Blake Lively Accuses Justin Baldoni Of “Abuser Playbook” Tactics After ‘It Ends With Us’ Director Sues Co-Star & Ryan Reynolds In $400M Defamation Suit

deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE: Hours after Justin Baldoni filed a $400 million defamation and extortion lawsuit against Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds today, the It Ends With Us star and her legal team have clapped back – hard. “This latest lawsuit from Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and its associates is another chapter in the abuser playbook,” said Lively’s Manatt, Phelps & Phillips attorneys and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP this evening in a statement provided to Deadline. “This is an age-old story: A woman speaks up with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation and the abuser attempts to turn the tables on the victim.

This is what experts call DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim Offender.”  “Their response to sexual harassment allegations: she wanted it, it’s her fault” the lawyers add of Baldoni and gang’s federal filing in New York on Thursday morning. “Their justification for why this happened to her: look what she was wearing,” Lively’s team go on to say in a some deft narrative reclamation of their own after Baldoni’s 179-page omnibus drop in the court docket. “In short, while the victim focuses on the abuse, the abuser focuses on the victim.

The strategy of attacking the woman is desperate, it does not refute the evidence in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and it will fail. Read the full statement from Blake Lively’s defense team in response to Justin Baldoni’s $400M defamation lawsuit below Of course, as made evident today and over the past few weeks, Baldoni, his Wayferer Studios CEO Janey Heath, Crisis PR chief Melissa Nathan (who worked for Johnny Depp during his very down and dirty and ultimately successful legal battles with ex-wife and Aquaman star Amber Heard) and publicist Jennifer Abel insist they are the