Taylor Swift or even Marvel are actually getting dragged into the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni criminal combat. Here’s the most recent — and the way we were given right here.

The Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni drama is the he-said-she-said case heard round Hollywood — and in May, famous person Taylor Swift used to be formally dragged into the mess, with a subpoena for the artist to seem in court docket.

Lively and Baldoni are entangled in a criminal combat over what might or won’t have came about at the set in their Colleen Hoover adaptation It Ends With Us, with Lively accusing her director and co-star at the movie of sexual harassment and a next retaliatory marketing campaign in opposition to her, and Baldoni denying all allegations and pronouncing the lawsuit is an try to harm his popularity.

Swift, who’s an established good friend of Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, and may be godmother to their 4 kids, used to be pulled into the combat because of the discharge of textual content messages that advised the Gossip Girl alum sought after to make use of Swift’s affect to sway choices on set. In one trade, Lively likened herself to Game of Thrones personality Khaleesi and known as Swift — in addition to Reynolds — one among her “dragons.”

Swift’s reps, alternatively, say that the singer’s simplest involvement within the movie used to be permitting her music “My Tears Ricochet” for use in it.

“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,” her reps acknowledged in a remark to the click, mentioning that the subpoena used to be “designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.”

It’s all very messy — and with the case headed to court docket in March 2026, there may be nearly definitely going to be extra that may spread over the following 10 months. But how did It Ends With Us cross from a extremely expected adaptation of a well-liked BookTok novel to the middle of one of the crucial leisure trade’s largest rifts to this point? Here’s what to grasp.

How all of it started

Lively and Baldoni starred in combination in 2024’s It Ends With Us, according to Hoover’s 2016 romance novel a couple of lady breaking out of the cycle of home violence. Baldoni, who first of all were given the rights to the ebook thru his manufacturing corporate, Wayfarer Studios, additionally directed the movie, whilst Lively used to be additionally an government manufacturer at the undertaking.

When the film got here out in August 2024, enthusiasts spotted that Lively and Baldoni — who performed a pair within the movie — didn’t do interviews in combination or pose for footage on the film’s premiere, fueling hypothesis that there used to be a rift between the 2.

During the movie’s press excursion, Lively confronted backlash for downplaying the tale’s central theme of home violence, as a substitute emphasizing feminine empowerment and the movie’s floral aesthetic or even weaving in promotion for her newly introduced hair care line. Social media buzz became important in opposition to the megastar as previous interviews resurfaced that painted the actress as catty or impolite. Meanwhile, Baldoni — whose emblem and podcast Man Enough is targeted on untangling himself from poisonous masculinity — gained reward for together with home violence as a part of the bigger dialog in regards to the movie.

Blake Lively speaks out

Lively had stayed quiet about her time at the It Ends With Us set and paintings with Baldoni — till December 2024, when she filed a criticism with the California Civil Rights Department. In her criticism, she claimed Baldoni engaged in sexual harassment and created a opposed paintings setting throughout the movie’s manufacturing.

Her criticism coincided with a New York Times exposé titled “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine,” which detailed Lively’s allegations — together with her criminal criticism — and highlighted the alleged retaliatory movements through Baldoni’s group. That integrated Baldoni encouraging publicists to drum up a smear marketing campaign in opposition to the megastar, which Lively acknowledged used to be the motive force at the back of the surprising onslaught of unfavourable social media feedback about her.

Lively used to be first of all met with some public enhance following the New York Times piece — other folks like her Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants costars and her Another Simple Favor director Paul Feig spoke out in her choose — however within the weeks after the item, social media sentiment towards the actress remained unfavourable.

Justin Baldoni pushes again

On Dec. 31, 2024, Baldoni filed a $250 million lawsuit in opposition to the New York Times. The actor claimed that the item crafted a deceptive narrative that broken his popularity the use of cherry-picked communications — like, say, a quoted textual content message that neglected an emoji indicating sarcasm. The New York Times stood through its reporting and in February 2025 filed to brush aside the lawsuit.

On Jan. 16, 2025, Baldoni and his group — together with Wayfarer Studios, manufacturer Jamey Heath and PR reps Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel — filed a lawsuit in New York federal court docket. They accused Lively, her husband Reynolds and her publicist Leslie Sloane of defamation and different contract violations, whilst searching for a whopping $400 million in damages. In Baldoni’s model of occasions, Lively and Reynolds sought after to achieve keep watch over over the making of It Ends With Us, and, when met with resistance, tried to wreck Baldoni’s popularity with a harassment declare.

In the times after his lawsuit submitting, Baldoni’s group launched photos from the It Ends With Us set to be able to contradict a few of Lively’s lawsuits about harassment. Later, in March, he introduced a web page with details about the location for the general public to view.

Also in March, Lively sought to have Baldoni’s lawsuit brushed aside, mentioning California regulation on misconduct claims.

How Taylor Swift were given concerned

Swift entered the dialog when messages between Baldoni and Lively got here to gentle in Baldoni’s submitting. In the lawsuit, she is known as Lively’s “megacelebrity friend,” and Baldoni claimed that Lively used her connection to Swift — whose music “My Tears Ricochet” is within the movie — as leverage over keep watch over of the film. This is why Swift used to be subpoenaed.

Per textual content messages between Baldoni and Lively, Swift used to be allegedly with Lively when she and Baldoni have been discussing a scene from It Ends With Us that Lively sought after to modify.

In one textual content trade between her and Baldoni, Lively wrote of Swift and husband Reynolds, “If you ever get around to watching Game of Thrones, you’ll appreciate that I’m Khaleesi, and like her, I happen to have a few dragons. For better or worse, but usually better. Because my dragons also protect those I fight for. So really we all benefit from those gorgeous monsters of mine. You will too, I can promise you.”

Though Swift’s group acknowledged her simplest function within the movie used to be offering a music for it, as different artists who weren’t subpoenaed had achieved, Baldoni up to now said that she had a bigger have an effect on. He instructed journalists that Swift had watched a video of Isabela Ferrer, who performs a more youthful model of Lively’s personality, and inspired the casting determination — one thing that Ferrer additionally shared with the click.

In addition to Swift, her longtime regulation company Venable is additionally being subpoenaed. The subpoena, first of all served April 29, demanded all communications between Venable and Lively, Reynolds and their lawyer Michael Gottlieb. It in particular named Douglas Baldridge, a Venable spouse who has represented Swift since 2013.

On May 12, Venable filed a movement to brush aside it, consistent with paperwork got through Billboard, calling it a “fishing expedition.” The company said that Venable is under no circumstances concerned within the lawsuit, and that any knowledge Baldoni seeks must be sourced from Lively and Reynolds themselves.

“Venable had nothing to do with the film at issue or any of the claims or defenses asserted in the underlying lawsuit,” the company wrote, arguing the subpoena used to be designed “to distract from the facts of the case and impose undue burden and expense on a non-party.”

In a May 13 court docket submitting, Reynolds and Lively supported Venable’s movement, calling it an “abuse of the discovery process.”

On May 14, alternatively, Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman got here again with a letter to the pass judgement on within the case, consistent with People, mentioning that the verdict to subpoena Swift used to be vital below the cases. Freedman wrote that the group gained a tip from what he believes to be a extremely credible supply that claimed that Lively steered Swift to delete textual content messages between the 2 of them.

The letter additionally alleged that Lively’s attorney demanded that Swift free up a remark of enhance for Lively over the Baldoni scenario, suggesting that if the singer refused, “private text messages of a personal nature in Ms. Lively’s possession would be released,” the letter from Baldoni’s lawyer learn.

In a remark to People on May 14, Lively’s lawyer Gottlieb denied the allegations, which he known 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,” he endured. “We will imminently file motions with the court to hold these attorneys accountable for their misconduct here.”

Where Deadpool is available in

Baldoni also known as out Reynolds’s Marvel film for allegedly making an attempt to wreck his popularity — in particular with the nature of Nicepool, portrayed through Reynolds however credited below the title “Gordon Reynolds.” In the movie Deadpool & Wolverine, Nicepool is an alternate model of Reynolds’s sarcastic superhero Deadpool who sports activities lengthy hair and a bun very similar to a method worn through Baldoni prior to now. Nicepool additionally calls himself a feminist and remarks on Lively’s personality Ladypool’s postpartum frame.

“Reynolds portrayed Nicepool as a vicious caricature of a ‘woke’ feminist before concluding the character’s arc with his violent shooting death at the hands of ‘Ladypool,’ a character voiced by Blake Lively,” the swimsuit states. It calls the nature a “transparent and mocking portrayal of Reynolds’ warped perception of Baldoni.”

The It Ends With Us credit additionally thank “Gordon Reynolds.”

Blake Lively breaks her silence in 2025

Lively and Reynolds stored a reasonably low profile within the rapid wake of the lawsuit. However, the 2 have not too long ago hinted on the drama at public occasions, one among which contains Lively and Reynolds’s February look on the Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary on Feb. 16 — their first public look in combination because the lawsuit broke. When requested how issues have been going through Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, Reynolds jokingly answered with “Why? What have you heard?”

Baldoni’s attorney Freedman addressed the instant on Billy Bush’s podcast, calling it “surprising” that they might funny story about such severe issues.

At the 2025 Time100 Gala on April 24, the place Lively used to be an venerated visitor after making its checklist of maximum influential other folks, she spoke about the use of her voice for just right, pronouncing, “Who and what we stand up for, and what we stay silent about, what we monetize versus what we actually live, matters.”

She additionally hinted at her criminal combat, mentioning, “I have so much to say about the last two years of my life, but tonight is not the forum.”

In a May look on Late Night With Seth Meyers to advertise Another Simple Favor, Lively additionally spoke about the use of her voice for alternate.

“What I can say without getting too much into it is that this year has been full of the highest highs and the lowest lows of my life,” Lively instructed Meyers. “And I see so many women around, afraid to speak — especially right now — afraid to share their experiences. And fear is by design. It’s what keeps us silent. But I also acknowledge that many people don’t have the opportunity to speak. So I do feel fortunate that I’ve been able to. It’s the women who have had the ability to use their voice that’s kept me strong and helped me in my belief and my fight for the world to be safer for women and girls.”