Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni return to court a month after reaching settlement

Attorneys for US actor Blake Likely were back in front of a New York judge on Monday to demand legal fees and damages from It Ends with Us co-star Justin Baldoni, after a settlement was reached last month in their years-long legal battle.The 38-year-old actor’s legal team argued that the defamation lawsuit brought against her by Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios, was a retaliatory move prohibited by California law.Lawyers for Baldoni rejected the claim.Agence France-Presse was not immediately able to obtain details regarding the sum being sought by Lively.Lively filed her first complaint against Baldoni in December 2024, alleging the actor – who also directed the film – had spoken inappropriately about his sex life, and sought to alter the film to include sex scenes that were not in the script.Lively, who came to fame on the television series Gossip Girl, said Baldoni orchestrated a PR and social media campaign to ruin her reputation.Baldoni and his studio Wayfarer had countersued Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds with claims of extortion and defamation – but a judge dismissed those claims last year.Wayfarer previously insisted that neither the studio, its executives, nor its PR team did anything to retaliate against Lively.The federal judge handling the case, Lewis Liman, also dismissed some of Lively’s claims, but upheld her allegations of retaliation.The full terms of the out-of-court settlement reached between the two parties have not been publicly disclosed.Based on a bestselling novel by the US writer Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us made more than $350m at the box office in 2024, making it one of the biggest hits of the year.