{"id":152102,"date":"2025-09-12T19:04:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T19:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/152102\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T19:04:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T19:04:09","slug":"taylor-swift-did-not-agree-to-baldoni-deposition-blake-lively-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/152102\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Swift Did Not Agree To Baldoni Deposition, Blake Lively Says"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJustin Baldoni<\/a>\u2018s latest attempt to pull Taylor Swift<\/a> into his defense against sexual harassment and retaliation allegations from It End With Us co-star Blake Lively<\/a> looks to be going off the rails faster than the Grammy winner\u2019s upcoming The Life of a Showgirl<\/a> album is expected to rocket to the top of the charts. <\/p>\n

\n\tNot yet approved by a judge in the case that goes to trial next spring, Baldoni and his Wayfarer Studies inner circle want to see Swift deposed \u201cduring the week of October 20-25 due to Ms. Swift\u2019s preexisting professional\u00a0obligations. However, the recently engaged singer has not been \u201cagreed\u201d to the sit-down next month, which comes weeks after discovery in the matter was supposed to be over, and Baldoni\u2019s side has presented no \u201cevidence\u201d to justify it, says a sharply worded filing by Lively\u2019s lawyers today.<\/a> <\/p>\n

\n\tCalling the effort first made public by Baldoni in a September 11 letter to the court,<\/a> another move \u201cto fuel their relentless media strategy,\u201d Lively attorney Michael J. Gottlieb wants federal Judge Lewis Liman to deny the Swift deposition, its dates and the discovery extension effort. \u201cEven if one were to take the Wayfarer Defendants\u2019 representation at face value, they have not come close to establishing good cause for their requested relief,\u201d the Willkie Farr & Gallagher partner insists. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Wayfarer Defendants assert that Ms. Swift is not available for a deposition until October 20, 2025, yet are silent about their efforts (if any) to schedule this deposition during the existing discovery period,\u201d Gottlieb adds. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat is likely because, as explained in the attached correspondence between the parties, see Exhibit A, the Wayfarer Defendants do not appear to have contacted Ms. Swift\u2019s counsel regarding a date or location about the deposition until earlier this week,\u201d Lively co-lead lawyer states. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn this respect, the Wayfarer Defendants\u2019 lack of diligence, and disrespect for Ms. Swift\u2019s privacy and schedule, is astounding. Discovery has been ongoing for more than six months, and Ms. Swift is someone whose calendar should be presumed to be packed with professional obligations for months in advance,\u201d Gottlieb continued. \u201cAt any point over the past six months, the Wayfarer Defendants could have noticed a deposition, served a subpoena, and negotiated an agreeable time and place for this deposition. But they did not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the overall matter heads towards its March 9, 2026 trial date start, Judge Liman will have the final word \u2013 for now \u2013 on bringing Swift on board and giving Baldoni and his Wayfarer co-founders more time for their own depositions. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Blake<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBlake Lively and Justin Baldoni in a scene from \u2018It Ends With Us<\/a>\u2018<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSony Pictures Releasing \/ courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tHaving been round this maypole before over the months since December 2024 when Lively first made her claims to California Civil Rights Department of what went down on the IEWU production and the online smear campaign that allegedly followed, Swift\u2019s reps did not respond to Deadline\u2019s request for comment on the supposed deposition next month and the back-and-forth correspondence. Baldoni and Wayfarer\u2019s PR team also did not answer a request to respond to today\u2019s damning letter from Livley\u2019s side. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBlake Lively and Taylor Swift attend a private party in Brooklyn in January 2024<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRobert Kamau\/GC Images<\/p>\n

\n\tSwift and Lively\u2019s long friendship had been a distinct sub-plot in the IEWU legal battles, with tabloid fodder that the duo have fallen out over the controversy adverse Eras Tour performer getting tainted with the whole thing. Swift was name checked in the self titled Scenario Planning document that Baldoni crisis PR chief Melissa Nathan, who is also a defendant in the case, put together in the summer of 2024 as IEWU\u2018s premiere loomed. \u201cAs part of this, our team can also explore planting stories about the weaponization of feminism and how people in BL\u2019s circle like Taylor Swift, have been accused of utilizing these tactics to \u2018bully\u2019 into getting what they want,\u201d the five-pager said in a section called
\u201cScenario 3: Ryan comes forward in defense of his wife.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the docket, Swift talking to Baldoni\u2019s Bryan Freedman-led lawyers was a media storm back in May and June. Even before that, Swift, who contributed her \u2018My Tears Ricochet\u2019 tune to the Lively cut of IEWU, made a cameo or two in various filings with IEWU director Baldoni feeling ganged up on when Swift\u2019s name was brought up as one of Lively\u2019s \u201cdragons\u201d who backed her suggestions for changes to the movie. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhile it does seem that Swift and Lively may not be hangin out that much of late, at least publicly, but the former is still the godmother to one of the latter and Ryan Reynolds\u2019 children. No word, if Lively and Reynolds are going to Swift\u2019s wedding with repeat Super Bowl<\/a> champ and Kansas City Chief player Travis Kelce<\/a> \u2013 but then again there is no word when that American royalty nuptial day is happening and who is going besides Swift and Kelce. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhat we do know is that Swift\u2019s new Life of a Showgirl album is se to drop on October 3 \u2014 a few weeks before the deposition Team Baldoni want her to give. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'The<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018The Life of A Showgirl\u2019 album cover<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tInstagram\/ taylorswift \/ Mert Alas \/ Marcus Piggott<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justin Baldoni\u2018s latest attempt to pull Taylor Swift into his defense against sexual harassment and retaliation allegations from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[8678,88,44292,8680,44293,1803,4915,54275,4144],"class_list":["post-152102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-blake-lively","tag-entertainment","tag-it-ends-with-us","tag-justin-baldoni","tag-lively-baldoni","tag-super-bowl","tag-taylor-swift","tag-the-life-of-a-showgirl","tag-travis-kelce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}