Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images
Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively’s legal battle has gotten even thornier. In legal documents reviewed by the Cut, Isabela Ferrer — the actress who played a younger version of Lively’s character in It Ends With Us — accused Baldoni and his legal team of “harassing” her. Baldoni’s team doesn’t see it that way, claiming in filings of their own that they are just trying to receive communication that they believe to be important to their defense in the sexual-harassment case Lively filed against Baldoni late last year.
On August 12, Baldoni’s team filed a motion requesting that they be allowed to serve Ferrer a subpoena by alternative means after they were unable to reach her through her attorney or via process servers. Baldoni is seeking to subpoena Ferrer for “documents that she either neglected to produce or were not requested” when Lively subpoenaed the actress back in February. As part of their submission, Baldoni’s lawyers included affidavits of due diligence from two different process servers but failed to redact either of the addresses they believed to be associated with Ferrer.
In a new motion filed on August 17, Ferrer’s lawyer, Sanford Michelman, claims that Baldoni’s attempt to subpoena Ferrer is “yet another attempt by Justin Baldoni and his affiliated entities to harass non-party Isabela Ferrer and draw her deeper into litigation and disputes that she has done her best to avoid.”
According to the filing, Ferrer received “personal threats and hateful statements” over social media following the publication of an article in Us Weekly about Baldoni’s motion. Examples of said messages include one person calling her a “fake-ass crackhead” and another saying that “Blake the snake is gonna ruin your career before it even began.”
All of this can be traced back to February, when Lively’s lawyers subpoenaed Ferrer for any and all communications that might pertain to her harassment suit against Baldoni. As a result, Ferrer’s lawyers invoked an indemnity clause in her It Ends With Us contract, which required Baldoni’s Wayfarer Studios to cover her legal fees. In their latest filing, Ferrer’s team claims that after she invoked the clause, the LLC behind It Ends With Us “demanded that Ms. Ferrer confirm that she will ‘surrender control [of her response] to Wayfarer.’” Her lawyers claim this was the Baldoni team seeking “to respond for Ms. Ferrer however they wanted, not actually allowing Ms. Ferrer to provide the documents that reveal the true facts.”
Ferrer was allegedly unwilling to let the company dictate her response to the subpoena, which led to a “protracted dispute” over Wayfarer’s indemnity obligations, one that was only settled earlier in August. Since the beginning of that dispute, Baldoni has “tried to manipulate, threaten, control, and otherwise act inappropriately towards Ms. Ferrer,” according to Michelman. He even claimed that Baldoni’s team has “gone as far as citing a phony case, which Ms. Ferrer’s counsel discovered as an AI hallucination, to support a frivolous legal position.”
Ferrer’s lawyers claim that Baldoni’s subpoena would not provide anything that was not covered by Lively’s. “Baldoni made no effort to tailor the subpoena towards the production of new or different materials, demonstrating that the real aim of the Baldoni Subpoena, as well as the pending Motion, is to harass Ms. Ferrer,” Michelman wrote. He requested that Judge Lewis J. Liman not only deny Baldoni’s motion, but that he “impose appropriate sanctions against Baldoni.”
Of course, Baldoni’s legal team has a different opinion. Per People, Baldoni claimed in a motion filed August 18 that Ferrer’s “opposition is primarily an inappropriate attack upon Mr. Baldoni and his counsel relating to matters not before the Court and irrelevant” to whether she should be served a subpoena.
They then floated the idea that Lively “should not be permitted to obtain discovery from” Ferrer, while Ferrer and her team “frustrate all effort by the Wayfarer Parties to obtain the discovery critical to the preparation of their defense.” Baldoni’s lawyers also asked the court to consider asking both sides to avoid using “any communication to, from or concerning Ms. Ferrer, or any testimony from her, in any manner in this action” to “satisfy Ms. Ferrer’s apparent desire to avoid involvement in the litigation and trial.”
This is not the first time that Baldoni’s search for text messages has garnered headlines. In June, Judge Liman denied a motion from Lively, which would have kept her text messages with Taylor Swift out of Baldoni’s grasp. Ultimately, it was determined that the texts specifically pertaining to It Ends With Us were fair game.
Lively and Baldoni are scheduled to head to trial in March 2026.
The Cut has reached out to representatives for Ferrer and Baldoni and will update this post if we hear back.
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