Justin Baldoni is claiming that he never read the bombshell New York Times story 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 a Hollywood Smear Machine,” which details Blake’s California Civil Rights Department complaint, which was followed by a lawsuit. In it, she alleges that Justin and his parties orchestrated a smear campaign after she complained about sexual harassment on set.
Justin and his publicists then sued the New York Times for $250 million in damages, calling its claims “categorically false and easily disproven.” The lawsuit was dismissed in June, as the judge ruled that his team had not demonstrated that the Times acted libelously: “The Times had no obvious motive to favor Lively’s version of events.”
However, Blake’s lawsuit against Justin is still ongoing. New court documents viewed by BuzzFeed show parts of Justin’s deposition, given in early October. In it, he said, “My testimony is that this lawsuit and The New York Times article and the CRD complaint was the first that I had heard of many of these allegations that evidently I was at or a part of, which I completely disagree with whether or not they happened.”
When asked about his prior testimony that he had never read the New York Times article, Justin replied, “Never personally read it, no…I did not personally sit down to read it.”
Instead, Justin said that his knowledge of the piece came from his attorneys: “I have personal firsthand knowledge from my attorneys giving me point by point all that was in the article.”
The New York Times was evoked again, when Justin was asked about the departure of his cohost Liz Plank from their podcast Man Enough. Justin was asked about “what [had] changed” that led her to not be a cohost, to which he replied, “I imagine The New York Times article and the entire world thinking I was a bad man.” However, he denied that the two spoke about it.
BuzzFeed has reached out to representatives for Blake, Justin, and Liz for comment.