Justin Baldoni attends the ‘It Ends With Us’ premiere in New York City, US, Aug. 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs

Actor-director Justin Baldoni, his production company Wayfarer Studios, and his publicists, Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan, filed on Thursday a joint $400 million countersuit against actress Blake Lively, in part claiming they received “abhorrent abuse and vile antisemitic slurs” after Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment.

The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court of the Southern District of New York in response to Lively’s own lawsuit against Baldoni, his public relations team, and Wayfarer Studios that was filed last month. In her filing, Lively, 37, accused Baldoni, 40, of sexual harassment and “sexually inappropriate behavior” on the set of their recent film “It Ends With Us,” and his team of initiating “a coordinated effort to destroy her reputation.”

Baldoni directed “It Ends With Us” and also starred in the film alongside Lively. In the film, Lively plays a florist named Lily Bloom who experiences domestic violence during her relationship with Baldoni’s character, a neurosurgeon named Ryle. Baldoni’s mother is from an Ashkenazi Jewish family with roots in Eastern Europe but he follows the Baháʼí faith.

In a joint statement given to The Algemeiner, Abel and Nathan explained their decision to join a counter-lawsuit against Lively after her own lawsuit in December. Their suit on Thursday also names Lively’s husband, “Deadpool” actor Ryan Reynolds, and Lively’s publicist as defendants.

“Over the last month we have received death threats, abhorrent abuse, and vile antisemitic slurs hurled at us due to her decision to use us as scapegoats for her own choices promoting her film in which she made millions of dollars,” Abel and Nathan said. “With this filing, we lift our own curtain of what happens when the entitled weaponize power, fear, and money to destroy, intimidate, and bully those who get in their way.”

Nathan is a crisis management expert and CEO and founder of The Agency Group (TAG) public relations firm, which has offices in Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC. Abel is the founder and CEO of RWA Communications, a public relations and media company based in Beverly Hills. She is Baldoni’s personal publicist.

In their joint statement, the two publicists also expressed frustration that they are “forced to answer this viciously selfish ongoing litigation littered with documented and provable lies in the midst of the tragedy impacting California where we reside.”

“Five months ago, Ms. Lively chose to promote a film about domestic violence in a way that caused instant negative and organic backlash due to her own highly publicized actions. Instead of accepting responsibility, she decided to cruelly blame us,” they added. “This malicious attack on private individuals by Ms. Lively and her team in which they chose to spoon feed The New York Times with doctored, out of context, and edited text messages in an effort to paint herself as a victim set off a chain of events that has been harmful beyond measure. To be clear, Ms. Lively and her team initiated this smear campaign in the media for the sole intention of gaining undeserved public sympathy for her own missteps.”

In their lengthy lawsuit on Thursday obtained by The Algemeiner, the plaintiffs made further claims about Lively directing a “smear campaign” against them that was carried out by her team. They also claimed Lively “concocted a fantastical narrative that laid the blame for her travails exactly where she believed it belonged — with others.”

“The ramifications of this scheme have been grave for Wayfarer, Baldoni, Abel, and Nathan, who became objects of public scorn and derision overnight,” the lawsuit stated. “Abel and Nathan, two private individuals (and female small business owners), have had their lives turned upside down: Their careers and reputations have been destroyed, their private information leaked, and their email inboxes and social media pages filled with a daily stream of death threats, abuse, and vile antisemitic remarks. The backlash against Wayfarer and Baldoni has been equally devastating, with Baldoni wrongfully labeled as a sex pest, his accolades rescinded, and his future projects thrown into doubt.”

The lawsuit on Thursday also addressed the accusations that Lively made in her own filing, including claims that Baldoni improvised unapproved and intimate scenes during filming “It Ends With Us,” used sexually inappropriate language on the film’s set, and talked with Lively about his experience with pornography. Lively also claimed in her lawsuit that Baldoni walked into her trailer uninvited while she was undressed, including when she was breastfeeding her baby, the youngest of her four children.

The plaintiffs in Thursday’s lawsuit sought to discredit all of Lively’s allegations. Discussing Lively’s claim that Baldoni walked into her trailer uninvited and while she was undressed, they said in their lawsuit, “the suggestion that this ever happened is illogical and categorically false.”

“No one would or did enter Lively’s trailer without knocking first and asking permission,” the lawsuit stated. “More than once, Lively invited Baldoni, [producer Jamey] Heath, and other producers into her trailer so that she could multi-task, understandably balancing motherhood with her work obligations. Regrettably, while accommodating Lively, Baldoni and Heath were led into situations that would later be characterized as harassment. Lively herself invited Baldoni to her trailer to ‘work on lines’ while she pumped breast milk. Lively regularly breast-fed in front of Baldoni while they had meetings … Lively was not topless, as she claims elsewhere, but was fully covered while either nursing or pumping breast milk.”

Baldoni’s publicists also claimed that Lively’s publicist, Leslie Sloane, “devised and executed a smear campaign of her own against Baldoni,” and disseminated “false and defamatory stories” about Baldoni and Wayfarer.

Baldoni has been dropped by his talent agency WME because of Lively’s accusations.