The legal battle between Blake Lively and Jason Baldoni rages on, as each side has continued to lob accusations at the other. A lot has been said about the use, or the lack thereof, of an intimacy coordinator on the set of It Ends With Us. Now a professional within that field has spoken out regarding what has been said, and what it likely means.
A new documentary that recently aired in the U.K. He Said, She Said: Blake Lively vs Justin Baldoni, (via Us Weekly) includes comments from Mia Schachter, an intimacy coordinator who has worked on projects including Lessons in Chemistry (available with an Apple TV+ subscription) and HBO’s Perry Mason. She says that the text messages between Lively and Baldoni indicate that, at least early on, the pair were getting along quite well. She said…
From reading their text messages, I do get the sense that, at one point, there was genuine affection between them and what felt like a friendship.
Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni had dual relationships while making It Ends With Us. The two were the romantic leads of the relationship drama, that became a solid box office hit, but both also had key roles behind the scenes, with Baldoni directing the film, and Lively acting as a producer and eventual script-changer.
One of Lively’s complaints in her suit against Baldoni is the claim that intimacy coordinators were not always on set during the production of It Ends With Us and that Baldoni would make changes to the film’s most intimate scenes. Baldoni has countered with texts that show Lively declined to meet the intimacy coordinator before filming.
However, Schachter contends that could have been the cast at the time simply because Lively and Baldoni had a different relationship than what came later. She explained:
In my experience, when an actor says, ‘I don’t need to meet the intimacy coordinator until we’re shooting,’ as much as it hinders my process, it does typically indicate that they trust their scene partner. And those texts made me think that at one point, she did feel a lot of trust with him.
Of course, even if Lively had trust in Baldoni at that point, it’s certainly possible things changed at some point later. Lively is suing Baldoni for sexual harassment. Baldoni has filed a countersuit for defamation against Lively, as well as the New York Times, and also Lively’s husband Ryan Reynolds, who he claimed used the character of “Nicepool” in Deadpool & Wolverine as a way to mock him.
At this point, it seems all but certain that these issues will only be settled in court. However, the case isn’t scheduled to be heard until next year, so anything could happen in that time.
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