{"id":385506,"date":"2026-01-23T05:03:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T05:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/385506\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T05:03:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T05:03:15","slug":"justin-baldonis-lawyer-brings-up-heated-rivalry-in-lawsuit-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/385506\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Baldoni’s Lawyer Brings Up ‘Heated Rivalry’ in Lawsuit Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tLawyers for Justin Baldoni<\/a> appeared in court on Thursday hoping to persuade a judge to dismiss Blake Lively<\/a>\u2018s lawsuit against him, in which she alleges sexual harassment and retaliation during and after the making of their 2024 film \u201cIt Ends With Us<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBaldoni\u2019s team argued that the allegations involve improvisation during filming of sexually charged scenes \u2014 which does not amount to gender-based harassment.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t know if the court is familiar with the show \u2018Heated Rivalry,’\u201d attorney Jonathan Bach said at one point. Laughter spread throughout the courtroom as U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman indicated that no, he was not familiar.<\/p>\n

\n\tBach went on to explain that the series \u2014 a gay romance drama that recently concluded its first season on HBO Max \u2014 featured several \u201cexplicit\u201d scenes. He was rebutting a point made earlier by one of Lively\u2019s lawyers: Esra Hudson argued that Baldoni\u2019s choice to improvise on set was not an excuse for kissing and nuzzling that Lively had not consented to, therefore providing basis for a claim of gender-based discrimination. Bach countered the argument, saying that if male actor on \u201cHeated Rivalry\u201d improvised during an intimate scene with another man, could there be a complaint of gender-based discrimination?<\/p>\n

\n\tBach frequently returned to the idea that any touching that occurred between Baldoni and Lively came from the relationship between their characters in the film and had nothing to do with Lively herself being a woman. <\/p>\n

\n\tHe was the first attorney to speak at the podium during the hearing, and opened his argument by saying that Lively signed onto \u201cIt Ends With Us\u201d knowing that it would feature \u201chot and sexy scenes\u201d that would become \u201csteamy and turbulent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLiman was quick to push back, indicating that Bach was surely \u201cnot suggesting\u201d that the film\u2019s sexual subject matter gave Baldoni license to touch Lively as he pleased. Bach agreed. \u201cSo maybe you can actually help me understand where the lines are,\u201d Liman said, leading Bach to emphasize that \u201ccontext matters.\u201d If anything \u201cawkward\u201d arose, he argued, it was in pursuit of a certain aesthetic. He insisted multiple times that Lively\u2019s complaints were \u201csmall potatoes\u201d that did not rise to the level of sexual harassment.<\/p>\n

\n\tHudson was the first to speak from Lively\u2019s side. She first made clear her team\u2019s position that key facts were in dispute between the two parties, necessitating the input of a jury. As an example, she offered the differing perspectives on a particular interaction between Lively and \u201cIt Ends With Us\u201d executive producer Jamey Heath during which he entered a room while she was nude from the waist up. Heath says he heard someone tell him to come in, whereas Lively and her hair and makeup artists recall saying, \u201cWhoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, no.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tHudson then focused her time on the issue of Lively\u2019s consent. Lively was \u201ckissed, nuzzled and touched\u201d in ways she hadn\u2019t consented to while shooting one scene, Hudson said, regardless of knowing she would be acting in intimate scenes. Liman pressed Hudson about the exact meaning of consent in the context of intimate scenes, asking whether and how improvisation may come into play.<\/p>\n

\n\tHudson clarified that she wasn\u2019t saying improvisation should be off-limits or that an actor must give consent for every individual motion in a scene, but that for improvisation to be considered consensual, there should be a conversation about what kind of touching can be expected \u2014 hence the advent of nudity riders and intimacy coordinators.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough Liman continued to question whether every touch-related decision could be for a jury to decide \u2014 \u201cThat can\u2019t be right,\u201d he said \u2014 Hudson maintained that in this scenario, there was a subjective standard they needed to look at: Lively was uncomfortable, surprised and leaned back, indicating that her consent had not been given. Whether or not another generally reasonable person would have reacted similarly, Hudson said, should be up to a jury.<\/p>\n

\n\tLiman took the arguments under submission and will rule on the motion at a later point. The case is scheduled for trial in May. Liman could opt to narrow the scope of the allegations that a jury will consider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lawyers for Justin Baldoni appeared in court on Thursday hoping to persuade a judge to dismiss Blake Lively\u2018s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[17860,6491,96,25485,17859,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-385506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-blake-lively","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-it-ends-with-us","12":"tag-justin-baldoni","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}