Pop juggernaut Taylor Swift has once again been pulled into the legal battle between It Ends With Us co-stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.
Text messages between long-time friends Swift and Lively were unsealed on Tuesday (US time) amid the ongoing legal drama, which began in December 2024 when Lively filed a complaint against her co-star and director, accusing him of sexual harassment and running a smear campaign against her. Baldoni categorically denied all accusations against him. The trial is set for May.
In May 2025, Swift was subpoenaed as a witness in Baldoni’s $US400 million defamation countersuit – which has since been dropped – against Lively. A spokesperson for Swift said at the time that this was designed to use the pop star’s name to draw public interest by “creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case”. Though the subpoena was dropped later that month, Swift’s name has emerged again amid the legal mayhem.
According to the unsealed messages, Lively spoke openly about the concerns she had while on the set of the film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us. At one point, the actress refers to Baldoni as her “doofus director”. A year later, the close friends texted again ahead of the publication of a New York Times expose regarding Lively’s accusations against Baldoni and the film’s production company Wayfarer Studios.
“I think this bitch knows something is coming because he’s gotten out his tiny violin,” Swift texted Lively alongside a screenshot of a People article about Baldoni saying he’d been “sexually traumatised”. Swift described the situation as “a horror film no one knows is taking place”.
Sigrid McCawley, a member of Lively’s legal team, told CNN the newly unsealed evidence “shows the concerns of Ms Lively and others were documented in real-time as early as Spring 2023, and Wayfarer understood them as ‘sexual harassment’ concerns”.
“The evidence also documents how Wayfarer refused to investigate, but instead attempted to ‘bury’ Ms Lively and others who spoke up through retaliation,” she said.
In response to this comment, Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Feldman said the evidence did not support the claims as a matter of law. “A simple read of the newly released message exchanges make the truth abundantly clear. We remain confident in the legal process and clearing the names of all of the Justin Baldoni parties,” he said, per CNN.
Swift’s representative has been contacted for comment.
More to come.
Must-see movies, interviews and all the latest from the world of film delivered to your inbox. Sign up for our Screening Room newsletter.
