The Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni showdown is probably the most anticipated legal event of 2026, with a trial now scheduled to start on May 18.
It’s a dispute which exploded into the public arena in December last year, was pumped up with numerous additional legal actions and has now been whittled down by Judge Lewis Liman to a single lawsuit.
Actress Lively alleges she was caused ‘severe emotional distress’ by the behaviour of her It Ends With Us co-star Baldoni during the making of the film – which amounted to sexual harassment.
She also claims that Baldoni and his team had ordered a public relations campaign to destroy her image and is seeking $161 million in damages.
Baldoni’s lawyers say that the case amounts to nothing more than an expensive ‘ego fit’ and that there was no sexual harassment.
My bombshell prediction is that Taylor Swift – who wants no part in the drama – is going to be an absolutely pivotal figure in the trial.
I understand that the nature of the text messages which she exchanged with Lively – who at the time was her best friend – are crucial to the case.
Actress Blake Lively alleges she was caused ‘severe emotional distress’ by the behaviour of her It Ends With Us co-star Baldoni during the making of the film – which amounted to sexual harassment
She also claims that Baldoni (pictured) and his team had ordered a public relations campaign to destroy her image and is seeking $161 million in damages
The pop star licensed her song, My Tears Ricochet, for use in the film. Swift was also present at the now infamous meeting at Lively and husband Ryan Reynolds’ penthouse, when Baldoni was invited over and pressured into accepting Lively’s rewrites of the film.
But more important than that, the texts show what Lively thought about Baldoni and when.
The texts will give an account in her own words of what – if any – complaints she had about him during filming.
No more than that can be said at this point… but after keeping an eye on this all year, I believe you can expect Swift to be called as a witness to talk about this crucial bit of evidence.
Let’s hope she’s not pencilled in a mid-May wedding with her footballer beau Travis Kelce.
In June, Judge Lewis Liman ruled that Baldoni’s team could get their hands on messages between Lively and Swift if they were about the film.
Lively’s legal team had tried to block this, arguing that Baldoni was dragging Swift into the conflict as part of a PR strategy. But in his order, the judge found that such messages may be relevant to the case.
He put in place a protective order to keep them out of the public domain until a trial – which means that they have not been shared in publicly available legal filings, unlike much of the rest of the evidence.
The judge wrote: ‘Given that Lively has represented that Swift had knowledge of complaints or discussions about the working environment on the film, among other issues, the requests for messages with Swift regarding the film and this action are reasonably tailored to discover information that would prove or disprove Lively’s harassment and retaliation claims.’
Justin Baldoni, left, and Blake Lively in a scene from It Ends With Us
Taylor Swift was a close friend of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds for years and is a godmother to three of their four children
Baldoni’s lawsuit – which has since been dismissed –claimed that Lively had utilised husband Reynolds and bestie Swift to pressure Baldoni into accepting one of her rewrites for the film.
The complaint alleged that Baldoni felt pressured after Lively claimed her changes made the scene ‘more fun and interesting’.
Lively responded to his text by referring to herself as ‘Khaleesi’ and Reynolds and Swift as her ‘dragons’ and ‘most trusted partners’ who have been ‘by my side for far too many experiences where I’ve been overlooked’, according to the complaint.
Swift was a close friend of Lively and Reynolds for years and is a godmother to three of their four children. She and Lively often used to be seen together in New York but the friendship seems to have completely fractured since the legal fracas started last December.
In May, Baldoni’s team subpoenaed Swift and her attorneys. At the time, the singer’s spokesman issued a statement saying that Swift had nothing to do with the film beyond the licensing of a song and had not even seen it until weeks after its release.
2026 will be the year of Sabrina Carpenter on screen. The pop star is appearing in a Disney+ one-off special of The Muppet Show in February and then starts filming big-budget musical Alice In Wonderland for Universal. And after that… she’s in the frame for Mamma Mia 3 with Meryl Streep.
And this year’s award for…
BEST DIVA
Ms Scherzinger, who many report is entertainingly high maintenance, told producer Jamie Lloyd that she didn’t want any close ups of her ‘wrong side’ during the show, which features live video projections on a central screen.
Lloyd said: ‘Early on Nicole told me: “You can’t put the camera on my right side, because the right side of my face is mediocre.” ’
My ‘diva’ award goes to singer and actress Nicole Scherzinger, who has had incredible success, with a Tony Award for her performance as Norma Desmond in the Broadway run of Sunset Boulevard
The runner-up diva is Victoria Beckham who similarly joked of her appearance in her Netflix documentary that she only smiles ‘from the left, because if I smile from the right I look unwell’.
BEST GIFTING
Times are tough and everyone is complaining that the big parties aren’t being thrown, the film premieres get smaller and smaller and nobody can fork out for lunch at Beverly Hills’s Polo Lounge, where their McCarthy chopped salad costs the equivalent of £34. But deep-pocketed Netflix, hoping to close its £62billion deal to buy Warner Bros, is still in the gifting business.
The streamer is going all out for its film Jay Kelly, starring George Clooney, and has been sending around packages with a DVD of the film, a beautifully bound book of the script, a CD of the music and a cosy Jay Kelly sweatshirt to people who might vote for it to get an award.
Then, as holiday season arrived, it has been following up with £63 Sweet Lady Jane vanilla bean cheesecakes – as cheesecake is a running joke in the film.
EXCUSE OF THE YEAR
It’s David Harbour doing a press tour for Stranger Things a few weeks after ex-wife Lily Allen released her album West End Girl, reportedly detailing an affair with ‘Madeline’ and a betrayal of the rules of their ‘open relationship’ – although Allen subsequently denied the album was factual.
David Harbour and then wife Lily Allen, who has since made an album about their break-up, pictured last year
Speaking ostensibly about his character Chief Hopper and Eleven he said: ‘They are both deeply flawed in how they express themselves and make tons of mistakes. That is right up my alley. I love playing characters like that. I love human beings like that. I love humanity.’
ENTHUSIAST OF THE YEAR
Danny Dyer played businessman Freddie Jones in Rivals and is loving filming the second series.
He said: ‘It is brilliant, but it is a mad thing to do a sex scene. If you think about it you are legally allowed to tongue someone else. It is part of your job. Depending on your partner. It is OK if you fancy it, I am not going to lie.’
In the show, Freddie Jones falls in love with romance author Lizzie Vereker, played by Katherine Parkinson. The initial run was eight episodes but Disney + has asked for 12 this time around.
CANDOUR AWARD
Actor and TV presenter Stephen Mangan and his wife Louise Delamere first worked together on the 2000 film Offending Angels. Mangan, who presented The
Fortune Hotel on ITV, said proudly: ‘It’s the lowest-grossing film in British history and made £94 at the box office.’
DOMESTIC GODDESS
Step forward Simon Cowell. Fiancée Lauren told me – and this will surprise nobody – that he doesn’t cook, which is why they have the services of Geoff the Chef, seen in his Netflix show. However his one dish is beans on toast and he insists on stirring the beans over a low heat for 20 minutes exactly, so the sauce reaches just the right thickness.
PASS THE ONION
Unbox the violin for Dwayne Johnson, who has amassed a £590million fortune for starring in one shlocky piece of garbage after another.
The former wrestling star has a sob story to tell about his dream to be recognised as a serious actor for wrestling film The Smashing Machine, and to move into a new direction.
‘A few years ago I started to ask myself, “Am I living my dream or am I living other people’s dreams?”’ he mused this summer. And then went off to make Jumanji 3…
No sex, please! Hollywood cleans up for Gen Z prudes
Sex used to sell – remember films such as Anora, Challengers and Babygirl? But the pendulum is swinging the other way and it looks as if 2026 will be the year when the big screen bonkbuster era draws to a close.
Anecdotally, people will tell you that fewer sex scenes are being filmed and written – and it seems that it’s the younger generation who don’t want to see it on screen.
In fact, according to a recent UCLA Teens & Screens report, more than 48 per cent of Gen Z respondents think there’s ‘too much sex or sexual content in TV and movies’.
Now intimacy co-ordinators – who had boom years from the birth of the MeToo movement in 2017 – are finding they are less in demand.
The giant agency UTA has now dropped intimacy co-ordinators from its roster, which feels like a real sign of the times. It was only ever a small part of its business and according to a report in respected industry newsletter The Ankler, it has ‘decided not to scale’ it.
Veteran intimacy co-ordinator Brooke Haney told The Ankler that this year was the ‘slowest’ they had.
Mark Eydelshteyn and Mikey Madison – who won an Oscar for her depiction of a sex worker – in Anora
And Zuri Pryor-Graves, a sex therapist-turned-intimacy co-ordinator, added that producers and writers are grappling with their discomfort with including more intense sexual scenes.
She has seen scripts with a fair amount of intimacy in the screen direction shrink to a hug or a kiss by the time the cameras actually roll.
She said: ‘I think that there is a state of Hollywood and entertainment right now where it seems like less intimacy is being written.
‘With the birth of intimacy co-ordinators, our goal was to work alongside creatives and just create safe spaces for these things to be written so that more could be written and they can be done more safely.
‘And I think the way that Hollywood has responded has been to say, “OK, if you guys feel like we needed so much policing, then maybe we just won’t do it”. It’s just less of a headache to just not do it, which is completely not the point.’
Anora actress Mikey Madison – who won an Oscar for her depiction of a sex worker in March – famously opted against working with an intimacy co-ordinator on the film after consulting with her director Sean Baker and producer Samantha Quan.
‘We were able to streamline it, shoot it super quickly,’ she said.
