Despite the earnest efforts of Blake Lively’s lawyers, the private correspondence between the Another Simple Favor star and superstar buddy Taylor Swift over what was going on during the rocky production of It Ends With Us and the subsequent legal battles with co-star Justin Baldoni are not going to stay as private as the actress hoped.
In a short but sharp ruling today less than a year before the March 9, 2026 trial start, Judge Lewis J. Liman has denied Lively’s lawyer’s motion for a protective order over Swift and Lively’s digital chats.
Calling the messages “relevant” to the extremely high profile sexual harassment and retaliation matter Lively first put in the public domain with her December 20 filing with California’s Civil Rights Department and in federal court on New Year’s Eve, Judge Liman Wednesday laser focused in on the matter in question. “Lively herself has identified Swift as someone likely to have knowledge about complaints or discussions regarding the working environment on the set of It Ends With Us,” he wrote, noting the long friendship the duo share and Swift’s cameos in the sprawling situation.
“Given that Lively has represented that Swift had knowledge of complaints or discussions about the working environment on the film, among other issues, the requests for messages with Swift regarding the film and this action are reasonably tailored to discover information that would prove or disprove Lively’s harassment and retaliation claims,” Judge Liman reasoned.
In a clear win for Baldoni, today’s order allows Bryan Freedman and other attorneys for the Wayfarer Studios co-founder and his inner circle to see what the Fortnight singer and Lively said to each other about IEWU and the fallout from the astroturfing that the actress has alleged she was painfully an preemptively subjected to last summer around time of the Sony distributed film’s premiere. “Given that the Lively Parties have not shown the information is irrelevant or its production would be unduly burdensome, the claim that the Wayfarer Parties have dramatized the request in the press does not justify a protective order against the production of responsive documents,” Judge Liman states. “Lively’s motion for a protective order is denied.”
Having once termed all this a “feud between PR firms,” Judge Liman’s use of the term “irrelevant” is specific here.
Coming after a big win for Lively, Ryan Reynolds, their publicist Leslie Sloane and The New York Times on June 9 seeing Baldoni’s $400 million countersuit tossed out, the actress’s lead attorney Esra A. Hudson implored Judge Liman to keep the long sought conversations between the friends out of the case. The heart of the argument being that the correspondence had no place in the case except as tempting clickbait for Baldoni’s side. “Ms. Swift is not central to Ms. Lively’s claims (unlike dozens of other witnesses she identified who the Wayfarer Parties have largely ignored), and is otherwise irrelevant to the Wayfarer Parties’ claims, which were dismissed on June 9,” Hudson wrote on June 13. The Manatt, Phelps & Phillips lawyer added: “Good cause exists for this request because it has been the Wayfarer Parties’ tactic since August 2024 to make Ms. Swift and her fan base central to their media strategy against Ms. Lively.”
While limiting the scope of what Team Baldoni could look at, and reminding them not to even think about “leak” of “the requested communications to the press,” Judge Liman clearly disagreed with the concelment of the Swift and Lively texts, emails, and more.
Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni in It Ends With Us (Credit: Sony Pictures)
Sony Pictures
Baldoni’s lawyers and Melissa Nathan-led PR team did not respond to Deadline’s request for comment on their victory today.
Blake Lively’s team tried to spin their loss into, well, something else – as you can read here:
The Court outright denied the Wayfarer Parties’ motion to compel documents from Ms. Lively, who has produced far more documents in this case than the Wayfarer Parties combined. Further, the Court’s protective order ruling rests on the Wayfarer Parties’ admission that they received nothing from Taylor Swift, which is exactly the opposite of what their “insider” claimed two weeks ago.
As for the rest, Justin Baldoni and the Wayfarer parties demanded access to Taylor Swift’s private communications—despite having already subpoenaed and then withdrawn that subpoena. Baldoni’s desire to drag Taylor Swift into this has been constant dating back to August 2024, when the crisis PR firm led by Melissa Nathan included her in their “Scenario Planning” document (Lively Amended Complaint, Exhibit D), referred to her as a bully, and called for a strategy to influence the “TS fanbase” (Lively Amended Complaint, ¶214(b)). We will continue to call out Baldoni’s relentless efforts to exploit Ms Swift’s popularity, which from day one has been nothing more than a distraction from the serious sexual harassment and retaliation accusations he and the Wayfarer parties are facing.
Generating headlines and posts all over the world, Baldoni’s lawyers in May served a subpoena on Swift and her attorneys at Venables. In response a spokesperson for Swift, who contributed the My Tears Ricochet song for the It Ends With Us soundtrack for Lively’s Sony sanctioned edit, decried the subpoena as being “designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.” After achieving exactly that, Baldoni lawyers on May 22 withdrew the paperwork seeking information from Swift about what the songstress knew about what went down on the domestic violence themed IEWU.
At the time, it was affirmed by sources that the dropping of the subpoena was because Baldoni’s crew got what they were looking for on Swift voluntarily from her lawyers. In her June 9 letter, Lively lawyer Hudson added a May 22 email on the subpoena shuttering to Freedman, Lively attorneys and others from Swift lawyer Doug Baldridge stating “no documents are being produced, and no deposition is being scheduled.”
Now, with all the hopes and dreams of one side to keep Swift, who is the godmother of one of Lively and Reynolds’ four children, out of this case and all the hopes and dreams of another side to drag her into the case reset by Judge Liman’s order, documents are indeed going to be produced – and maybe even a certain Shake It Off deposition scheduled.
