Newly released documents in Blake Lively’s ongoing legal battle with her “It Ends with Us” director Justin Baldoni show that her once-close friend Taylor Swift was more involved than she previously admitted in supporting efforts by the actor to seize control from Baldoni over the film’s production and its final cut.
Specifically, text messages released in the the U.S. District Court in Manhattan show that Swift at one point joined Lively in denigrating Baldoni as a “bitch” with “a tiny violin,” who should be worried about an upcoming New York Times expose about their feud, which portrayed Baldoni as a director who sought retaliation after sexually harassing her.
Swift also allegedly offered her status as one of the world’s famous entertainers in the world to urge Baldoni, Lively’s so-called “doofus director,” to use a revised version of an early scene in the script that Lively said she helped write, according to Lively’s deposition in the case.
“I’ll do anything for you,” Swift reportedly said, according to the deposition.
In addition, Swift agreed that giving Lively the rights to use her music would give her friend leverage in the final version of the film’s trailer, according to the documents. Swift told Lively in a text message that using her music “gives you more power over the film.”
The text messages were released ahead of a court hearing Thursday on whether a judge should grant Baldoni’s motion to dismiss the case before trial. The text messages and other documents also reveal growing tensions in the women’s decade-long friendship, which reportedly cooled last year over Swift’s concerns that she would be dragged into Lively’s legal battle with Baldoni and could be subpoenaed to testify in a deposition or in court.
In an attempt to distance herself from the court battle last year, a rep for the “Cruel Summer” singer issued a statement, telling Page Six: “Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie, she was not involved in any casting or creative decisions, she did not score the film, she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film.” Swift’s rep said the pop star had been busy during the film’s production through 2023 and 2024, traveling around the country and around the world as part of her Eras tour.
The court battle began in December 2024, four months after the film’s August 2024 release. That’s when Lively filed a lawsuit against Baldoni and his production company, Wayfayer Studios, accusing him of sexual harassing her during the film’s production and of him and the company’s executives coordinating a social media campaign to damage her reputation.
That’s also around the time when Lively and Swift last had contact, according to an October 2025 Page Six report.
In Lively’s version of events, Baldoni was an egotistical, posturing actor, who tried to present himself as an enlightened male feminist. But in messages to some of her famous friends, including Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, she slammed him as an inexperienced filmmaker who lacked taste.
Prior to Lively being cast in the film in 2022, Baldoni had secured the rights to the novel, by best-selling author Colleen Hoover, on which the film would be based. The film tells the story of Lily, a florist who falls in love and marries a handsome neurosurgeon, who turns out to be physically abusive. Lively was cast as Lily, and Baldoni starred as the doctor, while also directing the film.
According to Baldoni’s motion to dismiss the case, Lively assumed an active role in the film’s production and in developing its script, even though she was only hired to act. Among other things, she allegedly pushed Baldoni to use a re-write of the “roof-top” scene in which Baldoni’s character and Lively’s character first meet.
To convince Baldoni to use her version of the scene, Lively enlisted the help of Swift and her even more famous and powerful husband, movie star Ryan Reynolds, according to the motion. Using a “Game of Thrones” reference, Lively called them her “dragons,” while she identified as Khaleesi, according to court documents.
Lively arranged for Swift to drop by her New York City apartment, just as she was meeting with Baldoni to discuss the re-write. In her deposition, Lively said she asked Swift to promote her version of the scene even as she understood that Swift might not be able to read it. After the meeting, Baldoni told Lively he would have gladly accepted her revisions, even without urging from Swift or Reynolds. It also turned out that Reynolds, not Lively, had done the re-write.
Shortly after filming wrapped, Lively asked Affleck and Damon for help as she said she had to finish her edit of the film, She specifically asked Ben Affleck and Matt Damon for input on her work. In an email, she told Affleck, her co-star and director on the 2010 film, “The Town,” that she had “just come out the other side (well almost) of the most upsetting experience I’ve ever had on a movie.” She said she ended up having to step in to rewrite and restructure the entire movie and direct it as well.
Meanwhile, Lively exchanged what could have been some of her final texts with Swift in late 2024, in which she said she felt like she had been “a bad friend lately” because she had been consumed by the release of “It Ends With Us” and the negative backlash she faced over how she promoted it, according to People.
“I always want the opportunity to be a better friend if there’s something I unintentionally did,” Lively said, according to People. “I know how busy and taxed you are — physically, emotionally, practically, so I don’t expect any more from you ever.”
Swift texted back to tell Lively that she was “not wrong, but it’s also not a big deal.” While Swift said there “had been a lot of Justin stuff,” she also said she felt like Lively’s texts had started to read like “a mass corporate email sent to 200 employees.”
“And it feels awful to be in any way critical of any way you process what you’ve been going through but I just kinda miss my funny, dark, normal-speaking friend who talks to me as herself,” Swift continued. “And I know you feel attacked from all sides for ridiculous reasons so you’re feeling like you have to overly explain things… but. It’s me! That’s just caused a little distance. And you don’t need to apologize. Just come back please.”
Leave a Reply