Blake Lively’s personal text messages with Taylor Swift have now been made public, the latest in the ongoing litigation connected to the movie It Ends With Us.
As previously reported, a judge determined that the friends’ conversations about the working environment on set are relevant to Lively’s sexual harassment and retaliation claims against co-star and director Justin Baldoni.
Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios, prevailed in court last June on the issue of Swift’s text messages, which have taken center stage in Lively’s lawsuit. Some of those have come to light.
This week, several batches of back-and-forths have been released in which Baldoni is allegedly labelled a “doofus director,” a “clown” and a “bitch” who runs with a “gaggle of supervillains.”
In one exchange from December 2024, labelled “Exhibit 89” and seen by Billboard, Swift apparently references a favorable published story on Baldoni, quipping: “I think this bitch knows something is coming because he’s gotten out his tiny violin.”
Swift also likens the broader situation with Baldoni and others to “a horror film no one knows is taking place.”
In an earlier message, chunks of which are redacted, Lively apparently apologizes for soaking up so much of Swift’s time and energy on various matters. “No, you’re not wrong, but it’s also not a big deal,” Swift responds. “I think I’m just exhausted in every avenue of my life and in recent months had been feeling a little bit of a shift in the way you talk to me.”
And with it, a reset. And an injection of humor. “This f—ing guy and what he did to me gave me an identify crisis. Legitimately,” Lively writes, before adding, “F— that guy and his whole gaggle of supervillains.”
Billboard has reached out to Swift’s reps for comment.
Baldoni first tried to get the texts directly from Swift herself, but then dropped his subpoena on the pop superstar, opting instead to seek the messages from Lively in the normal discovery process. The filmmaker had tried to bring a countersuit accusing Lively and her inner circle of defamation, but Judge Liman threw out those claims as legally invalid mid-2025.
At the same time, Lively served a subpoena of her own on music mogul Scooter Braun, a longtime public opponent of Swift’s, and who is name-checked in the now-public texts. Lively sought information from Braun about the alleged public relations takedown orchestrated by The Agency Group PR, a controlling stake of which is reportedly owned by Braun’s company, HYBE America.
In September, Judge Liman rejected Baldoni‘s efforts to depose Swift and drag her into the courts, ruling that his lawyers had waited too long to try to schedule her deposition and failing to show a good reason for a shifted deadline.
