and 2024 headlining the biggest tour in history.”
Best of Variety
-
New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week
-
Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series – The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and ‘Hot Ones’ Stir Up Buzz
-
Oscars Predictions 2026: ‘Sinners’ Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
