LOS ANGELES – Justin Baldoni appeared on Instagram with his wife Emily on July 8 in a video that lasted just under five minutes. He did not say Blake Lively’s name. He did not say the name of the film. He said, “Gratitude has saved us.”
That was the first time Baldoni had addressed any of it publicly since December 2024, when Lively accused him of sexual harassment on the set of “It Ends With Us” and alleged that his company, Wayfarer Studios, had run a coordinated campaign to damage her reputation in retaliation. In the fourteen months that followed, Baldoni maintained silence on every platform and in every interview, even as the case worked its way through the courts and Lively’s team filed motion after motion. The video was the end of that silence, and it revealed almost nothing except that the silence had ended.
Emily Baldoni spoke alongside him, NBC News reported. “The truth and the facts have spoken for themselves,” she said, “and here we are.” The couple described themselves as focused on healing and time with their children. Neither mentioned the litigation by name. The deliberate obliqueness was the only tone available to someone whose legal team is still arguing over $7.5 million in contested attorneys’ fees.
The video appeared after the substantive legal fight was largely over, and largely in Baldoni’s favor on the most serious charges. Judge Lewis J. Liman dismissed the central allegations: the sexual harassment claim, the defamation count, and the conspiracy allegations. What survived to a May 2026 settlement were three narrower claims: breach of contract, retaliation, and aiding and abetting retaliation. The terms of that settlement remain sealed. What is not sealed is Lively’s subsequent filing seeking approximately $7.5 million in attorneys’ fees from Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios, which her lawyers characterized as a response to what they called his scorched-earth litigation approach.
Baldoni countersued in January 2025, naming both Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds. The counterclaim alleged defamation and extortion, arguing the couple had used a publicist to shape the media narrative against him before his own version of events could emerge. That counterclaim was largely dismissed as well. The fees question is what remains in front of a judge.
The timing of the video matters as a signal even if the content does not. Baldoni chose to speak after the settlement was sealed, after the harassment charges were dismissed, and while the fees motion was still unresolved. He spoke from the legal position of someone who retained the factual ground on the most serious allegations. The careful, indirect language he kept throughout the video was consistent with a man who understood that every word would be parsed for anything usable in a courtroom or on a tabloid homepage.
“What I will say is that there have been so many painful things that have been spoken to existence over the last couple years,” Baldoni said in the video. He did not specify whose speech he meant or what form the pain had taken. That ambiguity was not accidental.
The “It Ends With Us” dispute entered the culture before it entered the courts. The film, adapted from Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel, was positioned as one of the major studio releases of 2024. Lively’s public allegations arrived while it was still in wide release, and the coverage that followed placed both sides in fixed public roles before the court record had been developed. The court record, when it emerged, was more complicated than the original coverage suggested. The harassment claim was dismissed. The reputational damage to both parties, whatever the legal outcome, was already done.
Lively, meanwhile, had navigated her own complicated public period. Her return to the Met Gala in May 2026 drew an immediate online firestorm, demonstrating that the dispute had affected public perception of both parties regardless of what any court had decided.
Baldoni and Lively both know what fourteen months of litigation costs a career. Neither has publicly addressed that cost, and neither is likely to under a sealed settlement. The $8 million legal fees petition, filed June 30, remains the last unresolved chapter in what began as an on-set harassment complaint and became one of the most closely watched celebrity legal disputes of the decade.
“Thank you does not feel like enough,” Baldoni said near the end of the video. He did not indicate who he was thanking or for what. His wife added that the gratitude they felt did not erase the pain. Gratitude and pain: it is the only formulation available when what came before involved a federal judge, a sealed settlement, and a question of $7.5 million still sitting in front of a court.
Lively’s legal team did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
