Justin Baldoni Sues Former Publicist for Leaking Blake Lively Texts: ‘Despicable and Surreptitious’

Amid his expansive and ongoing legal battle with Blake Lively, “It Ends With Us” director and star Justin Baldoni has filed a counterclaim against his former publicist, Stephanie Jones, alleging that she “maliciously” leaked his private texts.

Jones filed a lawsuit against Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios, former Jonesworks publicist and RWA Communications founder Jennifer Abel and crisis PR rep Melissa Nathan in December, alleging that the group had worked together to undermine and publicly smear her reputation. On Thursdsay, Baldoni responded with a counterclaim filed in the Southern District Court of New York.

In the claim, Baldoni’s Wayfarer Studios accuses Jones, the founder and CEO of PR firm Jonesworks, of “despicable and surreptitious” actions that went on to “stir up unnecessary drama and discord … and generally [caused] more problems than she was solving.” Among those actions was “voluntarily and maliciously” breaching her agreement with Wayfarer by sharing confidential information with other parties, including Lively’s publicist, Leslie Sloane, “for the express purpose of harming the interests of Wayfarer and Baldoni.”

The confidential information in question includes the private texts sent by Baldoni, Nathan and Abel, whom Wayfarer characterizes as Jonesworks’ longtime primary liaison with the production company, that were retrieved from the latter’s phone and then obtained by Lively’s legal team. These texts later emerged at the center of Lively’s December lawsuit against Baldoni and Wayfarer.

Wayfarer was a Jonesworks client from 2020 to 2024. Baldoni was a client at the firm even longer, beginning in 2018. Wayfarer asserts in its counterclaim that it was Jones who single-handedly destroyed her firm’s relationship with Wayfarer and Baldoni. 

The studio claims she did so first by inserting herself amid a swirl of bad publicity about her and a flood of high-profile client exits from Jonesworks into Abel’s working relationship with the production company and filmmaker and then by reaching out “voluntarily to Lively’s team offering what she believed to be ammunition against Wayfarer, Baldoni, Abel and Nathan” while Wayfarer and Baldoni were still Jonesworks clients.

“In turning over these materials to Lively, Jones knew full well that the blowback would engulf not only Abel and Nathan but also current Jonesworks clients Wayfarer and Baldoni,” the counterclaim insists. “On information and belief, that was precisely the goal.”

In response to Jones’ initial lawsuit, Wayfarer is seeking “a money judgment representing compensatory damages, including consequential damages, lost wages, earnings, and all other sums of money, together with interest on those amounts, in an amount to be proven at trial.”

This is just the latest salvo in a months-long legal war involving Baldoni, Lively, Jones, Abel, Ryan Reynolds and others.

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