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It Ends With Us director and actor Justin Baldoni is suing the New York Times after the publication announced in a bombshell report that his co-star Blake Lively filed a lawsuit against him for sexual harassment and for running a smear campaign against her.

In his suit, he has referenced several instances which he says were wrongly depicted by the publication. While filming the movie, Lively texted Baldoni and said, “I’m just pumping in my trailer if you wanna work out our lines.” He responded: “Copy. Eating with crew and will head that way.”

According to Variety, 18 months later, that interaction was depicted by the New York Times in a sinister light. The Times wrote: “[Baldoni] repeatedly entered her makeup trailer uninvited while she was undressed, including when she was breastfeeding.”

That discrepancy is one of many in a $250 million lawsuit filed on Tuesday by Baldoni against the Times in the Los Angeles Superior Court.

Baldoni is among a group of 10 plaintiffs, which includes publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel who are suing the newspaper for libel and false light invasion of privacy over the December 21 article titled ‘‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine’. The parties, including It Ends With Us producers Jamey Heath and Steve Sarowitz, claim that the Times relied on “cherry-picked and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead”, Variety reported.

“The Times story relied almost entirely on Lively’s unverified and self-serving narrative, lifting it nearly verbatim while disregarding an abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims and exposed her true motives,” the lawsuit stated.

The complaint accused the Times of promissory fraud and breach of implied-in-fact contract and offered a rebuttal of the narrative depicted in the article.

A New York Times spokesperson responded, “The role of an independent news organization is to follow the facts where they lead. Our story was meticulously and responsibly reported. It was based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article. To date, Wayfarer Studios, Mr Baldoni, the other subjects of the article and their representatives have not pointed to a single error. We published their full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well. We plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”

Attorney Bryan Freedman, who filed the lawsuit, told Variety that the Times “cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful ‘untouchable’ Hollywood elites, disregarding journalistic practices and ethics once befitting of the revered publication by using doctored and manipulated texts and intentionally omitting texts which dispute their chosen PR narrative.”

Lively’s second lawsuit

Following her first lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles, the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants actor has sued Baldoni in a New York federal court for sexual harassment and orchestrating a campaign to smear her, The Hollywood Reported stated.

Lively, in the lawsuit, alleged that Baldoni and his PR team created a multi-tiered plan to undermine her reputation in response to speaking up about sexual misconduct on the set of the film.

The complaint named Baldoni, his film studio, Wayfarer and the PR representatives, Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel, who allegedly led the effort to defame Lively.

In a statement, Lively’s lawyers said she faced “further retaliation and attacks” after she went public with the allegations against Baldoni.

“Wayfarer and its associates have violated federal and California state law by retaliating against her for reporting sexual harassment and workplace safety concerns,” she said.

“Now, the defendants will answer for their conduct in federal court. Ms Lively has brought this litigation in New York, where much of the relevant activities described in the Complaint took place, but we reserve the right to pursue further action in other venues and jurisdictions as appropriate under the law.”

In the lawsuit, Lively claimed she had expressed concerns before It Ends With Us filming began regarding Baldoni allegedly improvising “physical intimacy that had not been rehearsed, choreographed, or discussed with Ms Lively, with no intimacy coordinator involved.”

The actor further accused Baldoni of trying to add in a graphic sex scene, without her consent, which saw her character orgasm on-camera. According to the suit, he defended the scene, saying, it wanted the characters “to orgasm together on their wedding night, which he said was important to him because he and his partner climax simultaneously during intercourse.” Lively alleged that Baldoni proceeded to ask for personal details about her relationship with her husband, Ryan Reynolds.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lively also accused Baldoni and Heath of pressuring her to perform certain acts for scenes that weren’t in the script originally.

For example, Lively claimed that when they were filming a birthing scene, the duo pressured her to simulate full nudity for the scene, “despite no mention of nudity for this scene in the script, her contract, or in previous creative discussions.” She maintained that Baldoni’s reasoning was that it’s “not normal” for women to keep their hospital gowns on while delivering a baby.

Lively also recalled Heath coming up to her and showing her and her assistant a video of his fully nude wife giving birth.

The actor’s second lawsuit alleged multiple inappropriate interactions she had with the two men, including Baldoni suggesting to her during a car ride that he had previously engaged in sexual conduct without consent. She further alleged that they described their past sexual relationships to her, and discussed their “previous porn addictions.”

The lawsuits come after a tumultuous press tour for the film where Baldoni was not in attendance with the rest of the cast and many accused Lively of taking a far too lighthearted approach while promoting a movie about domestic violence. Social media users claimed that Baldoni was shunned from film promotions for not seeing eye to eye with Lively, and was the only cast member actually raising awareness about domestic violence.