A new amendment in Justin Baldoni’s lawsuit claims that Blake Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, added the character of Nicepool in his recent film Deadpool & Wolverine to bully him. The amended lawsuit, along with a timeline of events, was uploaded to a new website created by Baldoni’s legal team.
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Lively and Baldoni co-starred in It Ends With Us, a film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel, which Baldoni also directed. Lively has accused Baldoni of sexual harassment and of attempting to damage her reputation after she spoke out about his alleged misconduct.
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New Allegations
The lawsuit also raises concerns about The New York Times' metadata, which allegedly shows that the newspaper had access to Lively’s civil rights complaint against Baldoni 11 days before publishing their December article, “We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.” The article accused Baldoni of launching a smear campaign against his It Ends With Us co-star.
In a statement to Variety, Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, said: "This fresh evidence corroborates what we knew all along—that, due to purely egotistical reasons, Ms. Lively and her entire team colluded for months to destroy reputations through a complex web of lies, false accusations, and the manipulation of illicitly received communications."
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The ‘Nicepool’ controversy
The amended lawsuit claims that Nicepool, a "nice guy" variant of Deadpool who is killed off by Ladypool (played by Blake Lively), was deliberately added to the film to mock and bully Baldoni.
According to the lawsuit, the Nicepool scene was filmed in January 2024, shortly after an alleged incident at Lively and Reynolds’ apartment. During the incident, Reynolds is accused of berating Baldoni and demanding he apologise for accusations he claims are false.
Both parties are set to appear in court this Monday for their first hearing.
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