Taylor Swift vs. Blake Lively vs. Justin Baldoni
It's Gossip Time!
Hello and welcome to Gossip Time, a weekly guide to the stars by Allie Jones. This week: a pop star removes herself from the narrative, an actress gears up for her biggest project yet, and Hilary Duff signs with CAA.
Last Friday, news broke that Taylor Swift was officially subpoenaed in the ongoing legal battle between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. Baldoni’s legal team had been hinting that they would subpoena Swift for a while, claiming that she is relevant to the case because Lively allegedly used her to pressure Baldoni into accepting Lively’s rewrites of a scene in It Ends With Us. (Baldoni’s $400 million lawsuit against Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds specifically claims that in text messages to Baldoni, Lively referred to herself as Khaleesi and Swift and Reynolds as her “dragons.”) Naturally, Tree Paine is not having any of this.
After Swift’s subpoena was made public, Paine released the following statement to the media:
“Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie, she was not involved in any casting or creative decisions, she did not score the film, she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film, she did not even see It Ends With Us until weeks after its public release, and was traveling around the globe during 2023 and 2024 headlining the biggest tour in history.”
Damn. Unfortunately, that was not the end of it: Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman filed a letter with the court, and then an affidavit, claiming that Swift is relevant to the case, because Lively attempted to extort Swift back in February.
Freedman claims that a source “very closely linked to Swift” told him that Lively’s attorney Michael Gottlieb called Swift’s attorney Douglas Bainbridge in February and “requested, on Ms. Lively’s behalf, that Taylor Swift make a social media statement in support of Ms. Lively given her absence from the Super Bowl that year, and stated that if Ms. Swift failed to do so, Ms. Lively would release ‘10 years’ of private texts with Ms. Swift.”
According to Freedman’s source, Bainbridge accused Gottlieb of extortion and hung up the call.
Lively’s legal team immediately denied the allegations, and they have since successfully gotten Judge Lewis J. Liman to strike Freedman’s letter and affidavit from the docket. Liman called the filings “improper” and “irrelevant” and warned Freedman that “future misuse of the Court’s docket may be met with sanctions."
Where does that leave everybody? Well, Baldoni seems to be losing this case, but he is succeeding in embarrassing Lively at every turn. Lively’s relationship with Swift, once her most powerful ally in the entertainment business (and the godmother to all three of her daughters!), is basically over.
“Their friendship has halted,” a source “close to Swift” told People yesterday. “Taylor wants no part in this drama.”
People has been friendly to Lively and Reynolds since Lively first filed her complaint against Baldoni for sexual harassment and retaliation back in December. But in a war between Lively and Swift, the tabloid is clearly going to pick the pop star.
People’s story goes on to say that Swift’s subpoena has “fractured” a “fragile peace” between Swift and Lively, and that, by the way, Swift and Lively’s mutual friend Gigi Hadid is Team Swift.
“Gigi feels terrible that her close friend is being pulled into the legal drama,” a source close to Hadid told the tabloid. “Gigi is closer to Taylor and has definitely taken her side in this whole drama. Gigi doesn't want to get involved in this whole ordeal, but she is closer to Taylor and has distanced herself from Blake although she still considers her a friend.”
Lol okay, we got it Gigi! This tracks, as Swift reportedly attended Hadid’s 30th birthday party last month, while Lively did not. Maybe she wasn’t even invited?
In happier (?) news, Tom Cruise and Ana de Armas are, uhhh, dating. After multiple European helicopter rides together, Us Weekly reports that Cruise, 62, and de Armas, 37, have a “low-key romance.”
“They’ve gone out on some dates and it’s very low-key,” an exclusive source revealed. “It’s in the early stages and he’s been courting her. Their romance is definitely on the down low.”
Definitely. I did get a chuckle out of this photo of Cruise and de Armas leaving David Beckham’s 50th birthday party in London earlier this month:
Very stealth.
De Armas is now promoting her upcoming John Wick movie Ballerina, and she acknowledged her relationship with Cruise for the first time in an interview with Michael Strahan on Good Morning America this week.
“We’re definitely working on a lot of, a lot of things,” she said in response to Strahan’s question about Cruise. “Like not just one, but a few projects with Doug Liman and Christopher McQuarrie and of course Tom, and I’m so excited.”
Uh huh. Sounds like the contracts are still being worked out. (By the way, the director Doug Liman happens to be the brother of Judge Lewis J. Liman of the Baldoni-Lively case. I bet they’ve had some interesting family dinners lately.)
STUFF BY HILARY DUFF: Hilary Duff signs with CAA.
Hilary Duff signs with CAA!
Finally, I must warn you that the Jeff Bezos-Lauren Sanchez wedding is coming, like it or not:
Sanchez, 55, was photographed celebrating her bachelorette party in Paris this week with Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner, Katy Perry, Eva Longoria, and a host of other tortured souls.
“The atmosphere was very relaxed and very Parisian,” a source told People. “It was a pre-wedding all-girl party for 13.”
Bleh.
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Bless Ana de Armas and her broken picker. Who among us?
Is this a safe space to say that based on these reports Taylor Swift seems like a bad friend in all of this?