Intro for January 21, 2026

Dear Gossips,

What the f-ck is happening this week? Not that it hasn’t already been hell for a long time but this week in particular feels like it’s been a new f-ckass low, from geopolitics to celebrity gossip. And that was before the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni lawsuit re-entered the chat.

Filings have been unsealed in the case ahead of the highly anticipated and likely monumental summary judgement hearing tomorrow. There are so many documents with so many text messages and emails involving so many celebrities, and information from the depositions, that of course the winner in all of this are the content creators on YouTube and TikTok who have become legal experts with ring cameras over the last 13 months since this story went nuclear.

The biggest celebrity, of course, and the person who’s become the main character in this court drama, is Taylor Swift, and that’s where most of the attention is being paid because some of her text exchanges with Blake have come to light in which they both disparage Baldoni and call him out for his various inadequacies.

Everyone, naturally, will have their own take, depending on where they stand on this issue. As we have seen, the internet has been leaning aggressively in Justin Baldoni’s favour, and nothing about these newly unsealed filings will change that. In fact, they only have more to double down with. For those who’ve only been casually following the drama, those posts and videos will likely dominate their algorithms.

So it might be worth revisiting the basics:

Justin Baldoni’s countersuit against Blake Lively has been dismissed, he has NO claims on the table. The main lawsuit that remains is her case against him, in which she’s accusing him of sexual harassment by creating a hostile work environment and also retaliation. This is what her lawyers have to prove and what his lawyers have to defend against.

For me, in observing how this situation has unfolded and how people are reacting to it, my main takeaway today is that, at least in my feed, how seemingly inconsequential it is that almost every woman involved in It Ends With Us has given testimony or communicated by text or email, that working with Justin Baldoni was disturbing and upsetting.

Per Deadline, the newly unsealed documents include “missives and deposition transcripts from Lively herself, Slate, IEWU author Colleen Hoover, screenwriter Christy Hall, Claire Ayoub (director of the Wayfarer-produced Empire Waist), IEWU actress Isabela Ferrer, Baldoni’s former Man Enough podcast co-host Liz Plank” speaking to Justin Baldoni and his business partner’s allegedly inappropriate conduct. So many women, most of the women involved in the film, claim to have a consistent experience to Blake’s. And we’ve seen this often in high profile celebrity harassment and/or assault cases – that it’s common for multiple women to come forward with what they’ve been through …and also equally common for the collective of women to be dismissed or undermined. The only ones who benefit from this are the ones who have always benefitted, from show business all the way to government.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey