Justin Baldoni’s attorney boldly cited “Heated Rivalry” in court on Thursday, in an effort to dismiss Blake Lively’s sexual harassment claims against the actor.
Attorney Jonathan Bach brought up “Heated Rivalry” when discussing Lively’s claim that Baldoni touched her without her consent while improvising during an intimate scene for “It Ends With Us,” Variety reported.
Bach drew laughter from the court when he asked, “I don’t know if the court is familiar with the show ‘Heated Rivalry,’” the outlet reported.
After Judge Lewis Liman said that he wasn’t familiar, Bach explained that the queer hockey romance contained explicit scenes and that the male actors — Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams — improvised.
Bach argued that if male actors are able to improvise sex scenes there couldn’t be a complaint of gender-based discrimination, and also claimed that any touching between Baldoni and Lively came from the relationship of their characters in the film, and had nothing to do with her being a woman.
He further argued that Lively signed up for “It Ends With Us” knowing that the film would feature “hot and sexy scenes,” and that her complaints were “small potatoes” that did not constitute to sexual harassment.
One of Lively’s attorneys, Esra Hudson, pushed back on Bach’s argument, telling the court that Lively was “kissed, nuzzled and touched” in ways she didn’t consent to — regardless of knowing she would be acting in intimate scenes, Variety reported.
Liman also pushed back on Bach’s argument, noting that the film’s sexual subject matter didn’t give Baldoni the right to touch Lively however he wanted without her consent, to which Bach replied that “context matters.”
In Lively’s lawsuit against Baldoni, she claimed that he sexually harassed her on the set of “It Ends With Us.”
In court docs obtained by Page Six, she alleged that during the filming of “a slow dance scene for a montage in which no sound was recorded,” Baldoni “leaned forward and slowly dragged his lips from her ear and down her neck as he said, ‘It smells so good’… When Ms. Lively later objected to this behavior, Mr. Baldoni’s response was, ‘I’m not even attracted to you.’”
Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman later released behind-the-scenes footage of him and Lively shooting the slow-dancing scene in an effort to refute her sexual harassment allegations.
“The scene in question was designed to show the two characters falling in love and longing to be close to one another. Both actors are clearly behaving well within the scope of the scene and with mutual respect and professionalism,” Freedman’s statement to Page Six read.
Back in December, Williams — who plays Shane Hollander in “Heated Rivalry” — joked that his close relationship with Storrie (who plays Ilya Rozanov) was a “nightmare for HR.”
“We got comfortable just being inches from each other’s face and invading each other’s personal space,” Williams told Vanity Fair. “A nightmare for HR.”
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