Taylor Swift Subpoenaed In Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni Legal Battle

In December, Blake Lively filed a lawsuit against It Ends With Us director and costar Justin Baldoni for sexual harassment and an online smear campaign. In January, Baldoni filed a defamation lawsuit against Lively. Now, Taylor Swift has been subpoenaed.

Deadline confirmed that the pop superstar was subpoenaed earlier this week. A spokesperson for Swift told Variety:

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.

Baldoni is suing Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds for $400 million, alleging that the pair hijacked the film and sought to destroy his public reputation with false allegations and sexual harassment. Swift was not named in the suit, but her first name appeared in a text message to Lively, which concerned a rooftop scene in the movie that Lively had allegedly reworked in the script. Baldoni’s lawyers said that he “felt obliged to text Lively to say that he had liked her pages and hadn’t needed Reynolds and her megacelebrity friend to pressure him.”

“Also was working on rooftop scene today, I really love what you did. It really does [help] a lot,” Baldoni wrote in the text message. “Makes it so much more fun and interesting. (And I would have felt that way without Ryan and Taylor) You really are a talent across the board. Really excited [and] grateful to do this together.”

Later, Lively sent a text that referred to Reynolds and another person as “absolute titans as writers and storytellers outside of their primary gig.” She likened herself to Khaleesi, the dragon-controlling queen on Game Of Thrones, and suggested that she has powerful forces in her corner. “My dragons also protect those I fight for,” she wrote. “So really we all benefit from those gorgeous monsters of mine. You will too, I can promise you.”

Swift’s spokesperson said, “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.”

It Ends With Us star Isabela Ferrer told Extra that Swift aided her in getting her role in the film, saying she “found out later after she got it” that Swift was a “helpful part of the process of the audition.”