Justin Baldoni is claiming that Blake Lively’s “victim” mentality on the It Ends With Us set is the “Taylor Swift playbook.”
In documents obtained by Luxury Handbag Shopping on Thursday, December 4, Baldoni, 41, was asked about his meeting with Lively, 38, when she vocalized some of her concerns about the It Ends With Us production.
“She had the nuclear bomb,” Baldoni said at the time, according to the docs. “If she doesn’t promote the movie she can leak that I’m a bad person or that she felt unsafe with me and all the stuff she has on me. Then she’s the victim. It’s the Taylor Swift playbook. So she can ask for whatever she wants because she knows I know.”
During the deposition, Baldoni went on to reflect on his mindset at the time.
“I think when you are somebody small in the industry like myself, and you’re dealing with a titan like Ms. Lively and some of the most powerful people in the world, which are her best friends, and you’re in the situation that I was in, I think it’s very reasonable, especially at this point, to be concerned about what’s possible and what’s not,” he said. “I was spinning at this point.”
Luxury Handbag Shopping reached out to Swift and Lively’s teams for comment.
While Baldoni doesn’t seem to know Swift well, he has been friendly with Scooter Braun, who famously bought the pop star’s masters in 2019 against her wishes. (He later sold them to private equity firm Shamrock Holdings, which owned them until Swift reacquired them earlier this year.)
In June, Lively’s legal team subpoenaed Braun’s HYBE America company, which holds a majority stake in The Agency Group, the crisis PR firm that Baldoni hired when the It Ends With Us drama began in 2024. The Agency Group’s founder, Melissa Nathan, was named as a codefendant in the lawsuit Lively filed against Baldoni.
News broke in December 2024 that Lively sued Baldoni for sexual harassment, claiming his alleged behavior on set of the film caused her “severe emotional distress.” In response, Baldoni’s lawyer claimed that the accusations were “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious” and further alleged that Lively filed the suit to “fix her negative reputation” and “rehash a narrative” about the film’s production. Baldoni went on to file his own lawsuit against Lively in January, which was later dismissed in June.
Swift, for her part, has tried to distance herself from the case. After Swift, 35, was subpoenaed by Baldoni’s attorneys in May, the spokesperson for the Eras Tour performer claimed she “never set foot on the set of” It Ends With Us. The spokesperson added that Swift did not make “casting or creative decisions” except from allowing her song “My Tears Ricochet” to be used in the film.
“She did not score the film, she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film,” her rep told Us in May. “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 spokesperson added, “Given that her involvement was licensing a song for the film, which 19 other artists also did, this document subpoena is designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.”
Despite Baldoni’s efforts, Judge Lewis J. Liman struck down his attempt to depose Swift because it would fall outside the timeline allotted. In November, Us learned that Swift was on a list of names submitted by Lively’s lawyers for potential testimony at trial. Lively and Baldoni are both expected to testify in the trial, which is tentatively slated for March 2026.
