Are Taylor Swift and Blake Lively over?
It's Gossip Time!
Hello and welcome to Gossip Time, a weekly guide to the stars by Allie Jones. This week: a pop star stays out of it, an actress stays home, and Tom Brady stays strong.
This time last year, Taylor Swift walked into the Super Bowl with her squad for the day: stylist Ashley Avignone, rapper Ice Spice, and then-carefree actress Blake Lively. When Swift descends on New Orleans on Sunday to once again watch her boyfriend Travis Kelce in the big game, I think Avignone is the only friend likely to make a repeat appearance.
She was in Swift’s VIP suite at the AFC Championship game last month and is one of the squad’s longest serving (and most uncontroversial) members. Swift and Ice Spice haven’t been seen together in months, and Lively…well. Here’s TMZ’s headline of the day:
Some caveats: TMZ has been talking to Justin Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman pretty much every day since Lively sued Baldoni for sexual harassment and retaliation in December, and TMZ is generally anti-woman. But the outlet has a source that claims Swift feels she has been “used” by Lively in the It Ends With Us war and is distancing herself from the friendship as a result.
How did Swift get pulled into this in the first place? Baldoni mentioned her in his $400 defamation suit against Lively and Ryan Reynolds, claiming that during production, Lively called him to a meeting at her apartment where Reynolds and Swift praised Lively’s rewrite of a scene in the movie. According to the suit, Lively later sent a long, strange text to Baldoni in which she said Reynolds and Swift were her biggest supporters and the “dragons” to her Khaleesi.
TMZ claims Swift was irked by the “dragons” comment and generally nonplussed at being mentioned in Baldoni’s suit. But has she really fallen out with Lively over it?
Let’s rewind to July, just before It Ends With Us premiered. Swift was close enough with Lively and Reynolds then to make a huge Instagram push for fans to see Reynolds’ Deadpool vs. Wolverine in theaters. But she did not promote It Ends With Us in August, and she did not weigh in when the backlash against Lively started brewing online. She did, however, host a private birthday party for Lively at her Rhode Island compound a few weeks after the premiere. After that, Swift and Lively were spotted together just once, in October, going to dinner in New York with Reynolds and Kelce. Swift did not release any statement of support when Lively filed her lawsuit in December, and she has not officially commented on her appearance in Baldoni’s countersuit.
Luckily, a source who is 100 percent Swift’s publicist Tree Paine gave some insight into Swift’s current stance to Us Weekly yesterday. “Taylor has always been Blake’s friend, but Taylor doesn’t have any involvement in the case,” the source said. “She wasn’t part of the movie. Taylor was not a producer on the film and had no creative involvement. While she and Blake are friends, this case is now a legal matter for the courts to resolve. Dragging Taylor into it is unnecessary and misrepresents what really happened.”
Another source (Paine using a voice modulator) added, “Taylor never even saw the film or a single scene from it until the movie was in theaters. She is not relevant to the case.”
There you have it. Swift and Lively are still friends (maybe not BEST friends, but friends), but Swift wants no part of this lawsuit, and so help you God if you try to depose her.
Even before TMZ’s story, it seemed unlikely to me that Lively would show up at the Super Bowl. She hasn’t gone anywhere public since she filed her suit, and she has no connection to the game outside of Swift (unless you count her friendship with Gigi Hadid, who may be attending in order to support her boyfriend Bradley Cooper’s pathological interest in the Eagles). I am disappointed, though, that we won’t get to see whatever outfit she would have put together for the event. Here’s last year’s for reference:
As for the Lively/Baldoni case itself, no winner has been declared. In a hearing on Monday, Judge Liman did not grant Lively’s request for a gag order for Freedman, but he did tell both sides to stop talking to the press about the case. (Baldoni’s website “TheLawsuitInfo.com” remains active as of this writing.) The trial is not for another 13 months.
But oh! We got a release date for ANOTHER SIMPLE FAVOR, FKA A SIMPLE FAVOR 2, this week:
It’ll be on Prime on May 1, but it’s premiering at South by Southwest on March 7, which means Lively could be doing press again in less than a month. Also, Daylight Savings Time starts right after that! We have so much to look forward to.
STUFF BY HILARY DUFF: Remember how last week, Hilary Duff got a skin treatment called Aquagold, which is “a prepared cocktail with a proprietary blend of ingredients specifically to give a glow and it is penetrated with tiny 24 carat gold needles?” Here’s the update:
Finally, I must leave you with the Instagram story Tom Brady posted hours after news broke that Gisele Bündchen gave birth to her baby with her jiu-jitsu trainer Joachim Valente:
You got this, buddy.
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