{"id":367587,"date":"2026-04-07T09:13:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T09:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/367587\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T09:13:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T09:13:11","slug":"blake-lively-justin-baldoni-last-minute-talks-fail-trial-looms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/367587\/","title":{"rendered":"Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni Last Minute Talks Fail, Trial Looms"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBlake Lively<\/a> and Justin Baldoni<\/a> are still heading to trial on the It Ends With Us<\/a> actress\u2019 retaliation and defamation claims despite a federal judge\u2019s best intentions and efforts.<\/p>\n

\n\tLawyers for the former and bitterly battling co-stars were ordered to call in with Magistrate Judge Sarah L. Cave on Monday afternoon to find out what \u201ctheir client\u2019s updated settlement position\u201d was<\/p>\n

\n\tIt did not go well. \u00a0 <\/p>\n

\n\tComing just days after Judge Lewis Liman dropped 10 of Lively\u2019s 13 claims against Baldoni<\/a>, his Wayfarer Studios execs and PR team, the individual conference calls (3 p.m. ET for Team Blake, 4 p.m. ET for Team Baldoni) saw both sides reject any deal to avert the May 18 trial. Judge Cave searched for any common ground between Lively and Baldoni that she could build on to no avail, I hear.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith her sexual harassment claims tossed not on their merits but on jurisdictional and contractual grounds, Lively certainly took a loss on April 2 with Judge Liman\u2019s summery judgement ruling trimming her case. Allegations of a preemptive online smear campaign by Baldoni\u2019s Crisis PR crew against Lively ahead of the premiere of the Sony<\/a> distributed IEWU are now the battlefield of the matter. Lively has said in recent days that the astroturfing claim was always the real case.<\/p>\n

\n\tPerhaps an indication of where the settlement calls were going to end up, earlier Monday Lively reposted her strongly worded remarks of last week <\/a>asking fans to not be \u201cdistracted by the digital soap opera\u201d and vowing to \u201cnever stop doing my part in fighting to expose the systems and people who seek to harm, shame, silence and retaliate against victims.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tReps for either Lively and Baldoni did not respond to Deadline\u2019s request for comment on today\u2019s settlement calls.<\/p>\n

\n\tMonday was far from the first time there were moves to get Lively and Baldoni to solve the December 2024 instigated legal matter<\/a> without the drama of a trial.<\/p>\n

\n\tLate last year, Judge Liman\u00a0ordered both parties to engage in settlement talks<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n\tThere were a number of meetings, including Lively and Baldoni meeting face-to-face in a Manhattan courtroom a couple months ago. Like today, it didn\u2019t go well. In February, Baldoni attorney\u00a0Bryan Freedman<\/a>\u00a0said that,\u00a0despite all the nudging and high hopes, attempts to reach a deal had proved \u201cunsuccessful.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn that sense, today was d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni are still heading to trial on the It Ends With Us actress\u2019 retaliation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[3780,156880,430,156,73088,3783,192779,111,139,69,5138,192780,6361],"class_list":{"0":"post-367587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-blake-lively","9":"tag-bryan-freedman","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-it-ends-with-us","13":"tag-justin-baldoni","14":"tag-lively-baldoni","15":"tag-new-zealand","16":"tag-newzealand","17":"tag-nz","18":"tag-ryan-reynolds","19":"tag-sexual-harrassment","20":"tag-sony"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}