NEED TO KNOW
Taylor Swift praised friend Blake Lively after the New York Times article about her Justin Baldoni complaint was published in December 2024, documents submitted in court appear to show.
Text messages between the stars were unsealed on Tuesday, Jan. 20, ahead of a summary judgment hearing in Lively’s case against Baldoni, her It Ends With Us director-costar that she accused of sexual harassment and retaliation. Baldoni, 41, denies the claims, and the trial is set to be held in May. (While the text messages do not contain the stars’ full names, other court filings describe the exchange as a conversation between Lively and Swift.)
After the Times published its report “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine” that covered Lively’s complaint and broke news of the allegations on Dec. 21, 2024, Swift texted Lively: “You won. You did it.”
“And,” the text message claims, “you f—ing helped so many people who won’t have to go through this ever again.”
“Never has a cancellation been reversed so fast,” wrote Swift, 36, to Lively, 38, in the exchange filed with the court. “You guys don’t understand how rare this is. To have proof and to take the perfect steps to bring that truth into the light.”
Lively replied to Swift at the time: “I love you so much. I would not be ok through any of this if it weren’t for you.” (Sources told PEOPLE in May 2025 that their friendship became complicated amid the legal battle and that Swift wanted “no part in this drama.”)
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Lawyers for Lively have argued that the excerpted messages presented by Baldoni’s legal team are missing necessary context, including one exchange between Lively and Swift from early in December 2024 when Swift supposedly texted, “I think this bitch knows something is coming because he’s gotten out his tiny violin.” Lively’s attorneys say it “does not support” the defendants’ claim that it shows Lively and Swift “privately discussed the forthcoming New York Times article.”
In her statement to the Times for the bombshell article that kicked off the highly publicized legal war, Lively said she hoped her “legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted.”
At the same time, Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman told the Times, “These claims are completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media.”
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Baldoni’s defamation countersuit against the Times, Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds has since been dismissed by the judge. After that dismissal, in June 2025, Lively spoke out about the case and said she felt “more resolved than ever to continue to stand for every woman’s right to have a voice in protecting themselves, including their safety, their integrity, their dignity and their story.”
Freedman told TMZ in June that Baldoni “wants to be vindicated, and that’s all that he cares about.” He added that Baldoni is “waiting for his day in court, where he can speak out to tell the truth.”
Swift has come up a number of times in the legal back-and-forth in this case, including in an alleged message once shared by Baldoni: “If [Lively] doesn’t promote the movie she can leak that I’m a bad person or that she felt unsafe with me and all the stuff she has on me. Then she’s the victim. It’s the Taylor Swift playbook. So she can ask for whatever she wants because she knows I know.”
Colleen Hoover, however, said in an unsealed text message to Lively in July 2024 that she felt Baldoni was the one “playing victim.” Wrote Hoover at the time: “I can guarantee you he hasn’t felt an ounce of guilt. He’s too busy playing victim while you work your ass off to make a better movie that he gets credit for.”
