It seems like Taylor Swift is officially getting dragged into Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s legal drama. Per Deadline, the singer (and Lively’s longtime bestie) was subpoenaed as a witness last week by Baldoni’s team.
As a brief refresher, Lively sued Baldoni in December for allegedly sexually harassing her on the set of It Ends With Us, prompting a flurry of tabloid attention and a libel countersuit from Baldoni. (He claims Lively hijacked the movie from him and then fabricated her claims to keep him quiet.) Lively’s well-documented friendship with Swift entered the picture in January, when a text message included in Baldoni’s countersuit purported to show Lively using her celebrity friendships to pressure him into using her rewrite on part of the film’s script. In the alleged message, Lively appeared to refer to Swift, as well as her husband, Ryan Reynolds, as the “dragons” to her “Khaleesi.”
Since then, tabloids have speculated that Swift and Lively’s friendship is on the rocks, while Swift seems to be publicly distancing herself from the whole ordeal — she hasn’t appeared with Lively since they were spotted on a double date with Reynolds and Travis Kelce in October.
The subpoena means she’s entering the legal foray in an even bigger way — though it sounds like she would very much like to be excluded from this narrative. In a statement sent to the Cut and other outlets, Swift’s spokesperson slammed the subpoena as a ploy to generate “tabloid clickbait,” arguing that the singer had no actual connection to It Ends With Us or anything else related to the dueling lawsuits.
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“Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie, she was not involved in any casting or creative decisions, she did not score the film, she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film, she did not even see It Ends With Us until weeks after its public release, and was traveling around the globe during 2023 and 2024 headlining the biggest tour in history,” her rep said.
The only real connection Swift has to the movie, according to her statement, was that she allowed one of her songs, “My Tears Ricochet,” to be used in it — “which 19 other artists also did.” The subpoena, it added, “is designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.”
Lively’s team also hit back against the subpoena against Swift — whom they called “a woman who has given a voice to millions the world over” — in a statement to Deadline, accusing Baldoni’s team of continuing “to turn a case of sexual harassment and retaliation into entertainment for the tabloids, going as far as suggesting that they sell tickets to a concert venue — Madison Square Garden — to witness Ms. Lively’s deposition.”
“This is a very serious legal matter, not Barnum & Bailey’s Circus,” they said.
Lively and Baldoni are set to go to trial in March 2026, though right now it’s unclear whether Taylor will really take the stand. But it all seems like a pretty fitting landscape to finally drop Reputation (Taylor’s Version), doesn’t it?
