This is one narrative from which Taylor Swift just can’t get excluded. On Friday, It Ends With Us director Justin Baldoni’s legal team subpoenaed the singer, pursuant to his lawsuit against her onetime bestie Blake Lively. Now, lawyers for Baldoni are alleging Lively’s legal team tried to extort support from Swift. Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman filed a letter in court Wednesday claiming Michael Gottlieb (a lawyer for Lively) threatened to release “private text messages of a personal nature” if Swift didn’t issue a public statement in support of Lively. Freedman is seeking messages between Gottlieb and Swift’s legal team that corroborate his claims.
Gottlieb called the story “categorically false,” “cowardly,” and completely untethered from reality.” His response also called out Freedman. “This is what we have come to expect from the Wayfarer parties’ lawyers, who appear to love nothing more than shooting first, without any evidence, and with no care for the people they are harming in the process,” Gottlieb said in a statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.
The extortion claim comes after Baldoni’s team claimed Swift and Lively’s husband Ryan Reynolds peer pressured him to accept Lively’s revisions on a rooftop scene int he movie. They also point to a text calling Swift and Reynolds Lively’s “dragons,” referring to herself as Khaleesi. Venable, Swift’s law firm, challenged the subpoena. They say neither they nor the singer they represent have any pertinent information, and that this whole shebang is designed to “distract from the facts of the case.”
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