If you’ve been following the lawsuits Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively’s teams have both filed (and which have included Ryan Reynolds), you are probably aware there have been contentious allegations thrown out on both sides. While the varying lawsuits go through the court system, people have been very curious about the background of the It Ends with Us Director, particularly given he’s less well-known in the public eye than Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds are. Now, new info has broken about the actor and director, as well as the lawyer he has hired to lead the charge in the upcoming proceedings.
Who Is Justin Baldoni’s Lawyer?
Baldoni hired Bryan Freedman, a lawyer Variety has called “one of the entertainment industry’s most divisive attorneys,” to represent him in his defamation lawsuit against the New York Times as well as a subsequent lawsuit he filed against Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds after they dropped their own suit. Freedman
If you’ve been keeping tabs on all the drama surrounding these various suits, Freedman actually came up earlier this week. The current move from Lively’s legal team is to try and get a “gag order” in place. Her team is alleging “improper conduct” after Freedman has spoken out repetitively in favor of his client in recent days. He has, in fact, gone on the offense and previously called the suit filed by the It Ends with Us female lead full of “false allegations” and claiming her legal team only has “just one heinous pivot left.”
Now, however, it seems this isn’t the first time Baldoni came into contact with Bryan Freedman, as new details about a previous suit have surfaced.
Bryan Freedman Once Actually Sued Justin Baldoni Over Another Incident Involving His First Movie 5 Feet Apart
One of the reasons Baldoni was presumably able to move forward with It Ends with Us was because he did a good job with the weepy drama Five Feet Apart, which won over audiences in its 2019 debut. That movie, starring Cole Sprouse and Haley Lu Richardsons didn’t come without controversy, either.
Apparently, Bryan Freedman actually sued the Five Feet Apart team in 2021, claiming the script idea had been stolen from his client, an individual with cystic fibrosis who appeared in a documentary called My Last Days Baldoni had produced. That client had allegedly written a script called Three Feet Distance that had landed with a company working with Universal (Lionsgate produced Five Feet Apart.) Baldoni had allegedly had access to the script for Three Feet Distance, and Freedman’s then-client sued him over having a similar idea, though Baldoni had maintained his work on the aforementioned terminal illness documentary led to the idea.
The case was seemingly settled out of court, and Freedman filed to dismiss the case in 2022.
Now, the two are working together to combat claims from Lively that include a "smear campaign" and what Freedman calls "revolting sexual allegations" against his client. Baldoni subsequently sued the actress for $400 million. Her legal team has said the whole thing is "not a feud."
Meanwhile, Lively’s lawsuit has spotlighted some issues with the It Ends with Us production that did not all stem from Justin Baldoni, but the back-and-forth has remained contentious on both sides. We’ll have to wait and see if these suits get settled in a timely fashion, or if we all end up in court.
