Before the lawsuit, Blake Lively called Intimacy Coordinators “critical.”

Before that Blake Lively filed a lawsuit in court against him It ends with us costar and director Justin Baldonialleging sexual harassment, retaliation and more, the actress revealed the vital importance of intimacy facilitators.

“I think it's really important to have an intimacy facilitator,” Lively, 37, said DigitalSpy In an August 2024 interview published three months before she filed her lawsuit against Baldoni in the Southern District of New York.

“You coordinate stunts, you coordinate dances, it's choreography,” she continued. “So it's to be able to say, 'Here, here, and here's the stunt,' and 'This is here, and here's the dance,' but like, 'Now you guys put your bodies together and your mouths and whatever, and just the action and cut.

Lively went on to say that she believes “being choreographed” during intimate scenes is “critical to everyone's safety.”

Lively officially sued Baldoni on Tuesday, December 31, 2024. Us Weekly previously approved alleging sexual harassment, retaliation, breach of contract, infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy and lost wages. Besides Baldoni, Lively is suing publicists Melissa to Natasha and Jennifer Abelas well as Wayfarer Studios.

Lively also filed a complaint with the California Department of Civil Rights citing similar claims.

“I hope my legal action will help pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about wrongdoing and help protect others who may be targeted,” Lively said in a statement. We.

In response, Baldoni submitted $250 million proceedings against The New York Times that same day and to report Lively's sexual harassment allegations. In the lawsuit, Baldoni accuses the publication of defamation and falsely slighting invasion of privacy, alleging that the newspaper “selected” the communication and omitted context to mislead readers.

The lawsuit also alleges that Lively ran a “strategic and manipulative” smear campaign against Baldoni, using false “sexual harassment allegations to gain unilateral control over every aspect of the production.”

Baldoni also claims that Lively never met with an intimacy coordinator during filming It ends with us.

“In this vicious smear campaign entirely orchestrated by Blake Lively and her team, New York Times bowed to the wishes and whims of two powerful 'untouchable' Hollywood elites, disregarding the journalistic practices and ethics once befitting a respectable publication, using fabricated and manipulated texts and deliberately omitting texts that challenge their chosen PR narrative,” said Baldoni's attorney, Brian Friedman. said in a statement to us on Tuesday, December 31.

“In doing so, they pre-determined the outcome of their story and aided and abetted their own disastrous PR smear campaign aimed at reviving Lively's self-inflicted tarnished public image and countering criticism from the online public,” Friedman continued. . “The irony is rich.”