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- Lively, 37, and Baldoni, 40, are involved in litigation tied to It Ends with Us
Justin Baldoni speculated on if his conduct was appropriate after he hugged Britney Spears in a 2017 chat that has resurfaced amid the litigation-fueled scandal with his It Ends with Us costar Blake Lively.
The actor-director, 40, played the role of Rafael Solano on 99 episodes of The CW series Jane the Virgin from 2014–2019.
Spears played herself in an appearance during the show’s second season on an episode titled Chapter Twenty-Seven, which initially aired November 9, 2015.
He told Fuse that on the series, his character had no scripted scenes with the Oops!…I Did It Again songstress.
‘The guest star I was most excited to work with was Britney Spears – and then it turned out, I didn’t get to work with her,’ Baldoni said. ‘And there was zero scenes with Rafael and Britney Spears – probably at her request.’
Baldoni said of the pop star and The CW series, ‘I know she was a fan of the show. We were shooting and then a few of us that weren’t in scenes with her came to watch one of her scenes.’
Baldoni noted he had been ‘a huge Britney Spears fan in high school,’ adding, ‘What adolescent boy wasn’t?’
Baldoni said he and the Grammy-winning pop star had exchanged social media messages in the past, leading him to think she would have a stronger reaction to him than she displayed.
‘Because I had tweeted her and she had tweeted me back, I’d gone up to her, so in my mind we were friends – but we weren’t,’ Baldoni said. ‘I went up and I gave her a big hug and I think I scared her.’
Baldoni noticed that his fellow cast members on the show were laughing at the awkward exchange, and he wondered to himself, ‘Did I just harass Britney Spears?’
Dailymail.com has reached out to reps for Baldoni for comment on the latest in the developing story.
In Lively’s sexual harassment lawsuit against Baldoni, the Gossip Girl alum accused him of sexually harassing her in multiple ways – including body shaming her – during production of the motion picture.
The Los Angeles native, 37, said Baldoni said he’d been dealing with lower back pain as a ruse to express his grievances on the issue to the film’s crew, Newsweek reported after reviewing documents in the civil rights complaint, which was filed in California December 20.
Lively – who is mother to four kids with her husband, Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds, 48, – said in the 80-page legal complaint, ‘Mr. Baldoni referred to Ms. Lively’s trainer as “a damn spy” and sought to plant stories to portray his concerns as being motivated by his lower back pain.’
Lively, who played Lily Bloom opposite Baldoni’s Ryle Kincaid in the romantic drama, said that Baldoni raised his grievances with her trainer in a series of texts to production workers on the motion picture.
Lively, in her complaint to the California Civil Rights Department, did not specifically name the fitness professional, according to the outlet.
Baldoni claimed the personal trainer told Lively that he wanted her to shed pounds for the film ‘less than four months after [she] had given birth to her fourth child,’ son Olin, Lively said in her legal filing.
Lively said in the filing she was ‘humiliated’ to learn that Baldoni – ‘without her knowledge or permission’ – convened a meeting with the trainer and ‘implied that he wanted her to lose weight in two weeks.’
In regards to the reference to back pain, Lively said Baldoni ‘told the trainer that he had asked because he was concerned about having to’ lift her up ‘ in a scene for the movie, but there was no such scene’ scripted.
Lively said in the complaint that Baldoni had been deceitful on multiple fronts in regards to issues linked to her physical appearance, as she said she ‘routinely’ felt shamed about her figure.
In one instance, she said that he had sent her to a weight loss specialist under the initial guise he was pointing her to an expert on probiotics after she had come down with strep throat, E! News reported after reviewing the complaint.
Lively’s legal team said in the complaint that Baldoni ‘routinely degraded [her] by finding back channel ways of criticizing her body and weight.’
Baldoni and select associates also worked in concert in instigating a negative publicly campaign with the intent to damage her public image, Lively said in the complaint.
She initially filed a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department on December 21, before filing a federal lawsuit against him on December 31.
Lively told The New York Times the day after she filed the complaint, ‘I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted.’
Baldon has denied all of the claims against him in Lively’s legal filing, and has sued the newspaper for $250 million in a defamation claim.
Since the complaint was filed, Baldoni has faced a number of professional consequences, including a lawsuit from a former publicist; and being dropped by the agency WME, which also reps Lively and Reynolds.
It Ends with Us, which also starred Jenny Slate, Hasan Minhaj, Brandon Sklenar and Kevin McKidd, arrived in theaters August 9 and was a hit with audiences.
The film, adapted from the 2016 Colleen Hoover novel, earned $148 million in domestic box office, and $350 million globally, according to Box Office Mojo.
