Blake Lively has come under fire from furious fans who have lambasted her for a ‘disgusting’ act while filming A Simple Favor in 2018, DailyMail reports.
Blake Lively is currently embroiled in a lawsuit with her It Ends With Us co-star Justin Baldoni, after accusing him of sexual harassment and plotting a smear campaign to ruin her reputation.
But in the wake of Justin’s counter lawsuit, Blake’s behaviour on various film sets has come under fire, with rumours surfacing there has been long-running tension with her co-star on A Simple Favor, Anna Kendrick, DailyMail reports.
Due to her ongoing legal woes, Blake Lively is not expected to partake in promotional duties for sequel Another Simple Favor, which will be released next month, and so far she has made just one appearance for the film’s premiere at the SXSW Film Festival.
Now a clip has emerged that shows a surprising side to Blake’s behaviour on the set of A Simple Favor, when she confessed that she improvised a scene where she grabbed her co-star Henry Golding’s privates.
The Gossip Girl star first made the admission while recording a commentary for the film’s Blu-Ray release, and lawyer and YouTuber @elsrich who has been following the Baldoni saga has drawn fans’ attention to it again in the light of the legal battle.
The clip was then re-shared by Norwegian journalist Kjersti Flaa, who went viral earlier this year when she revealed how an awkward interview with Blake in 2016 nearly led her to quit her profession.
The video showed a clip from A Simple Favor when Blake’s character Emily Nelson taunts her husband Sean, played by Golding.
In the tense scene, the pair lean in for a kiss while she grabs his manhood, and in the commentary, Blake Lively admits she improvised the move as she felt it was something that her character would do
Director Paul Feig can be heard saying: ‘One of my favourite additions you came up with was you grabbed his nuts, and you really went for it too.’
Blake then adds: ‘That’s always awkward, when you’re like, “Hey nice to meet you! Can I grab your nuts really hard?”. Not because I want to, because I feel like she would.’
While Kjersti herself reprimanded Blake’s behaviour, many fans also took to the comments to share their fury.
Comments under her video included: ‘This is absolutely unbelievable!
‘OMG poor Henry looks so uncomfortable. This woman is shameless;
‘Where was the ”intimacy coordinator” lmao;’
‘Maybe this is why he doesn’t follow BL on Insta but he does follow Anna Kendrick.’
Blake Lively seemingly attempted to shut down any rumours of tension between herself and co-star Anna in her latest Instagram post, but there was a very telling clue that all is not well.
On Tuesday night, Blake Lively shared a gallery of photographs from the movie’s promotional tour in Austin and gushed over working with ‘each of you’ in a caption.
She featured pictures of her co-star Anna and the film’s director Paul Feig at Friday’s SXSW Film Festival, but they weren’t in any of the behind-the-scenes snaps.
Another Simple Favor’s director Paul tried to shut down any claims of tension between Blake and Anna amid the ongoing rumours.
When a YouTube star claimed on X that Blake Lively was ‘terrified to walk the red carpet’ with Anne at the Another Simple Favor premiere on Friday, Paul hit back with: ‘Um … you’re wrong.’
In an interview with People, he also gushed that making the film ‘was too much fun’ as he brushed off the allegations of behind-the-scenes tension.
‘I mean, I had such a great experience on the first one. It always kind of stuck with me, like, “God, I love working with the two of them”,’ he said.
Late last year, Lively filed a lawsuit against him as well as film producer Jamey Heath, Wayfarer Studios co-found Steve Sarowitz and more from Baldoni’s team.
In her complaint, she accused Baldoni and company of sexual harassment and orchestrating a smear campaign to ruin her reputation.
In response, Baldoni filed a $400million defamation lawsuit against Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and their publicist Leslie Sloane, accusing them of shutting him out of his own film and ruining his career.
He also filed a lawsuit against The New York Times’ reporting on Lively’s allegations.
Over a week ago, Lively filed to dismiss Baldoni’s $400 million defamation lawsuit, slamming it as ‘vengeful and rambling.’
In court documents obtained by DailyMail, Lively’s attorneys slammed Baldoni’s lawsuit as a ‘profound abuse of the legal process that has no place in federal court’ as they asked for all claims against her to be dropped.
In a shocking twist, the documents also state that Wayfarer’s legal efforts against Lively may end up costing Baldoni’s team $100 million due to a mandatory fee shifting provision in California Civil Code Section 47.1, which provides protections to individuals with claims of sexual harassment and similar allegations.
It’s the latest update in the messy legal ordeal between Blake Lively and Baldoni, which officially began in December 2024 after Lively filed her complaint and Baldoni countersued in February.
All parties have denied the allegations against them, and Reynolds and Sloane have also filed to be dismissed from the lawsuit.
In the introduction and summary of their argument, Lively’s legal team argues the lawsuit against her has ‘no place in federal court’ due to legal protections for individuals who have spoken out about sexual harassment or filed legal claims.
‘The law prohibits weaponizing defamation lawsuits, like this one, to retaliate against individuals who have filed legal claims or have publicly spoken out about sexual harassment and retaliation,’ the documents state.
The former co-stars’ trial date is set for March 9, 2026.