With just two weeks to go before what Megyn predicted would be the “[civil] trial of the century,” Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni announced Monday they reached a shocking agreement to settle their yearlong legal saga.
The Legal Drama
The surprising news followed an 18-month court battle between the It Ends With Us co-stars that began in December 2024 when the actress alleged Baldoni, who directed and starred in the project, sexually harassed her and later orchestrated a retaliatory smear campaign to destroy her reputation. Baldoni denied the allegations and countered with his own lawsuit against Lively that was later dismissed.
After failed attempts at mediation and a very messy discovery process that aired a lot of dirty laundry, what remained to be settled was a very slimmed down version of the Gossip Girl star’s complaint. U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman dismissed 10 of Lively’s 13 claims – including sexual harassment, defamation, and conspiracy – last month, meaning only her accusations of breach of contract and retaliation would move forward to trial.
Court filings revealed the actress was seeking significant financial damages – to the tune of nearly $300 million – for that narrowed down complaint, but reports indicate she settled for nothing. According to Page Six, Lively and Baldoni each earned no money in the settlement, while their legal teams made a combined $60 million to sue and countersue one another.
The Joint Statement
What’s more? The agreement came with a joint statement released by the pair. It read:
“The end product – the movie ‘It Ends With Us’ – is a source of pride to all of us who worked 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.
We acknowledge the process presented challenges and recognize concerns raised by Ms. Lively deserved to be heard.
We remain firmly committed to workplaces free of improprieties and unproductive environments.
It is our sincere hope that this brings closure and allows all involved to move forward constructively and in peace, including a respectful environment online.”
Megyn believes the tone and tenor of the statement amounts to a huge victory for Baldoni and his team. On Tuesday’s show, she reacted to the settlement news and had some advice for Lively as she tries to resuscitate her image and career. Below are Megyn’s remarks, edited for length and clarity.
Megyn’s Take
“The big news Monday afternoon was the settlement two weeks before trial of the case brought by Blake Lively against Justin Baldoni and his movie studio [Wayfarer], not to mention the PR team representing him. This came as a big shock to most because they had been saying all along that there would be no settlement, they were going to see this through right to the bitter end. And a bitter end it was, indeed.
I want to take you back to what Bryan Freedman, who represented Justin Baldoni (he’s also my own personal attorney), said to me back in January 2025 right after this thing was filed. He came on the show and he talked about what was going to happen in this litigation:
MEGYN: What’s your prediction of where things go for him from here?
FREEDMAN: I mean, you know, my prediction 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 Jamey Heath and Justin Baldoni in this position of being called sexual predators, 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 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. They never relented. They kept confronting her via the media with the truth about her behavior toward Justin Baldoni and toward others and all the things she did that made everyone loathe her. It was devastating for her. Her reputation is in tatters. It is in ruins thanks to her.
They put out a joint statement, and I want to take you through it from a legal perspective. It is remarkable. It is a huge accomplishment for the Baldoni defense team. It reads as follows:
“The end product – the movie “It Ends With Us” – is a source of pride to all of us who worked 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.”
It’s 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 Ms. Lively deserved to be heard.”
Now, I haven’t talked to Bryan, but I guarantee you that that line there was the subject of about 200 revisions back and forth. You can feel it getting watered down and watered down and watered down. I’m sure that sounded much more favorable to Blake Lively when it was first drafted. Instead, we wind up with this. Every defense lawyer out there is like, ‘That’s excellent.’ It’s the best you could ever hope for.
“We remain firmly committed to workplaces free of improprieties and unproductive environments.”
There is nothing in here about sexual harassment 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, including a respectful environment online.”
That is Team Blake saying, ‘Please don’t hurt us anymore, Bryan Freedman.’ But you’re the one who started this, Blake. ‘Including a respectful environment online’ is 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 are a liar and your legal team are a bunch of liars.
Remember when you subpoenaed me in this case to try to get my documents? They subpoenaed me and my company for the documents my team and I put together before we interviewed Bryan Freedman on the 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.
I told her to pound sand. I hired an outside lawyer because Bryan was handling this case, and the lawyer went in, objected, and they lost. They were forced to stand down. And then she had the nerve when she was forced to stand down and come out and say, ‘We never subpoenaed Megyn Kelly,’ which was a lie. I can show you the document with my name on it asking for my documents. So, I know they are liars.
And I also know they are liars from the complaint that they filed against Justin, which Bryan, bit by bit, undermined with proof that she had taken things out of context, that she was determined to paint herself as a victim. It’s either like some form of Munchausens, or she is a bald-faced liar who made the whole thing up because she understood that she was suffering PR-wise thanks to her own bad deeds and she wanted somebody to blame it on.
The reporting is not $1 exchanged hands. 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 giving this statement. Now, she is going to run around and paint herself as, like, ‘I can’t talk about it because of an NDA, but, you know, wink, wink. I care about women. I 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 and to Meghan Markle. 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.
It is fine to correct the record if somebody is saying you stole from a bank. It is fine you say that is not true, ideally without too much emotion. But don’t make a huge deal out of it. Don’t call additional attention to the terrible things being said about you. At least let time pass. Ideally, it would be months before you get out there and subtly say something about it because it only caused more attention to the negative thing that is being said about you.
And on top of that, Americans don’t want to hear it. They don’t care about your PR problems, Blake Lively. You are married to Ryan Reynolds. He is 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. 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 in some huge mansion. You’re doing great. You’ve got your liquor company. You’ve got your hair company. Shut the fuck up about your bad PR, which amounted to, like, a month’s worth of negative articles that [Baldoni] didn’t even generate. But 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.
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. That wasn’t the case here.
She and her ‘dragons,’ Taylor Swift and Ryan Reynolds. Blake herself had way more power than Justin Baldoni, and she was determined to ruin his life, to dub him as a #MeToo-er, as a sexual predator, to misrepresent his emails, his behavior on set, that of his partners from Wayfarer. And she did not care at all. She just wanted to cloak herself in fake #MeToo glory. She was a #MeToo stolen valor thief.
Had she just taken it and let us beat her up for her terrible behavior in her interview with that Nordic journalist [Kjersti Flaa] she would have realized, ‘Shit, I was bad there. I mishandled that,’ 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. We actually thought maybe that was the better way to promote it, but, now having seen it, I understand how it was perceived as insensitive.’ You could’ve handled it like that, but, instead, you filed a lawsuit and tried to viciously ruin a man’s life. For that, we do not forgive you.
You don’t seem sorrowful or regretful at all. In fact, I believe you would do it again. So, now you’ll have to live with the consequences of calling attention to your own bad behavior. You are the one who made it an unforgettable two-year saga for all of us, and you ruined your career. You did the same thing to yourself that Meghan Markle did to herself.
Justin Baldoni will emerge from this smelling like a rose. He looks victimized by you and like someone who decided not to take it lying down; who hired himself a very good lawyer who was able to out you for exactly what you are. You will not sail off into the sunset with great movie roles or in high demand in Hollywood. You’ve reached the apex of your career.
Look, your life is still great. You have your great husband, you have your kids, you have your multi-million dollar estates. Enjoy them. Be quiet. Reflect. Try to learn. And maybe, at some point in the future, come out and do the mea culpa you owe us all, but, most importantly, you owe Justin.”
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 1,310 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.