Blake Lively Seeks $8 Million in Fees After Justin Baldoni Settlement

Q: Did Blake Lively’s bitter legal battle ultimately end her friendship with Taylor Swift?

It appears the legal battle severely damaged Blake Lively’s friendship with Taylor Swift and may have ended it, but neither woman has publicly confirmed a final break. The strongest evidence is circumstantial but significant. Lively and Ryan Reynolds were absent from Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding celebrations at Madison Square Garden, despite once being among Swift’s closest friends and despite Swift being godmother to their children. Their being in Lake Placid for their daughter’s horse show during the festivities has been widely read as a sign of distance. The legal fight with Justin Baldoni seems to have been the turning point. Swift was pulled into the dispute when Baldoni sought to subpoena her, though that effort was later rejected by a judge. Unsealed December 2024 texts also showed strain well before the case ended. Swift told Lively there had been a “shift” in how she communicated and said her messages felt like “a mass corporate email,” adding that she missed her “normal-speaking friend.” That does not amount to definitive proof the friendship is over. Public absences can have other explanations, and celebrity-friendship reporting often relies on unnamed sources. But taken together—the subpoena fight, the unsealed texts, and Lively’s conspicuous absence from Swift’s wedding—the available evidence points to a friendship that was at minimum badly fractured and, quite possibly, no longer intact.

3 articles · Updated · The Independent · Jul 5

$8 million in legal fees and costs was submitted by Blake Lively’s team after a federal judge ruled she was entitled to recover expenses tied to Justin Baldoni’s countersuit.
July 13 is the deadline for Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios to either accept the bill or challenge the amount in court.
The fee fight follows the pair’s early May 2026 settlement, which ended dueling claims after Lively sued Baldoni for sexual harassment and reputational harm, and Baldoni accused Lively, Ryan Reynolds and their publicist of trying to destroy his career.
Taylor Swift was drawn into the case during 2025 because her song appeared in It Ends With Us and Baldoni sought her deposition, a bid a judge later rejected.