Aaron Boucher, Blake Lively, Chris Hackett, Dina Doll, documentaries, Emily Reynolds Bergh, In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni, Investigation Discovery, It Ends With Us, Justin Baldoni, Kjersti Flaa, Matthew Frank, Mia Schacter, movies, Natasha Jokic, Perez Hilton, reviews, Tia Streaty, true crime, TV
April 19, 2025
by Carla Hay
“In Dispute: Lively v. Baldoni”
Directed by Chris Hackett
Culture Representation: The documentary special “In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” features a predominantly white group of people (with one African American) discussing the feud between “It Ends With Us” co-stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni over accusations that include sexual harassment, retaliation and defamation.
Culture Clash: Since December 2024, Lively and Baldoni (who is also the director of “It Ends With Us”) have been embroiled in multiple lawsuits against each other and with other people, with Lively accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment and retaliation, while Baldoni has accused Lively of civil extortion and defamation.
Culture Audience: “In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” will appeal primarily to people who want to get an incomplete and rehashed summary of this feud.
“In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” is yet another hastily assembled, cheap-looking documentary about a celebrity scandal that has less information than what anyone can find on Wikipedia. Everything about this documentary reeks of lazy, bandwagon-jumping filmmaking. It’s a dull rehash revealing nothing new and leaving out crucial facts about the Blake Lively/Justin Baldoni feud. Some of the people interviewed have questionable credibility.
Directed by Chris Hackett, “In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” has a total running time of 42 minutes, but most of it is a weak regurgitation of well-known facts, padded with interviews that aren’t meaningful. A sure sign of a poorly made documentary is when at least half of it consists of journalists from gossip media re-stating what’s already known and giving their opinions. Needless to say, no one in the inner circles of Lively and Baldoni and no one connected to the lawsuits is interviewed in the documentary.
“In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” mentions the basic facts of this feud. In August 2024, the Columbia Pictures drama “It Ends With Us” (based on Colleen Hoover’s 2016 novel of the same name) was released in theaters and became a hit. According to Box Office Mojo, “It Ends With Us” had worldwide ticket sales totaling more than $351 million.
In the movie “It Ends With Us,” which takes place mainly in Boston, Lively plays a flower shop owner named Lily Bloom, and Baldoni plays a neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid. Lily and Ryle meet, fall in love, and eventually get married. After they’re married, Ryle is controlling and abusive to Lily, although there were hints that he was problematic before Ryle and Lily got married.
In addition to being co-stars of “It Ends With Us,” Baldoni and Lively had behind-the-scenes roles for the movie. Baldoni was the movie’s director. He is also a co-founder of Wayfarer Studios, the production company that bought the rights to the book “It Ends With Us” and is one of the production companies that financed the movie. Lively (who is not affiliated with Wayfarer) was a producer of the movie. Christy Hall wrote the adapted screenplay for “It Ends With Us.”
During the publicity tour for “It Ends With Us,” people noticed that Baldoni was doing interviews separately from the rest of the cast members, who all unfollowed him on social media. Lively got some criticism for promoting her liquor brand while doing interviews for the movie instead of talking about the more serious subject of domestic violence. In an interview to promote “It Ends With Us,” Lively admitted that her husband Ryan Reynolds (who is not listed in the movie’s credits) rewrote at least one scene in the film.
In December 2024, Lively filed a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department against Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios, with Lively alleging that Baldoni sexually harassed her while filming “It Ends With Us” by (among other accusations) unwanted kissing and inappropriate touching that was not in the script; graphic talk about his sex life and genitals; and coming into her trailer unannounced while she was breastfeeding her baby son Olin. The complaint also alleged that Baldoni and his public-relations team retaliated against Lively for speaking up about this alleged harassment. The alleged retaliation included engineering a smear campaign against Lively after the release of the movie.
The same day that the complaint was filed, The New York Times published an article that presented seemingly damning evidence (mostly text messages) to support Lively’s claims. “It Ends With Us” author Hoover and several of Lively’s former co-stars spoke out in support of Lively. Also in December 2024, Lively filed a lawsuit (which is separate from the complaint) against Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel, who worked with Baldoni as his publicists during the publicity campaign for “It Ends With Us.”
As a result of all this negative publicity over Lively’s allegations, Baldoni was dropped from William Morris Endeavor (WME), the same talent agency that represents Lively. Liz Plank, who co-hosted the “Man Enough” podcast with Baldoni and Jamey Heath, quit the podcast after Lively’s legal claims went public. In December 2024, Baldoni (who describes himself as a feminist) then filed a libel lawsuit seeking $250 million in damages against The New York Times. All parties involved in these lawsuits are denying the accusations against them.
In January 2025, Baldoni sued Lively, Reynolds and the couple’s publicist Leslie Sloan for $400 million for civil extortion, defamation and invasion of privacy. Reynolds is a defendant in the lawsuit because Baldoni claims that Reynolds exerted too much control during the making of “It Ends With Us,” and Baldoni claims that Reynolds’ Nicepool character in 2024’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” movie was a cruel parody of Baldoni. In March 2025, Baldoni and Abel filed a separate lawsuit against publicist Stephanie Jones, who was Abel’s former employer.
“In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” is such a shoddily made documentary, it doesn’t mention that Baldoni was dropped by WME and that he filed a lawsuit against his former publicist because of this feud. The documentary doesn’t go into details about the publicists who are plaintiffs or defendants in these lawsuits. Instead, “In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” is just a collection of interviews with people who have little or no connection to any of the plaintiffs or defendants.
Aaron Boucher, a business owner in Hoboken, New Jersey, has a store that was used as the location for Lily Bloom’s flower shop in “It Ends With Us.” He talks briefly in the beginning of the documentary by saying predictable things about how he was thrilled to have his store used in the movie. Boucher has nothing important to say, unless you think it’s fascinating that he got photo of himself with Baldoni. The photo is shown in the documentary.
Emily Reynolds Bergh, the founder of R Public Relations, is apparently in this documentary because she describes herself as a big fan of “It Ends With Us” author Hoover. Reynolds Bergh gives generic comments about the lawsuits doing damage to the reputations of all the plaintiffs and defendants. She also says that if she were the PR representative for Lively or Baldoni, she would advise each of them to show more humility and vulnerability.
Freelance entertainment journalist Kjersti Flaa is in the documentary to comment on a previously unreleased 2016 video interview that she did with Blake Lively and Parker Posey for the movie “Cafe Society.” In the interview, Lively and Posey are rude to Flaa after Flaa congratulates Lively for her “bump” (pregnancy), because it was in the news at the time that Lively had announced she was pregnant. (The pregnancy resulted in the birth of Lively’s second child, Inez.)
Flaa released the video in August 2024, around the time that Lively was getting backlash for how Lively was doing publicity for “It Ends With Us.” Flaa titled the 2016 video interview this way: “The Blake Lively interview that made me want to quit my job.” The video went viral and got millions of views. What the documentary doesn’t mention is that Flaa has publicly denied she was part of a smear campaign against Lively. The documentary also doesn’t mention Flaa has said that just because Lively was rude to her in that interview, it doesn’t prove or disprove Lively’s legal claims against Baldoni.
Tia Streaty, an actress who worked briefly with Baldoni when he co-starred on the TV comedy/drama series “Jane the Virgin’ (which was on the air the 2014 to 2019), describes him as “very down-to-earth” and “considerate.” But this documentary is about the disputes over how Baldoni was as the director/co-star of “It Ends With Us,” not how he was in a TV series that he did years earlier. The interview with Streaty is ultimately pointless because she barely knew Baldoni. The documentary does not interview anyone who worked with Lively.
People from the media who are interviewed in the documentary are gossip blogger Perez Hilton, who seems to side with Baldoni; BuzzFeed senior writer Natasha Jokić, who seems to be on Lively’s side; and The Ankler reporter Matthew Frank, who seems mostly neutral and comments that neither side in the legal dispute will end up looking good. The documentary also includes videoclip montages of people commenting on social media about the feud. That’s another indication of how low-quality a documentary is: Many of the quoted “sources” are random strangers on social media.
“In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” also has an interview with intimacy coordinator Mia Schacter, who has never worked with Lively or Baldoni. Schacter looks at text messages between Lively and Baldoni that were released as “evidence” over Lively’s and Baldoni’s communication about an intimate scene in “It Ends With Us.” Schacter comments, “These texts made me think that at one point, she did feel a lot of trust with him.”
Schacter also points out that an “It Ends With Us” video outtake that Baldoni released of a slow-dancing scene between him and Lively only proves that he was trying to do things (such as kiss her) that weren’t in the screenplay. She also thinks it’s contradictory that Lively reportedly refused to have an intimacy coordinator, even though that was one of her demands in a contract for “It Ends With Us.” Some of the people in the documentary say that much of the evidence can be argued as being supportive of either side.
Attorney/legal analyst Dina Doll is the most outspoken commentator in the documentary and makes it clear that she thinks Lively’s case is more believable. Doll says about Baldoni’s libel lawsuit against The New York Times: “It’s not The New York Times’ job to give all sides of the story. You might not like that, but that doesn’t open them up to liability.” Actually, anyone who knows anything about ethics in journalism knows that a news report is supposed to get as many facts and as many sides of the story as possible.
Doll comments, “Blake Lively has the stronger case because all of Justin Baldoni’s arguments about fame and control don’t really refute her claim of sexual harassment.” With all these lawsuits filed in this massive feud, the documentary does nothing to give any real insight. At the time that this documentary premiered on TV, the only lawsuit that had a trial date announced was Lively’s lawsuit against Baldoni. That lawsuit is expected to go to trial in May 2026.
Doll is shown in the conclusion of the documentary saying: “The bigger loser is victims of domestic violence. This movie [‘It Ends With Us’] was about domestic violence, and nobody’s talking about domestic violence.” Anyone who watches “In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” will lose something too—valuable time in watching a shallow and insufficient documentary that barely scratches the surface of what could have been reported in this documentary.
Investigation Discovery premiered “In Dispute: Lively v Baldoni” on March 31, 2025.