Taylor Swift has had numerous cameos in pal Blake Lively‘s multimillion dollar legal war with Justin Baldoni over allegations of sexual harassment and an online smear campaign by the It Ends With Us director against his co-star. Now the “Shake It Off” superstar has taken center stage with a subpoena issued for Swift to reveal what longtime buddy Lively told her, what she knows, and likely a lot more.
Deadline has confirmed that Swift was subpoenaed earlier this week by lawyer Bryan Freedman for Baldoni, executives for his Wayfarer Studios, plus publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel. The roping in of Swift, one of the most famous people on the planet, truly cranks up the volume on the now six-month-old case that went public on December 20 when Lively filed a complaint with California’s Civil Rights Department.
With a settlement looking like a non-starter, Lively and Baldoni are set to face off before Judge Lewis J. Liman in a trial beginning on March 9, 2026. In the lead-up, Lively, Reynolds,, their PR rep Leslie Sloane and The New York Times are all seeking to be dismissed from Baldoni’s $400 million defamation and extortion lawsuit.
The depth and scope of the blast radius of Swift now being officially involved is evident by the near total radio silence from the usually quip quick Team Blake and Team Baldoni. At the time of IEWU’s summer 2024 release, Lively mentioned the then Eras Tour-performing Swift’s participation on the film’s top tier soundtrack more than once.
On the other side of the subpoena, representatives for Swift were not leaving any statement stone unturned Friday.
“Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie, she was not involved in any casting or creative decisions, she did not score the film, she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film, she did not even see It Ends With Us until weeks after its public release, and was traveling around the globe during 2023 and 2024 headlining the biggest tour in history,” a Swift spokesperson says Friday in response to the subpoena for Baldoni’s crew.
They added: “The connection Taylor had to this film was permitting the use of one song, ‘My Tears Ricochet.’ Given that her involvement was licensing a song for the film, which 19 other artists also did, this document subpoena is designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.”
Ryan Reynolds & Hugh Jackman in Deadpool & Wolverine Credit: Disney
Marvel/Disney/Everett Collection
As more and more lawsuits and accusations have emerged, Ryan Reynold’s buddy and Deadpool & Wolverine co-star Hugh Jackman is likely next to be subpoenaed, a source close to events tells me.
With Baldoni’s legal beagles claiming the cringy Nicepool character from the blockbuster superhero team-up flick is a mockery of their client, Disney and Marvel have already been yanked into the ever expanding Lively-Baldoni matter. Freedman and other Baldoni attorneys are seeking to get their hands on documents, scripts, Google spreadsheets and correspondence from the House of Mouse on how the original and man-bun wearing Nicepool came to be and in the Shawn Levy-helmed flick. No surprise, Marvel-owners Disney are not interested at all in allowing outsiders a peek inside their MCU — lawsuits or no lawsuits.
Almost from the moment Lively went to the CRD and The New York Times posted its ‘We Can Bury Anyone: Inside A Hollywood Smear Machine’; on December 21 about what allegedly went down during the making of the Sony-distributed domestic violence drama IEWU Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios, execs and publicists have long claimed Reynolds has been a major player in the whole drama, off screen and in the courts. As the dispute notched it up with multimillion-dollar lawsuits on all sides, lawyer Freedman has tried to put the focus on Reynolds’ role in supporting his wife during IEWU, the alleged astroturfing smear campaign against Lively that followed, and in the whole thing going supernova in public.
TMZ was first to report the Swift subpoena.
