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Justin Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, has responded to Ari Emanuel’s alleged reasons for dropping the actor-director as a client.
“Mr. Ari Emanuel is notably one of the best agents, and clearly the most loyal, in Hollywood,” Freedman told the Daily Mail on Friday, February 14. “Perhaps Ari’s perspective would be different if they had ever met in the half-decade they were clients of his agency.”
Emanuel is the chief executive of WME’s parent company, Endeavor, and recently claimed that he “fired” Baldoni, 41, as a client out of loyalty to Blake Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds. (News broke in December 2024 that WME stopped representing Baldoni shortly after Lively’s sexual harassment lawsuit made headlines.)
“I mean it is a f—ed up, bad situation with what Baldoni … is doing,” Emanuel said during a live taping of the “Freakonomics” podcast earlier in February. “[He was my client] until I fired him.”
When pressed if he actually fired Baldoni, Emanuel succinctly said, “I am a ride or die. And [Lively and Reynolds] are good people.”
Lively, 37, sued Baldoni in December 2024 for sexual harassment and fostering a “hostile work environment” when they filmed It Ends With Us together. She also claimed that Baldoni, who both starred in and directed the picture, tried to destroy her reputation. Baldoni, meanwhile, denied the allegations before filing a defamation suit against Lively. He also named Reynolds, 48, in the motion. The married couple, meanwhile, denounced the accusations.
“It’s not really fair,” Emanuel said on the Wednesday, February 12, episode. “I’ve known Ryan and Blake for over a decade. They’re really incredible people. In Hollywood, they have been incredibly successful. People work with them, they’ve never had any bad mojo out there or treated people badly.”
He added, “They are charitable — we help them with their foundation [and] they’ve given tons of money away.”
Emanuel also had a difficult time believing Baldoni’s version of events.
“If what is alleged in her lawsuit [and] what happened on social media is true, just because she complained to the studio that things were unhealthy on the set and that he was director and this man was the producer, and they did to her what is being alleged, they’re really bad people,” Emanuel said. “I know Blake, I know Ryan; they’re good people. Social media is a really good thing at times because it lets stars connect with their fans, but these two guys [Baldoni and his team] used it in an evil way if that’s true.”
Emanuel further implored Baldoni’s camp to “just stop since they think they’re innocent.” Baldoni’s attorney, Freedman, has been vocal in the media arguing his client’s perspective, even launching a website that documents their team’s alleged proof.
“Let the process play itself out,” Emanuel stressed on Wednesday. “These are good people that have been in the business for decades and have never had any bad press about them and all the people they work with like them. So, if it’s true what they’re saying in that allegation, these are two bad guys.”
