Blake Lively Slams Accusation of Threatening Taylor Swift Amid Legal Battle With Justin Baldoni

The It Ends With Us star denies claims that she pressured Swift to publicly support her, calling the allegations “categorically false” as legal tensions escalate ahead of trial.

Blake Lively is pushing back hard against explosive new allegations made in her ongoing legal dispute with It Ends With Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni — this time involving global superstar Taylor Swift.

In the latest twist in the contentious court case, Baldoni’s legal team has alleged that Lively attempted to pressure her close friend Taylor Swift into issuing a public statement of support — allegedly even threatening to release private text messages if Swift refused. However, Lively’s attorney, Mark Gottlieb, has strongly denied the accusation, calling the claims “categorically false.”

“We unequivocally deny all of these so-called allegations, which are cowardly sourced to supposed anonymous sources, and completely untethered from reality,” Gottlieb told Entertainment Weekly on Wednesday.

The claims emerged after Swift’s legal team at Venable received a subpoena in the legal battle between Lively and Baldoni. Both Swift’s and Lively’s attorneys are now seeking to quash the subpoena in the District of Columbia, asserting that Swift is irrelevant to the dispute.

But Baldoni’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, insists otherwise. In a letter to the presiding judge — reviewed by EW — Freedman claimed that Swift’s involvement was justified on grounds of “witness tampering and evidence spoliation.” He alleged that Lively asked Swift to delete messages and that Gottlieb tried to “intimidate” Swift into publicly supporting Lively, threatening that otherwise, personal messages might be released.

Freedman’s letter, notably, offered no concrete evidence to support the claims. Representatives for Baldoni and Swift did not immediately respond to EW’s requests for comment.

In response, Gottlieb accused Baldoni’s legal team of misconduct, saying they are “shooting first, without any evidence, and with no care for the people they are harming.” He added that Lively’s team plans to “imminently file motions with the court to hold these attorneys accountable.”

Lively’s legal team also requested that Freedman’s letter be struck from the record, arguing it lacked any evidentiary support and was designed to “launder scandalous and defamatory allegations” to the media.

This latest development stems from a legal saga that began in December 2024, when Lively filed a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department, accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment during the filming of It Ends With Us. She also accused him of orchestrating a smear campaign in retaliation. Lively later escalated the matter with a federal lawsuit in New York, to which Baldoni responded with a countersuit.

Now, Swift — who had no creative involvement in the film beyond licensing her song “My Tears Ricochet” for its soundtrack — has become entangled in the controversy.

A representative for Swift recently issued a strong statement distancing the singer from the project:

“Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie… She did not score the film, she never saw an edit or made notes, and she didn’t even watch It Ends With Us until weeks after its public release.”

The spokesperson dismissed the subpoena as a “tabloid clickbait tactic,” emphasizing Swift’s only connection to the film was the licensing of one song — something 19 other artists also did.

Swift and Lively share a long-standing friendship. Swift is the godmother to Lively’s children with Ryan Reynolds and has even included their names — James, Inez, and Betty — in her Folklore album. The two were last seen together publicly at the 2024 Super Bowl.

As the legal proceedings progress, Lively and Baldoni are slated to face off in court in March 2026. Until then, the legal and personal drama surrounding It Ends With Us continues to unfold — with no signs of slowing down.