Justin Baldoni is suing The New York Times for $250 million over the publication's bombshell article, in which they alleged the actor and others coordinated a smear campaign against his "It Ends with Us" costar, Blake Lively.
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00:00If you thought Blake Lively's lawsuit against Justin Baldoni was the end of that,
00:05if you will, it was kind of a play.
00:08Yes, nice and done.
00:10Well, you're wrong, because Justin Baldoni has filed not just a lawsuit against the New York Times,
00:16a $250 million lawsuit against the New York Times, which published a 4,000-word story,
00:25basically outlining all of the misdeeds that the Times claimed that Justin Baldoni committed
00:34during the filming of It Ends With Us.
00:36And basically, he's saying that this was a hatchet piece, that the New York Times was
00:41out to get him, and left out a lot of context.
00:44So let's point to—
00:45Well, not just context.
00:46That they're saying it was just flat-out distorted and lies.
00:50Right.
00:50So let's point one example of this.
00:52So let's go to the Times story.
00:55This is the New York Times story.
00:56Baldoni repeatedly entered her—meaning Blake Lively's makeup trailer—uninvited
01:01while she was undressed, including when she was breastfeeding.
01:04Now, this goes to her sexual harassment allegation against him in her lawsuit.
01:08So now let's show more context of why he went in there.
01:13This was a text message that Justin Baldoni exchanged with Blake Lively.
01:17And this is her to him.
01:18Yeah.
01:18New pages can always be sent to me as well, please.
01:22Now, what they're talking about with new pages is script.
01:24Script, right.
01:25And then Blake Lively says, I'm just pumping in my trailer if you want to work out lines,
01:30which certainly sounds like an invitation to come into the trailer—
01:34It is.
01:34—knowing that she's—
01:35That is an invitation.
01:37That is.
01:37So what Baldoni is saying is that this was manufactured, not real.
01:44The New York Times, if they saw the actual email or the actual text which they put in their story,
01:53they would not have put it the way they did because it was an invitation by Blake
01:58and it wasn't an intrusion by Baldoni.
02:01So this is critical, of course, to the underlying lawsuit by Baldoni against the Times,
02:04because in order to prevail in a defamation case, he would have to show that the Times
02:08acted with a reckless disregard for the truth.
02:11Basically, they had alternative information and they neglected to present it because they
02:16wanted to paint a very specific picture.
02:18That's the allegation, Jason.
02:19That's the allegation.
02:20And that's what Baldoni would ultimately have to prove in order to prevail.
02:24The New York Times is in a tough place here.
02:26I mean, by not presenting this other information, they've got to come back and say,
02:30we just didn't have it.
02:31We didn't know it existed.
02:32And I don't know how successful they're going to be in presenting that case.
02:36The New York Times, by the way, has said they stand by the story that there is
02:41nothing they're retracting.
02:42So they're being very strong here, saying that this was a valid story.
02:46That's what they're saying.
02:47There's more, a lot more in this lawsuit against the Times.
02:52There was an allegation that Blake Lively was being shown pornographic material
02:58by both Baldoni and the producer of the movie.
03:04Jamie Heath, who also helps to run Wayfarer Studios, who's Justin's best friend,
03:08who is behind a lot of what he does professionally.
03:10Who she's also suing, by the way.
03:11Right.
03:12So let's show you more context on that one.
03:15So this was what Blake Lively had said as a condition of her continuing to work on this film,
03:22no more showing nude videos or images of women,
03:24including producer's wife, to Blake Lively and or her employees.
03:28So what was the video that was shown?
03:30Was it a sex video?
03:31Well, they say no.
03:33That this is what the video in question was a non-pornographic recording of
03:38Heath's wife during a home birth, a deeply personal one with no sexual overtone.
03:44To distort this benign event into an act of sexual misconduct is outrageous and emblematic
03:50of the lengths to which Lively and her collaborators are willing to go to defame plaintiffs.
03:54That's from Justin Baldoni's lawsuit.
03:56So now you have dueling lawsuits.
03:59We are being told that there will be yet another lawsuit filed
04:03by Baldoni against others connected to Blake Lively.
04:07So there are now multiple lawsuits.
04:11She may counter with yet another.
04:14We don't know.
04:15But this is going to be...
04:17Jason, I got to tell you, this, I suppose anything can settle.
04:22But it feels like the New York Times, at least right now,
04:24is digging in so hard that I don't see any kind of a settlement looming.
04:29Not for now.
04:29That's for sure.
04:30I mean, he wants to make more.
04:32He obviously would love to get a huge settlement out of the Times.
04:35But he's trying to make a bigger point that is going to relate also back to the Blake
04:38Lively lawsuit against him, which he's defending himself in.
04:43And in that suit, if he can point out that she withheld information from the New York Times
04:49in order to present a particularly negative picture against him,
04:53or frankly, these text messages exist and do
04:56contradict the allegations she made about him in the complaint, that's a huge win for him.
05:01He has a lot to lose here.
05:03On the verge of losing his career based on the allegations by Blake Lively,
05:06he needs to defend himself full-throatedly.
05:09And I don't think he wants to settle with the Times quite yet,
05:12because that's his best ability to get a lot of information from them that it could be useful.
05:16Hi, I'm Sarah from Casserole, Colorado.
05:19I'm a big Blake Lively fan.
05:21I always have been.
05:22And after everything that I've seen and that I've read about this whole situation,
05:27I really think that Justin Baldani is really just trying to save face in the situation,
05:32because I can't imagine someone with her platform and her following that she would
05:36make up such false allegations against someone else,
05:38knowing the extremities of what could happen afterwards.
05:42It is interesting, and I've known Justin Baldani for a long time,
05:45and his biggest issue has been women's rights and feminism,
05:50and that men should treat women better, and that men should be sensitive to women's needs.
05:55And so the portrait that Blake Lively is painting
05:59is the complete opposite of everything that Justin Baldani has worked for many,
06:03many years to create.
06:05So either that was a completely false narrative that he was creating,
06:08or maybe what Blake Lively is saying isn't exactly what happened.
06:12That is really interesting.