Blake Lively’s allegation that she was ‘fat shamed’ by Justin Baldoni is facing fresh scrutiny after a newly released audio clip reveals the actress wanted to push back filming to get into ‘her best shape’ after having a baby.
The unearthed recording, obtained by the Daily Mail from court filings in New York, captures Lively speaking candidly to Baldoni – her director and co-star in the 2024 film It Ends with Us – in February 2023, just weeks after she gave birth to her fourth child and months before cameras started rolling.
In the clip, the actress admits to feeling anxious about returning to work so soon while wanting to ‘work out every day’.
The audio, released as part of Baldoni’s bid to have Lively’s $160million lawsuit dismissed before the case goes to trial in May, appears to undermine one of her most explosive claims – that she was humiliated when Baldoni allegedly made comments about her weight shortly after she had given birth.
Lively alleges in her lawsuit that Baldoni asked her personal trainer Dan Saladino about her weight, a comment Saladino then relayed to her.
The Gossip Girl star maintains that Baldoni also sexually harassed her on the set of It Ends With Us and retaliated against her with a smear campaign.
Baldoni denies all claims against him but a judge dismissed the actor’s own $400million defamation countersuit last year.
Saladino said in a deposition that he was taken aback when Baldoni asked him about Lively’s weight, supposedly because he was worried about not being able to lift her up during a dance scene.
In his deposition, Saladino said Baldoni’s comments made him feel ‘uncomfortable’ and so he told Lively. Baldoni claims he had back problems and only wanted to be safe during filming.
Lively’s audio message was sent to Baldoni on February 8, 2023, three months before shooting eventually began.
In the rambling, four-and-a-half minute long message, Lively said she had been speaking to the director of Proxy, the sci-fi film she was due to make before It Ends With Us because there was ‘very little time to prep’.
Lively told Baldoni that the Proxy director asked if the start date of It Ends With Us could be pushed back but she said no.
She said: ‘I’ve been really, really under it. I don’t talk to him (the other director) like I talk to you, so I haven’t told him about about not having a baby nurse – still don’t have one by the way.
‘The idea of going back to work right away. The idea of wanting to work out every day and yet being on set every day. Like what have I done?’
A gap of just a week between filming Proxy and It Ends With Us was ‘a lot’, Lively told Baldoni, because she ‘really wanted to focus on our movie’.
‘Shooting in April, March is too soon after having a baby and not sleeping and wanting to be in my best shape and all that,’ she said.
Lively added that she and Ryan Reynolds had been ‘really stressed’ about spending all of June apart.
She said that the most they had ever been apart was less than two weeks and that they wanted to be with their children during the summer holidays.
In the end she did not work on Proxy.
The alleged ‘fat shaming’ particularly angered Reynolds who let rip during a January 2024 meeting at the house he shares with Lively, according to legal filings.
According to Baldoni, Reynolds was ‘enraged’ during the ‘traumatic encounter’ as the Deadpool star demanded an apology.
When Baldoni ‘resisted apologizing for what he had not done, Reynolds became further enraged’, court documents state.
Baldoni’s lawyers have said that he had ‘never been spoken to like that in his life’.
In her complaint Lively claimed that Baldoni ‘routinely degraded’ her by finding ‘back channel ways of criticizing her body and weight’.
She was left feeling ‘humiliated’ after her personal trainer told her about Baldoni’s comments, which allegedly included him wanting her to ‘lose weight in two weeks’.
The complaint states: ‘Mr Baldoni told the trainer that he had asked because he was concerned about having to pick Ms Lively up in a scene for the movie, but there was no such scene.’
The newly released filings also lift the lid on Baldoni’s private mindset as the controversy engulfed him.
They include a long text conversation between Baldoni and the PR team he hired in 2024 to manage the crisis enveloping him and the movie.
In messages to Jennifer Abel, who worked at the time for Baldoni’s PR firm, he mocked Sony, the film’s distributor.
Baldoni said: ‘Hi I’m Sony and I’m going to cozy up to Ryan (Reynolds) and erase Justin…Sony has no spine’.
Abel insisted that comments on social media were ‘real people’ and ‘no bots’ were involved in the Internet criticism of Lively.
In a text from July 2024 Baldoni revealed a text sent to him by Isabela Ferrer, who plays a young version of Lively’s character, Lily Bloom.
Ferrer told Baldoni it was ‘such a comfortable safe space’ on set.
Baldoni wrote: ‘Now she won’t even say my name’.
In a deposition filed last week, Ferrer said that she was shocked that Baldoni said a sex scene where her character loses her virginity was ‘hot’ because she was supposed to be around 16 at the time.
In the texts Baldoni talked about getting a ‘ton of fun bro texts’ from Brandon Sklenar who plays a Atlas Corrigan, Lily Bloom’s love interest.
Baldoni wrote the pair had a ‘bromance for a year and then nothing’.
Days later Baldoni claimed that Reynolds had unblocked him and his wife Emily on social media but only so he could ‘spy’ on them.
Also included in the new documents was raw video from the shooting which Baldoni’s lawyers said refuted Lively’s claim that he ‘suggestively’ told her that her neck smelled ‘so good’ during a scene where they dance together.
The footage was previously reported by the Daily Mail last July in an exclusive clip.
It shows Baldoni joking about rubbing his beard on Lively, who laughs at the remark.
Lively says: ‘I’m probably getting my spray tan on you.’
Baldoni replies: ‘It smells good.’
Lively appears not to take the comment well and tells Baldoni: ‘Well it’s not that, it’s my body makeup.’
According to Lively, Baldoni ‘nuzzled’ her neck without her consent during the filming of the scene in an improvised moment that wasn’t in the script.
