The Daily Roundup you’re listening to is part of the Reality Steve Podcast. I’m Reality Steve. Welcome to 2025. What a great way to start the new year. More lawsuits involving Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. They each filed lawsuits yesterday.
Cheryl Burke is in the news. She decided to end her hugely popular podcast. At least for now, I’ll get a reader email and I’ll finally get to tell that story. com ran last week. This is one of their deals that they only list on Reddit. They find something someone posted and turn it into a front-page story without any review or even knowing if it’s true.
This story is so irrelevant. I’ll figure it out.
As I said publicly, Justin Baldoni’s $250 million lawsuit against the New York Times is a great way to start 2025. He did not file a lawsuit and did not sue Blake Lively. He sued the New York Times over accusations that he defamed Blake Lively, filing an 87-page lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court.
This is about the story reported in the New York Times. We can bury anyone in the Hollywood smear machine. There are 10 plaintiffs in this case. It was him, along with fellow Wayfarer producers Jamie Heath and Steve Sarawitz, and Jennifer, the two publicists whose emails and text messages were filled with Black’s complaints. Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan.
The lawsuit essentially states that they relied on communications that were cherry-picked and altered, stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead. The lawsuit also alleges that the news media relied almost entirely on Lively’s unsubstantiated and self-serving account, quoting it almost word for word while ignoring substantial evidence that contradicted her claims and exposed her true motives.
But the Times didn’t care. Given the breadth of the article and the coordinated drop, it’s clear that the Times had been quietly working with Lively’s team for weeks or months. So this seems to be just an assumption because it doesn’t say that we know they have been working. It says it’s obvious.
Well, I don’t know if this proves the obvious. The New York Times fired back, saying, “The role of independent news agencies is to follow the facts where they lead.” Our stories are reported carefully and responsibly. It is based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including text messages and emails that we have quoted accurately and in detail in our articles to date, Mr. Wayfarer Studios.
Neither Baldoni, the other subjects of the article, nor representatives pointed out any errors. We have also published their full statement in response to the allegations in the article. So, as I said, by the end of 2024, we’re going to start early 2025, this is not going away anytime soon.
It’s going to get ugly. Maybe there will be a reconciliation at some point. These people just go their own ways. I don’t know, but it’s not going to end anytime soon, because Justin Baldoni and his team are suing The New York Times for $250 million over this story. Hours later, TMZ broke the news about a new lawsuit filed by Blake Lively against Baldoni, accusing her of emotional distress and mental anguish.
Basically, it mirrors the complaint she filed, but in federal court in New York. The complaint lists demands to be addressed as a result of Baldoni’s conduct. And Blake Lively. Ms. Lively filed a federal lawsuit against Wayfarer Studios and other companies in the Southern District of New York after the lawsuit was filed earlier today, attorneys said.
Miss Lively previously filed a complaint with the California Department of Civil Rights in response to Wayfarer’s retaliation campaign for her reporting of sexual harassment and workplace safety issues. Unfortunately, Ms. Lively’s decision led to further retaliation and attacks.
As alleged in Ms. Lively’s federal complaint, Wayfair and her colleagues violated federal and California law by retaliating against her for reporting sexual harassment and workplace safety concerns. The defendants will now respond to their actions in federal court. Ms. Lively filed the lawsuit in New York, where much of the rebellion actually took place.
The relevant activity described in the complaint has occurred, but we reserve the right to take further action in other locations and jurisdictions as appropriate under the law. Yes. There’s a lot of legal talk out there, though. Again, this isn’t going away anytime soon. They may also leak more stuff.
During Blake’s complaint, we knew, obviously, that his attorneys and his team were not going to be like, yeah, this is what we’re doing. We have started the smear campaign again. Of course they won’t admit it. They’ll say, no, no, no, no. She did this to us. She launched a smear campaign. Forget it, I filed a complaint on page 87.
Wayfarer and nine others sued The New York Times for $250 million. I will because it’s fair. I’m telling you to read Black’s 80-page complaint about what happened on set. Plus all the text messages and emails between Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan you need to read. Well, I wanted to see what they would say.
I know they’re saying some of the stuff in it was taken out of context. Text messages exchanged in Justin Baldoni’s lawsuit. The Times article said Baldoni repeatedly entered Lively’s makeup trailer uninvited while she was undressing, including while she was breastfeeding, including during his lawsuit against The New York Times.
His complaint shows text messages he allegedly sent from Lively read: I was just pumping water in my trailer. Justin Baldoni responded, “If you want to figure out our lines, imitate eating with the crew and we went in that direction,” the lawsuit says Baldoni didn’t show up uninvited. OK It doesn’t matter. If this is true, it’s just an example.
What if Black was talking about another example? Why do you make movies? Two or three months. There may have been other times when he showed up uninvited. Maybe after that she said, hey, you want to come in? I was pumping gas in the trailer. If you want to know about our lines. He said, of course, I’ll be there.
Maybe after that. He never checked, he just decided to go in. This proves nothing to me. It turns out that one time they discussed it over text message and she asked him to come in while she was pumping.
That doesn’t mean he’s allowed every time, and that’s what we don’t know. Like, there’s something we don’t know yet. There are many things we don’t know. However, this is too bad for the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025. Justine Baldoni is seeking $250 million from The New York Times, and Black essentially turned her complaint into a lawsuit, but she did file it in New York, where filming took place.
So I’m telling you, this is going to be a story that goes on for months and we’ll be reporting on anything new as it emerges. So get ready. Cheryl Burke, a two-time guest on the podcast, announced yesterday that she will be taking a break from her Sex Lies and Spray Tan podcast for the foreseeable future.
She said, After an incredible journey, I have made the bittersweet decision to say goodbye to this podcast for the time being. This chapter has been one of the most valuable experiences of my life, full of growth, meaningful conversations, and powerful connections. I have bittersweet news, she said.
Just wanted to say to you that as I sit down to share this news, my heart is genuinely filled with gratitude. I think it’s been a few weeks or a few days since I decided to take a break from this podcast. It’s been an incredible journey. Obviously. This is a very popular podcast.
Many of her guests ended up becoming front-page stories. com Us Weekly. com. She has a lot of great clients who are all very, very candid in their answers. When I got her back in September, I even said to her, hey. This is a very popular podcast. I didn’t say I liked it, I didn’t know she was going to end it.
I didn’t expect her to. I wouldn’t, but she mentioned the fact in the podcast when she announced that this podcast was coming to an end, she did mention the fact that she has a lot of new things coming up in 2025. and the Spray Tan podcast will be back in the fall with Dancing with the Stars,” she said, but she didn’t want to make any promises.
Looks like she has something going on. And one thing that moved me. Not to ask any questions about this, but when someone decides to put their podcast on hiatus or basically cancel it, especially someone like her, whose podcast was so popular, to me, that means she definitely has a bigger Something that will take up a lot of her time, like another reality show or any type of show.
I, you know, like, I, you know, the first thing that went through my mind was, is she going to be on Survivor in 2025? So she went. but. I thought, probably not. Cheryl didn’t strike me as someone who wanted to go on Survivor, but something like that popped into my head. You’ve got a hugely successful podcast, and entertainment sites love aggregating it and running stories on it.
So something big is definitely going to happen. I don’t think she took a break from the podcast to do private dance instruction. You know, I do think there might be something in the entertainment world that she’s entering that’s going to take up a lot of her time, whether it’s a show, a reality show, a scripted show or something like that.
I don’t think it was a behind-the-scenes thing because she was really telling her audience, hey, big things happened in 25, 25 years. Maybe there was a part in the podcast where she did start to get a lot of pressure from dancing with the star’s family because everyone viewed her as being very negative.
She said, listen, anyone who misunderstands this podcast or questions my love for this show that has shaped me, I encourage you to listen to these episodes. My heart has always been in the right place. I see so many of your comments affirming that I will never forget where I came from and my love for this chapter of my life will never waver.
So it’s possible. Who knows this might criticize her for being just a negative Nelly. Many people are like this. Tired of her constantly showing up on the show and calling out the judges. Maybe that had an effect on her. Maybe that’s part of the reason she doesn’t want to do it anymore. I guess we’ll never know unless she answers directly.
She answered the question there. Just saying, no, that has nothing to do with it. It sounds like she has some pretty big things coming up in 2025, which I’m sure we’ll all be hearing about in the coming months.
