Justin Baldoni claims he never read the sensational New York Times article about his alleged misconduct towards Blake Lively amid It ends with us.
In December 2024, the New York Times published “We Can Bury Anyone: Inside the Hollywood Smear Machine,” which details Blake's complaint to the California Department of Civil Rights, which was followed by a lawsuit. In it, she claims that Justin and his co-stars launched a smear campaign after she complained of sexual harassment on set.
Justin and his publicists then sued The New York Times for $250 million in damages, calling her claims “categorically false and easily disproven.” The claim was fired in June, when a judge ruled that his team had not demonstrated that the Times was defamatory: “The Times had no apparent motive to favor Lively's version of events.”
However, Blake's lawsuit against Justin is still ongoing. New court documents Reviewed by BuzzFeed shows portions of Justin's testimony given in early October. In it, he said, “My testimony is that this lawsuit, the New York Times article, and the CRD complaint were the first I heard of many of these allegations that I obviously participated in or participated in, and which I completely disagree with, whether they happened or not.”
When asked about his previous testimony that he never read the New York Times article, Justin responded, “Never personally read it, no… I didn’t personally sit down to read it.”
Instead, Justin said he learned about the article from his lawyers: “I have first-hand personal knowledge from my lawyers, who told me in detail everything that was in the article.”
The New York Times brought it up again when Justin was asked about his colleague Liz Plank's departure from their podcast. Man, that's enough. Justin was asked about “what [had] has changed,” causing her to not become a co-host, to which he responded, “I'm representing an article in The New York Times and the whole world thinking I'm a bad person.” However, he denied that the two talked about it.
BuzzFeed has reached out to reps for Blake, Justin and Liz for comment.
