Taylor Swift has been subpoenaed in Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s ongoing legal battle, but a representative for the singer has slammed the lawyers for involving her client.
“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,” the rep said in a statement to Us Weekly on Friday, May 9. “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.”
The spokesperson added, “The connection Taylor had to this film was permitting the use of one song, ‘My Tears Ricochet.’ Given that her involvement was licensing a song for the film, which 19 other artists also did, this document subpoena is designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.”
Days prior to the official subpoena, Lively’s lawyer Mike Gottlieb slammed Baldoni’s legal team for planning to subpoena Swift, 35, and possibly Hugh Jackman. “This is a case about what happened to Blake Lively when she raised claims of sexual harassment on the set,” he said in an interview with People published Thursday, May 8. “It’s not a case about how songs were chosen for the movie. It’s not a case about fictional Marvel characters in Deadpool movies.”
Gotham/GC Images Taylor Swift was reportedly a major inspiration on the set of It Ends With Us. Justin Baldoni directed the 2024 adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel, starring Blake Lively as protagonist Lily Bloom opposite himself as Ryle Kincaid. The film chronicled the characters’ abusive relationship. Months after the movie came out in August […]
“You have to ask the question, then, why are these people being subpoenaed?” he continued. “Do they have any actual relevance to the case at hand? You can’t just go around subpoenaing people because they’re famous and you think it will generate a bunch of headlines. And the federal courts don’t tolerate that kind of behavior.”
Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman responded to Gottlieb’s comments by saying, “Although obviously uncomfortable for the Lively parties, the truth is not a distraction. The truth has been clearly shown through unedited receipts, documents and real life footage. More to come. Blake was the one who brought her high-profile friends into this situation without concern for their own personal or public backlash. As the truth shows, she used her Dragons to manipulate Justin at every turn.”
Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. Courtesy Sony Pictures
In a March issue of Us Weekly, a source exclusively shared that Swift “wasn’t happy with being brought into the legal mess.” While the insider noted that Swift does not want to be part of the case, a separate source told Us in January that the Grammy winner and Lively are still pals.
“There’s no truth that this has hurt their relationship,” the second insider shared. “They are still close friends.”
Lively and Baldoni’s legal battle went public in December 2024 when Lively filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against her former costar and director. In the legal docs, Lively claimed Baldoni and his team cited Swift as an example of the “weaponization of feminism” in their alleged plan to launch a smear campaign against her.
In a text featured in Baldoni’s $400 million countersuit against Lively, Ryan Reynolds and Lively’s publicist Leslie Sloane, Baldoni claimed Swift and Reynolds gave input on a rooftop scene between his and Lively’s characters. “Was working on rooftop scene today, I really love what you did. It really does hep [sic] a lot. Makes it so much more fun and interesting. (And I would have felt that way without Ryan and Taylor),” his text read in legal docs obtained by Us in January.
Both Lively and Baldoni and their teams have vehemently denied each other’s accusations, including Lively’s sexual harassment allegations against Baldoni and the director’s claims that Lively attempted to take over creative control of It Ends With Us, among many others on both sides.
The pretrial discovery period is currently underway. A trial date has been set for March 9, 2026.