Link: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/05/dirty-washing-dethroned-hollywood-golden-couple/?WT.mc_id=tmgoff_tw_post_washing-dethroned-hollywood-golden-couple/

The dirty laundry that dethroned Hollywood’s golden couple

By Abigail Buchanan

Blake Lively’s legal war with Justin Baldoni was meant to be a victory lap. Instead, the fallout has made her and Ryan Reynolds pariahs

No one was expecting Blake Lively to appear on the Met Gala red carpet – in sparkling pastel Versace, no less – just hours after the lawsuit against Justin Baldoni, her co-star on It Ends with Us, was settled out of court.

Lively’s appearance may have been intended as a victory lap, but she has little to celebrate. The two-year-long legal battle, in which she accused her co-star of harassment, sexual misconduct and orchestrating a smear campaign against her, has backfired spectacularly.

The film, based on the bestselling novel by Colleen Hoover, was a great commercial success. It made $351m (£259m) from a budget of $25m. However, that was immediately overshadowed by the nastiness of the dispute between Lively and Baldoni.

Baldoni claimed that Lively tried to control the film by rewriting and editing scenes herself. Lively, meanwhile, always maintained that her lawsuit was a necessary stand against “pervasive retaliation I faced, and continue to, for privately and professionally asking for a safe working environment for myself and others”. Critics, however, have seen it as little more than an act of hubris and legal overreach.

As one half of Hollywood’s most bankable couples, Lively clearly assumed that she could use her considerable power and connections, and those of her husband, Ryan Reynolds, to override Baldoni.

Now, however, there is a very real possibility that the fallout from years of bitter legal and PR battles could harm not just Lively’s long-term career prospects, but those of Reynolds. Indeed, an executive at Sony, the studio in charge of the film’s release, described Lively as “epic-level stupid” in leaked emails and said: “[She] probably will never work again, or not for a while.”

Baldoni denied Lively’s accusations and counter-sued for $400m, leading to a car crash of litigation that revealed unflattering details and cringe-inducing text exchanges between Lively, Reynolds and a cabal of their famous friends (Ben Affleck and Taylor Swift included). This airing of dirty laundry has, according to multiple sources, changed the public’s perception of Lively and Reynolds – not for the better – and even led Hollywood’s power players to question whether the couple is worth working with.

Studio sources have suggested that Lively has gained a reputation as a “backseat director”. One film executive told the Daily Mail: “This lawsuit has ruined her in Hollywood… She had a reputation for being difficult, one of those toxic people who always thinks she knows best.”

And in the end, it was all for nothing. A judge dismissed Baldoni’s defamation lawsuit last year. In April, a federal judge dismissed 10 of Lively’s 13 claims, including the key allegations relating to sexual harassment and defamation. Those remaining were claims of breach of contract and retaliation against Baldoni’s production company, Wayfarer.

The final, 11th-hour settlement – in which no money is thought to have changed hands – is a conclusion that gives the whole sorry saga the air of a mud-slinging competition. It is notable that, for the Met Gala on Monday night, Lively attended alone.

These are the key moments – both damning and just plain embarrassing – that have dethroned one of Hollywood’s foremost couples.

Exchanges between Lively and Baldoni offer a peek behind the curtain of the early days of a Hollywood film’s production. The couple appear to be on such a charm offensive with Baldoni that it is almost unbelievable that relations soured so soon after. The messages are cloyingly sweet, and the banter – on both sides – is outright cringeworthy. 

In one, Lively tells Baldoni: “You’re safe here.” In another, referencing a scene in the film that she has rewritten, Lively says: “If you knew me (in person) longer, you’d have a sense of how flirty and yummy the ballbusting would play. It’s my love language. Spicy and playfully bold, never with teeth.” 
Reynolds was also involved in the film from the off, messaging Baldoni to say: “I happen to adore you, Justin.”

In another telling exchange, Lively compared herself to Daenerys Targaryen, the “Mother of Dragons” character, also known as Khaleesi, in the fantasy series Game of Thrones. 

“You’ll appreciate that I’m Khaleesi, and like her, I happen to have a few dragons,” she texted Baldoni. “For better or worse, but usually better. Because my dragons also protect those I fight for. So really, we all benefit from those gorgeous monsters of mine. You will too, I can promise you.” 

These “dragons” and “gorgeous monsters” are presumably Reynolds, as well as Lively’s most famous friend, Swift, as in the previous exchange, Baldoni says: “I really love what you did [with the script]… (And I would have felt that way without Ryan and Taylor),” with a wink emoji. 

It is surely no coincidence that since these and so many other strange messages were made public, Lively’s popularity has plummeted. According to Parrot Analytics, which tracks public sentiment on social media, just above 10 per cent of people had a “positive” view of Lively at the end of last year, compared with more than 80 per cent in January 2023.

The only person less thrilled than Lively that her personal messages with Swift would be included in the lawsuit must have been Swift herself. They show that Lively appears to have asked Swift to step in as the saga unfolded on multiple occasions. In one, she asks Swift to “tell him you’re excited for the movie”, and praise her rewrites, calling Baldoni a “clown” and Swift “the greatest living storyteller”.

In another thread, Lively asks Swift if “everything [is] OK” as she “felt like a bad friend lately”. Swift replies: “I think I’m just exhausted in every avenue of my life, and in recent months had been feeling a little bit of a shift in the way you talk to me”. Swift adds that some of Lively’s recent messages had felt “like I was reading a mass corporate email sent to 200 employees”, going on to say that it had “just caused a little distance”. The loss of Swift as an ally is a blow to Lively’s star power.

It wasn’t only Lively who attempted to bring in the big guns when it came to ensuring that she had creative control over the film. Court documents revealed that the couple had also enlisted the help of Bradley Cooper – who is thanked in the end credits – and Ben Affleck and his ex-wife, Jennifer Lopez. 

Reynolds messaged Matt Damon and his wife, Luciana, in an apparent group chat, asking them to watch the film. “This is such a zero-pressure ask…” he says, “[but] we’d LOVE to get your well-earned [point of view].” He continued: “This movie has been one of the all-time zingers on and off set.” 

Lively then jumped in to say: “Blake here. Adding more zeroes to the pressure.” In another message to the couple, Reynolds called Baldoni “a malignantly vein [sic], sociopathic FAUXminist with almost no sense of boundaries or shame. I cannot believe he hasn’t gone to jail or returned to the sun”. 

The revelations around Lively’s many edits to the film, as well as Reynolds’s willingness to call in A-list reinforcements to push these edits through, have done little to endear the couple to directors. In fact, it has left many “nervous” to work with her, according to gossip reporter, Rob Shuter. A studio source told Shuter: “She’s talented, yes – but she’s earned a reputation for being controlling. Directors are asking themselves: ‘Do I really want that drama?’”

Somehow, despite the animosity between the two leads, production rumbled on, and the film was completed. On the press tour in August 2024, Lively was widely criticised for what appeared to be a flippant attitude to its promotion – this was considered inappropriate by many, given that the plot deals with domestic abuse. 

In a video that seemed to pitch it as a light-hearted romance, she said: “Grab your friends, wear your florals and head out to see it.” The post-premiere party featured cocktails made with Reynolds’s gin brand, with cutesy names such as “Ryle You Wait” (named after Baldoni’s character – naming a promotional cocktail after a domestic abuser did not go down well with the public). 

Baldoni, who conducted all his press separately, focused on the film’s more serious themes. This clumsy handling of a sensitive topic shifted the needle in terms of public perceptions of Lively. It isn’t true that all publicity is good publicity – a lesson Lively and Reynolds have learnt the hard way.

Edit: Author/journalist’s name is added.

Long live citizen journalism! Shame on NYT for its reckless reporting and for ignoring critical context to bend the knee to Blake Lively and her unethical dragons. May public awareness blow the Dracarys to these faux feminists.

By Theresa.concepcion*

The diagram is self-explanatory and clearly distinguishes the separate components of the analysis related to Lively’s retaliation claim. It is worth noting that MJOP remains on the table; if the FEHA claim does not survive, the good faith belief for “protected activity” is ultimately irrelevant.

*Theresa posted this to her TikTok. If she’s not the source please feel free to correct me.