A few months later and “beef” is putting it mildly. Lively has filed a legal complaint alleging that Baldoni conducted a calculated smear campaign against her (“We can bury anyone”, Baldoni’s PR is reported to have said) after she accused him and producer Jamey Heath of sexually inappropriate behaviour on set, including displaying a lack of respect for her boundaries during intimate scenes and making unwarranted sexual comments. Baldoni has sued the New York Times – who broke the story – for defamation damages worth $250m and countersued Lively for $400m. There was also a creative power struggle at play: Lively says the two men’s behaviour improved after safeguarding procedures – including hiring an intimacy coordinator – were put in place on set, after which she made her own cut of the film, which was used as the final version. Baldoni, the director, has claimed that Lively had not even read the book.
Justin Baldoni with producer Jamey Heath at the It Ends With Us premiere (Photo by James Devaney/GC Images)
Now, Baldoni has released footage of the slow-dance scene takes in which Lively claims he was behaving inappropriately – and the internet is aflame dissecting it. Some argue that Baldoni is doing his job as an actor, some that Lively’s body language and repeated assertions that the characters should “just talk” proves the allegations he was trying to dispel by making the video public.
It all feels icky and nasty. But it has done from the very beginning, and the pendulum swings of who’s in favour are symptomatic of a toxic media (and social media) culture that encourages us to swap those feelings of icky nastiness for a more straightforward rage and indignance.
Lively has filed a lawsuit against her former It Ends With Us co-star, Justin Baldoni (Photo: Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP/File)
Aghast at Baldoni’s behaviour – towards us as well as Lively – we thought we had our villain. But now Baldoni has retaliated, the conversation has become messy again. Lively is more famous than Baldoni and more reputationally powerful – he has released a screenshot of a text in which she says she has “a lot of dragons” protecting her, referring, presumably, to her mega-celebrity best friend Taylor Swift and powerful Hollywood husband Ryan Reynolds (whom Baldoni is also suing). Her garnering feminist support as an individual alleging harassment feels at odds with the counternarrative that she wasn’t particularly interested in the deeper message of the film. Through the legacy of the PR campaign or through some other more mysterious means, the idea that Lively is a mean girl, out for herself, is alive and well.
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Read MoreWhen it comes to A-listers and BookTok, these pendulum swings are often put down to petty and spurious gossip culture or passing fads – but they are the same forces of black-and-white thinking and tribalism that fuel more dangerous extremism and political polarisation. It is impossible for us to know for sure, at this stage, what really happened on the set of It Ends With Us. Both sides think they’re right – of course, that doesn’t mean that neither are wrong. But nor does it mean that their wrongness equates to the kind of villainy or sainthood that grants us the relief of an easy answer.
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