Megyn Kelly is having a harder and harder time siding with Blake Lively with each new piece of information released amid her and Justin Baldoni’s “It Ends With Us” legal skirmish.
On Wednesday’s episode of “The Megyn Kelly Show,”
the host zeroed in on behind-the-scenes footage during production on “It Ends With Us” released by Baldoni and his legal team on Tuesday.
The 10-minute footage shows Lively and Baldoni dancing in one of the film’s romantic scenes cited in Lively’s original complaint.
The video shows them being flirtatious on camera but speaking and joking around out of character, discussing the scene at hand, since the scene being filmed wasn’t going to have audio.
Baldoni released the footage, claiming it disproves Lively’s complaint that characterized the moment as being riddled with unwanted sexual advances. Lively’s team responded shortly after Wednesday, calling the footage a “manufactured media stunt” that “corroborates, to the letter, what Ms. Lively described in Paragraph 48 of her Complaint.”
“This matter is in active litigation in federal court,” Lively’s statement continued. “Releasing this video to the media, rather than presenting it as evidence in court, is another example of an unethical attempt to manipulate the public.”
Kelly, however, does not think the footage aligns with how Lively painted the moment in her lawsuit.
On Thursday’s podcast, the host also stated that Lively is trying to place a gag order on Baldoni to stop him from releasing any more to the story from his point of view. The host added that if Lively was telling the truth, she wouldn’t need the gag order.
“Now that she’s had her shot against him, and she severely damaged him with that New York Times piece in this complaint, which she managed to get leaked, now she wants a complete gag order,” Kelly said. “Now he needs to be shut down to protect her. This is very unfair to poor Blake. Why should Justin be able to release snippets to the media without the full context? That’s what she said. That’s what she did.”
She continued, “I’m just saying this person is not an honest broker. I believe her less than ever. I actually disbelieve her fully now, and they should not be gagged. I will happily participate in releasing any further leaks that they have, because the truth should be out there. What does she have to fear if she’s telling the truth?”
Wednesday’s video is the latest salvo in a weeks-long legal dust-up between the “It Ends With Us” colleagues. Baldoni has already sued the New York Times for $250 million, citing defamation, and stated in a separate lawsuit against Lively and Ryan Reynolds that the Nicepool character in “Deadpool & Wolverine” was created to “mock” him.
Lively has accused Baldoni of improvising without an intimacy coordinator “physical intimacy that had not been rehearsed, choreographed or discussed with [her]” and of coercing her into an unplanned nude scene.