By Variety | Created at 2025-01-29 05:46:20 | Updated at 2025-01-30 08:12:23
1 day ago
In the latest turn in the legal battle between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, a voice message from the “It Ends with Us” director has surfaced in which he apologizes for his brash response to Lively’s version of the now infamous rooftop scene.
The voice note, originally obtained by Daily Mail, is a six-minute apology from Baldoni, who sounds desperate to fix any trouble over Lively’s rooftop rewrites. Baldoni states that it’s “two in the morning” in the voice note, but the date it was recorded remains unclear.
“I am far from perfect. I am a flawed man, as my wife will attest,” Baldoni said in the voice note. “And I’m going to fuck up. I’m going to say the wrong thing. I’m going to put my foot in my mouth. I’m going to piss you off, probably, but I will always apologize and find my way back to center. That is one thing I can assure you of. I’m sorry I made you feel that way.”
Contention over the rewrites was first exposed in Baldoni’s $400 million lawsuit against Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds, in which he included a text exchange where Lively expressed disappointment over Baldoni’s response to her edits.
Baldoni continued: “I think you and I have been trying to build a relationship, which I think we’ve done successfully. I mean here we are — talking like this — me into my phone at two in the morning, but largely via text and voice note. And I will be honest with you, that is not my biggest strength. I love being with people and being in somebody’s, in somebody’s space and being face to face and I feel like that’s where I excel and definitely fallen short at times in our text and voice note exchanges so much to communicate and there’s so much happening and all that to say, I’m just really looking forward to spending time together and I think that’s going to really go a long way for our chemistry, which I believe is there — has been there from the start.”
The Baldoni-Lively feud started in December when Lively filed a sexual harassment and retaliation complaint against the “Jane the Virgin” actor. The pair are now suing each other in federal court, with Lively suing Baldoni over sexual harassment and retaliation and Baldoni suing Lively and Reynolds for defamation and extortion. Judge Lewis J. Liman, who is overseeing both cases, will hold an initial hearing on Feb. 3. Liman also set a briefing schedule that could see the pair go to trial as early as March 2026.
