Where Blake Lively Stands With Taylor Swift, Ben Affleck and Others After Justin Baldoni Legal Battle

Blake Lively may have finally settled her It Ends With Us lawsuit against Justin Baldoni and his production company, but they’ve still got a battle ahead to win back their status in Hollywood, a source reveals.

The Gossip Girl alum, 38, and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, 49, are “looking forward to getting back out there and re-integrating themselves socially a whole lot more now things have finally died down,” a source tells Star, but because multiple celebrities — including Taylor Swift, Ben Affleck and Hugh Jackman — were name-dropped into the nearly 18-month legal battle, they realize their “popularity has taken a dent.”

In a May 2024 email filed in court and obtained by Star, Lively writes to Affleck that she “ended up rewriting and restructuring the entire script, I also ended up having to direct the movie,” calling Baldoni a “chaotic clown.” She also asks her The Town costar and director to watch her edit of the film, but there was no response from him in the filing.

Jackman, 57, and Swift, 36, seem to have been more directly dragged into the battle. They both allegedly witnessed Reynolds berate Baldoni for asking about Lively’s weight around April 2023, according to a timeline of events sent in an email by Baldoni’s producing partner, Jamey Heath, that was filed in court documents obtained by Star.

“Ryan insists he’s still cool with Hugh,” the source says of the Deadpool & Wolverine costars, noting that Jackman likes to “distance himself from drama” but won’t let that stop him from working with Reynolds again. “They go way back and still have a deep affection and respect for one another.”

Swift might be another story. As Star previously reported, she’s mentioned several other times in the lawsuit, with texts from Lively asking her to show excitement for a scene in front of Baldoni, and another comparing the pop star and Reynolds as her “dragons.”

In one text exchange from December 2024 obtained by Star, Lively even asks the “Bad Blood” singer if “all is good” between them because she feels like a “bad friend.”

“You’re not wrong, but it’s also not a big deal,” Swift wrote back. “I think I’m just exhausted in every avenue of my life and in recent months had been feeling a little bit of a shift in the way you talk to me.”

Having those private messages exposed made the Grammy winner, who Baldoni’s team briefly tried to subpoena for the trial, “uncomfortable,” People has reported.

“Taylor was Blake’s very best friend before this nightmare engulfed their world,” the source tells Star. “It remains to be seen if she’ll be inviting Blake and Ryan to her wedding, but regardless of that, they hope that as time passes things will steadily soften and in the not-too-distant future it’ll all be water under the bridge.”