The dirty laundry that dethroned Hollywood’s golden couple
No one was expecting Blake Lively to appear on the Met Gala red carpet – in sparkling pastel Versace, no less – just hours after the lawsuit against Justin Baldoni, her co-star on It Ends with Us, was settled out of court. Lively’s appearance may have been intended as a victory lap, but she has little to celebrate. The two-year-long legal battle, in which she accused her co-star of harassment, sexual misconduct and orchestrating a smear campaign against her, has backfired spectacularly. The film, based on the bestselling novel by Colleen Hoover, was a great commercial success. It made $351m (£259m) from a budget of $25m. However, that was immediately overshadowed by the nastiness of the dispute between Lively and Baldoni. Baldoni claimed that Lively tried to control the film by rewriting and editing scenes herself. Lively, meanwhile, always maintained that her lawsuit was a necessary stand against “pervasive retaliation I faced, and continue to, for privately and professionally asking for a safe working environment for myself and others”. Critics, however, have seen it as …
