Amidst the back-and-forth lawsuits between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, talent agency WME is jumping in to refute one claim in particular: that they dropped Baldoni from their client roster at the behest of Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds. WME did drop Baldoni, per The Hollywood Reporter, after Lively filed her lawsuit alleging sexual harassment on the set of It Ends With Us. But it was not because Lively and Reynolds (who are also clients of the agency) pressured them to do so, according to a new statement.
In his lawsuit against The New York Times, Baldoni alleges that Reynolds approached his WME agent at the Deadpool & Wolverine premiere and urged the agent to drop Baldoni as a client. “Baldoni and Wayfarer grew increasingly fearful of what Lively and Reynolds were capable of, as their actions seemed aimed at destroying Baldoni’s career and personal life,” the suit alleges.
In response, WME said plainly that this claim is “not true.” In the statement, published in THR, WME said, “Baldoni’s former representative was not at the Deadpool & Wolverine premiere nor was there any pressure from Reynolds or Lively at any time to drop Baldoni as a client.”
In her own lawsuit, Blake Lively accused Justin Baldoni of sexual harassment on set and further claimed that he embarked on a PR campaign to destroy her reputation—which is what Baldoni is now accusing Lively of doing to him. According to People, Baldoni is suing The New York Times for “libel, false light invasion of privacy, promissory fraud, and breach of implied-in-fact contract.”
Read more about the controversy and ensuing lawsuits here.
Read the full article here
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