Breaking Down the TRUTH About Why Blake Lively Settled with Justin Baldoni For ZERO Money

[0:00]The big news yesterday was the settlement two weeks before trial of the case brought by Blake Lively against Justin Baldoni and his movie studio, not to mention the PR team representing him. Um, this came as a big shock to most because so far they had been saying all along there'll be no settlement, like we're we're going to see this through right to the bitter end and a bitter end it was indeed. Um, I want to take you back before we kick this off to what Brian Friedman, who represented Justin Baldoni, to what he said to me back in January 2025, right after this thing was filed. Uh, he's a friend. He's also my own personal attorney and he will make your life very unpleasant if you come after me. Uh, but that's an aside. Um, he came on the show and he talked about what was going to happen in this litigation. You remember what happened was Blake Lively, just as a quick primer, started this movie, it ends with us with Justin Balni, he had purchased the rights to that Colleen Hoover novel. It was his film, he agreed with, um, Blake Lively that she would star in it, and she agreed to that just to be the star, not the co-writer, not the co-director. She had an executive producer credit, but that's meaningless, that's just like a vanity plate. And, um, when she did the movie, she started to complain that he was allegedly doing things inappropriate on the set, that she felt like he was writing in sex scenes that weren't there, and other allegations. And they took a break during COVID and when they came back, she wanted him to sign this long rider of all the things he promised he would not do, like go into her dressing room unannounced. we would later learn that she invited him into the dressing room while she was breastfeeding, something she would complain about in the lawsuit, even though he, she said I'm breastfeeding and he said, oh, I can come later, and she said, no, come now. Okay, there were there was such a list of those things where if you just heard her half of it, you're like, oh god, he's terrible and then you heard the other half of it, it was like, oh gosh, she's terrible for misleading me in this way. So she filed that, she filed first a complaint with the California Human Rights Department. And then somehow, I mean, G, who knows, it wound up in the New York Times. I don't, I have no idea how the New York Times got wind of her super confidential complaint with the California Human Rights Division, but lo and behold, the New York Times, they're good scoopers, and they found out. Uh, shortly thereafter, we had cross lawsuits. She sued Baldoni and Wayfair and Justin's PR team, claiming that they had unleashed that she'd been discriminated against, sexually harassed, and then that they had retaliated against her when she complained with the California Human Rights Division and with them internally. And, um, he cross claimed against her too for defamation of character and so on and so forth. The litigation proceeded, he was very aggressive in his defense and very aggressive in his PR, thanks to his lawyer, Brian Friedman. Who, let me tell you, has been through this a time or two. I mean, his representation of me in my battle with NBC was one of the first huge uh litigations that he'd handled that was equally big on the PR front battle and on the legal battle. And Brian is equally gifted at both, and he understood in this case, and he's handled so many in between, but um, he understood in this case that both were going to be equally necessary here. In fact, the truth is, the PR battle was even more important in this lawsuit. So we spoke to him weeks after the New York Times article dropped on this program and he made a prediction about how this was going to go for Blake Lively. What's your prediction of where things go from here? I mean, you know, my prediction is, is, is, is that this is going to get worse and worse for Blake Lively, and the reason it's going to get worse and worse is people are going to be more comfortable telling the truth. And what this is about is really the truth, and she's put Jamie Heath and and Justin Baldoni in in this in this position of being called sexual predator, sexual harassers. They have no choice but to go all the way, no choice. So, you know, we're going to go all the way, and, and, the unique thing again in this case is going to be we're going to put every single text message out there. We're going to put every email out there, we're going to put every document out there that's relevant to the case, not something that's disrespectful or otherwise would embarrass Miss Lively because that's not what we want to do. But we want to make sure that people have the facts and people can make their own determinations as to what happened. And that would prove to be devastating to Blake Lively. It's the reason she settled, because they never relented. They kept confronting her via the media with the truth about her behavior toward Justin Baldoni and toward the press and toward others, and all the things she did that made everyone loathe her. And it was devastating for her. Her reputation is in tatters, it is in ruins, thanks to her. When the dollar's convertibility into gold ended in 1971, gold was fixed at 35 bucks an ounce. Fast forward to today and the US dollar has lost more than 85% of its purchasing power. Gold, on the other hand, has increased in value by over 12,000%, and that's why major firms like Vanguard and BlackRock hold significant positions in gold. And it's also why you may want to consider diversifying your savings with physical gold from Birch Gold Group, but it starts with education. Birch Gold just announced that they're learn and earn precious metals event, um, that they, they've just announced it, right? So they're going to help you learn all about this if this is an area in which you just feel overwhelmed or like you've heard about it, but you don't really know what to do. It's a free online event and it rewards you for learning the basics of investing in precious metals. Sign up to get free silver on your next purchase and get even larger incentives as you go. The more you learn, the more you can earn, but you do have to act now, as this special event only runs through April 30th. Text my initials MK to the number 989898 to join Birch Gold's learn and earn precious metals event by April 30th. That's MK to 989898 today. They put out a joint statement, and I want you, I want to read you the joint statement and take you through it from a legal perspective. Okay, is it's remarkable. It is a huge accomplishment for the Baldoni defense team. It reads as follows: A joint statement, okay, so they're both all of them, uh, signing onto this. The end product, the movie It Ends With Us, is a source of pride to all of us who work to bring it to life, raising awareness and making a meaningful impact in the lives of domestic violence survivors and all survivors, is a goal that we stand behind. Okay, generic, go see our movie, it was a good one. Then we get to the meat of it. We acknowledge the process presented challenges and recognize concerns raised by Miss Lively deserved to be heard. Now, I'm going to, I haven't talked to Brian, I guarantee you that that line there was the subject of about 200 revisions back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, right? You I can feel it getting watered down and watered down and watered down from like, Blake Lively had righteous claims that she was correct to bring. Unfortunately, they were thrown out by a judge and whatever and this is the best you could do, whatever, I'm sure it sounded much more favorable to Blake Lively when it was first drafted. Instead we wind up with the process of making the movie, presented challenges and we recognize concerns raised by Lively deserved to be heard. So good, I mean, honestly, every defense lawyer out there is like, that's ex the best you could ever hope for. We remain firmly committed to workplaces free of improprieties and unproductive environments. There is nothing, nothing in here about sexual harassment, nothing or retaliation. Just workplaces free of improprieties and unproductive environments, you could be talking about people who leave early and who are lazy on the set. That does not in any way suggest any sexual harassment, never mind retaliation, it is as anodyne a statement as you could get. It is our sincere hope that this brings closure and allows all involved to move forward constructively and in peace. That's Team Blake saying, please don't hurt us anymore, Brian Friedman. Huh, but you're you're the one who started this. Uh, including a respectful environment online. That's a message for all of us to stop saying nasty things about Blake Lively. Well, I hate to break it to you, Team Blake, but I didn't sign a settlement agreement, and I'm totally free and emboldened to say whatever I want about you, including that you're a liar. You're a liar and your legal team are a bunch of liars. Remember when you subpoenaed me in this case, trying to get my documents on you. This happened, they subpoenaed me, my company, and tried to come out after my documents that my team and I put together before we covered her on this show before we interviewed Brian Friedman on this show. They actually had the gall to ask for my attorney client communications between me and my lawyer, thinking we had nothing better to discuss than Blake Lively.

[10:00]Um, and I told her to pound sand, we, I hired a lawyer, an outside lawyer, because Brian was handling this case, I didn't want him to have to, you know, be conflicted. And, uh, the lawyer went in, objected, and they lost. Okay, they they were forced to stand down and then she had the nerve when she was forced to stand down to come out and say, oh, we never subpoenaed Megan Kelly, which was a lie. I can show you the document with my name on it asking for my documents. I had to hire a lawyer and go into the court and defend it and I won. So I know they're liars, and I know they're liars from the complaint that they filed against Justin, which Brian bit by bit undermined with proof. With proof that she had taken things out of context, that she was determined to paint herself as a victim. I'm telling you, this woman, Blake Lively, I think she has Munchhausen's, where like she she tries to make something bad happen to her, she like insists that she has to be a victim because like something terrible's happened to her. It's like some form of Munchausen's. And, um, either that or she's a bold faced liar who made the whole thing up because she understood that she was suffering uh, PR-wise thanks to her own bad deeds, and she wanted somebody to blame it on. She wanted someone to blame it on. Um, the the Daily Mail today, I want to give credit where it's due, it's I think it's the Daily Mail, not the post, but, um, is reporting not one dollar exchanged hands. Not one dollar, TMZ also has it. Not one dollar. He didn't pay her one red cent. Can you believe that? That is a total and complete victory for him with this anodyne statement, and she dismisses all charges. It is a complete and total win for Justin Baldoni, and it is a complete and total surrender by Blake Lively and admission that she had no claims. She won't be forced to do it publicly, she was allowed to save face by just saying, oh, we settled it and give this statement, you know, we both agree on appropriate workplaces. And now she's going to run around and she's going to try to paint herself as like, I can't talk about it because it's an NDA, but like, you know, wink wink, we care about workplaces and I care about women, I care deeply care. And the press is going to let her get away with that, but the public is not. And this is where I want to offer a free PR lesson to Blake Lively, to Megan Markle. Another person who wasn't at the Met Gala, even though her good friends, the Kardashians were all there and very tight with the co-chair, Lauren Sanchez Bezos, couldn't quite manage to get an invite for that loser.

[13:20]But both women need the same lesson and I am just the gal to provide it. When you come under withering attack by the media, which happens to virtually every public figure at one point or another in his or her life, there is only one play, be quiet and take it. I know you can go out there and you can complain. You can fight back. It's fine to correct the record if somebody's saying, you know, what you stole from a bank, it's fine if you say, that is not true. You know, ideally without too much emotion, you can correct the record, but don't make a huge deal out of it. Don't call additional attention to the terrible things being said about you, right? Like, whatever, at least let time pass, you know, ideally months before you go out there and subtly say something about it, because it only caused more attention to the negative thing that's being said about you. And on top of that, Americans don't want to hear it. They don't want to hear it. They don't care about your PR problems, Blake Lively. You're married to Ryan Reynolds, he's reportedly worth $400 million. You yourself reportedly earned $21 million in the eight years preceding the filing of this lawsuit, according to those involved in the case. So you're earning what, 4 million and change per film, that's not bad for you, you're really not that talented, you're really just the gossip girl actress. Your life is grand. You have four wonderful children, you live at some huge mansion, I think up in Bedford, New York, or some place in the sort of hills of Connecticut. You're doing great. Shut up, you got your liquor company, you got your hair company, shut the fuck up about your bad PR, which amounted to like a month's worth of negative articles, which he didn't even generate. But you, honestly, even if he had, shut up. We don't care. America has its own problems and they look like real problems, not your stupid problems. Of I had bad things said about me in the Daily Mail or the New York Post, oh, cry me a river. You ruined your own reputation by telegraphing to the world that you could not take a rhetorical punch in the face. That you were so thin skinned you had to run and file a lawsuit and on top of that try to ruin a man with less power than you. It's one thing for a bully to take on someone of equal or greater power, it's almost impossible actually to be dubbed a bully in those circumstances if you have equal or the other person has greater power than you, you're not bullying them at all. That wasn't the case here, she and her dragons, Taylor Swift and Ryan Reynolds, her best friend and her husband, and Blake herself had way more power than Justin Baldoni and she was determined to ruin his life, to dub him as a MeTooer as a sexual predator, to misrepresent his emails, his behavior on set, that of his partners from Wayfair, and she did not care at all. She just wanted to cloak herself in fake MeToo glory, she was a MeToo stolen valor thief, and had she just taken it, had she let us beat her up for her, admittedly, I mean, not admittedly by her, but the rest of us admit, terrible behavior in her interview with that Nordic journalist, I like your baby but too, why do they always ask us about our fashion, we they ask that of the man, Parker Posie, you're awful too. Had she just taken it, because she would have realized, shit, I was bad there, I should have just I I mishandled that. And and ideally issued an apology to that young woman. Had she come out and said, you know what, some of my tone around the promo of a domestic violence movie, it may have been off, let me explain it to you in an interview, I we actually fought, maybe that was the better way to promote it. But now having seen it, I I understand how it was perceived as insensitive, whatever, you could you could have handled it like that. But instead you filed a lawsuit and you tried to viciously ruin a man's life. And for that we do not forgive you. You haven't sought forgiveness, you don't seem sorrowful or regretful at all. In fact, I believe you'd do it again. So now you'll have to live with the consequences of calling attention to your own bad behavior, the reasons people disliked you, which got amplified the the strizing effect times 2,000. Everyone's seen these terrible clips of you, whereas they wouldn't have before, it would have been a small, one month deal at most. You're the one who made it an unforgivable two year saga for all of us and you've ruined your career. No, no director wants to work with you. They know you're going to do this to them. They they know you're a nightmare, that you're a terrorist. That's what the Sony executive who's responsible for putting this movie out called you a terrorist. Thanks for watching this clip. If you're new here, subscribe. We got a whole lot more goodness where that came from. Would love to hear your feedback, you can email me too, Megan m e g y n at meganlly.com or just leave a comment below. But join the community by becoming a subscriber. We really, really value your input and your support. We may not always agree, but we are always going to talk about it and respect.