The 80-page administrative complaint, filed in California Civil Court on Friday and obtained by Vanity Fair, follows a filing made the same day by Lively's legal team with California's Civil Rights Department. Instead of requesting that state investigators look into the allegations, Lively requested an immediate right to sue. That right was granted, sources familiar with the case tell Vanity Fair.
According to the complaint, when filming for It Ends With Us was set to resume following a disruption prompted by the 2023 Hollywood strikes, attorneys for Blake Lively sent a letter to the film's production company, Wayfarer Studios, asking for an end to what, in the complaint, was described as a “hostile work environment.” In a subsequent “all-hands” meeting this January, according to the complaint, Lively told a group that included Baldoni, some of the film's producers, and studio execs, as well as Lively's husband, Ryan Reynolds, that Baldoni had improvised additional kissing in scenes. She asked for an end to “adding of sex scenes, oral sex or on camera climaxing,” the complaint alleges, and both sides agreed to a set of boundaries before filming resumed. But though the list of stipulations included a prohibition on retaliation against Lively for raising those complaints, the complaint alleges that Baldoni, Heath, and others within Wayfarer hired public relations strategists to create a campaign to erode public trust in Lively, a preemptive move in case Lively's on-set allegations were leaked to the public. As first reported by The New York Times, text messages and emails Lively’s team obtained via subpoena include messages between public relations, crisis communications, and media management experts that appear to detail a coordinated set of efforts to plant negative stories about Lively in the media and boost social media posts critical of the sta