Blake Lively called intimacy coordinators “critical” before the lawsuit

before Blake Lively filed a lawsuit against her It ends with us actor and director Justin Baldonialleging sexual harassment, retaliation and more, the actress talked about the vital importance of intimacy coordinators.

“I think it’s extremely important to have an intimacy coordinator,” Lively, 37, said DigitalSpy in an August 2024 interview published three months before she filed her lawsuit against Baldoni in the Southern District of New York.

“You coordinate the stunts, you coordinate the dances, it’s choreography,” she continued. “So it’s being able to say, ‘This is happening here, here and here in a stunt,’ and ‘This is happening here and here in a dance,’ but like, ‘Now you guys put your bodies together and your mouths and whatever is” and simple action and interruption.”

Lively went on to say that she believes “being choreographed” during intimate scenes is “critical to everyone’s safety.”

Lively officially sued Baldoni on Tuesday, December 31, 2024. Us Weekly previously asserted, claims of sexual harassment, retaliation, breach of contract, infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy and lost wages. Besides Baldoni Lively also sues publicists Natasha’s Melissa and Jennifer Abelas well as Wayfarer Studios.

Lively also filed a complaint with the California Department of Civil Rights citing similar allegations.

“I hope my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to hurt people who speak up about wrongdoing, and helps protect others who may be targeted,” Lively said in a statement to us.

In response, Baldoni submitted $250 million case against New York Times on the same day and for his reporting on Lively’s allegations of sexual harassment. In the lawsuit, Baldoni accuses the publication of defamation and invasion of privacy, saying the newspaper “cherry-picked” the communications and omitted context to mislead readers.

The lawsuit also alleges that Lively conducted a “strategic and manipulative” smear campaign against Baldoni, using false “allegations of sexual harassment to establish unilateral control over every aspect of the production.”

Baldoni also claims that Lively never met the intimate coordinator during filming It ends with us.

“In this vicious smear campaign entirely orchestrated by Blake Lively and her team, New York Times subject to the whims and whims of two powerful ‘untouchable’ Hollywood elites, disregarding the journalistic practices and ethics once befitting a respected publication, using forged and manipulated texts and deliberately omitting texts that challenge their chosen PR narrative,” Baldoni’s lawyer, Brian Friedman said in a statement to us on Tuesday, December 31.

“In doing so, they predetermined the outcome of their story and aided and abetted their own devastating PR smear campaign designed to revive Lively’s self-inflicted volatile public image and counteract the organic basis of criticism among the online public,” Friedman continued. “The irony is rich.”