Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds stepped out for a rare date night this week, temporarily setting aside the actress's intense $161 million legal clash with co-star Justin Baldoni.
A Night Off From Legal Drama
The 38-year-old actress, who recently faced accusations of improvising an unscripted kiss while filming It Ends With Us, appeared to brush off the ongoing drama during her Wednesday evening out. Sharing insights from her night on Instagram, Lively gave followers a glimpse of her preparation process, showing herself blow-drying and curling her hair before setting it with hairspray and changing into a velvet dress.
The couple appeared to be enjoying a child-free evening, leaving their four children - James, nine, Inez, seven, Betty, four, and Olin, one - at home. Lively captured the moment with a selfie featuring her husband Ryan, captioning the post: 'Putting my night out hair to good use.'
The Bombshell Court Evidence
Lively's night out comes weeks after Baldoni's legal team filed a revealing deleted scene in their motion for summary judgment. The evidence alleges that Lively engaged in unscripted physical contact during filming, directly contradicting her claims against the actor-director.
The minute-long hospital hallway clip, shot in May 2023, shows Lively's character Lily approaching Baldoni's Ryle, grabbing his arms, planting a quick kiss on him, and walking away smiling. According to court documents obtained by Daily Mail, Baldoni's legal team argues this kiss was not in the script and that Lively not only approved it but oversaw the scene and added it to every take.
This newly surfaced evidence directly challenges Lively's allegations of sexual harassment on the set of the drama. The filing claims the former Gossip Girl star 'herself added to the script, in which her character kissed Baldoni's character in every take, although there was no kiss in the script.'
Escalating Legal Warfare
The legal battle between the two stars has grown increasingly complex since Lively initially filed a lawsuit in December 2024 accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment, retaliatory conduct and intentional infliction of emotional stress. Baldoni has denied all allegations.
In response, Baldoni filed a multi-million dollar defamation suit against Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and The New York Times in January 2025, though it was dismissed by a judge this past June.
Recent developments have seen Lively suffer courtroom setbacks. Earlier this month, a New York judge dismissed her claims against social media strategist Jed Wallace, whom she accused of helping Baldoni's camp coordinate an online smear campaign. The judge ruled that her legal team failed to show Wallace had sufficient ties to New York to be sued there.
Lively's representatives maintain that she plans to pursue her claims in a different court, stating: 'Ms. Lively is evaluating her many options for doing so, and looks forward to trial on all of her claims against Baldoni, Heath, Nathan and the rest of the Wayfarer defendants in March in New York.'
The ongoing legal drama has overshadowed the success of It Ends With Us, which earned $148 million at the domestic box office and $350 million globally. The film, based on Colleen Hoover's 2016 novel, centres around a toxic relationship between Lively's Lily Bloom and Baldoni's Ryle Kincaid.
