It was a woman’s dinner in New York’s Meatpacking district that exposed the identification of Blake Vigorous’s new A-list buddy.
The embattled actress was seen laughing along with her older sister Robyn and fellow Hollywood star Salma Hayek as they left the RH Rooftop Restaurant, shortly after it emerged that Vigorous’s friendship with Taylor Swift had come to a dramatic finish.
The singer reportedly reduce ties when Vigorous threatened to leak non-public texts until Swift backed her in an ongoing bitter feud along with her co-star Justin Baldoni.
Solely days later, Hayek gushed about her new bestie on the 2025 Sports activities Illustrated Swimsuit Concern launch get together in New York.
She revealed she’s been buddies with each Vigorous and husband Ryan Reynolds for years and is shut with their 4 kids.
‘I acquired an opportunity to go play with them. They acquired to see their tía[aunt] Salma,’ she cooed. ‘They’ll additionally communicate some Spanish.’
Blake Vigorous has filed a criticism claiming Baldoni sexually harassed her throughout the making of the film It Ends With Us
Now, her new friendship with Salma Hayek (centre) is now the speak of Tinseltown, after US District Court docket choose Lewis Liman’s sensational dismissal of the £400million defamation lawsuit filed by Baldoni towards Vigorous
The message was clear: Vigorous’s acquired a brand new bestie. Certainly, her new bosom friendship with Hayek is now the speak of Tinseltown, after US District Court docket choose Lewis Liman’s sensational dismissal of the £400million defamation lawsuit filed by Baldoni towards Vigorous.
By sheer coincidence, the choose, a graduate of each the London Faculty of Economics and Yale Regulation Faculty, is the brother of Doug Liman, a significant Hollywood director.
Doug, identified for engaged on hits reminiscent of The Bourne Identification and Mr & Mrs Smith, is represented by Inventive Artists Company – the identical company Hayek’s billionaire husband François-Henri Pinault purchased a controlling stake in again in 2023.
One Hollywood insider mentioned: ‘Whereas the judgment got here as a shock to many, it isn’t an unfair choice. The connections are there – however then I suppose it’s Hollywood in any case, and everybody is aware of everybody.’
The entire sorry saga unfolded final 12 months when Vigorous – greatest referred to as Higher East Aspect ‘It lady’ Serena van der Woodsen in Gossip Lady – filed a civil rights criticism claiming Baldoni sexually harassed her throughout manufacturing of a movie adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestseller It Ends With Us.
She alleged he then retaliated when she spoke out. Baldoni, for his half, strenuously denied every part. Vigorous later escalated her claims, launching a proper lawsuit towards Baldoni.
The actor – and his firm Wayfarer Studios – hit again in January with a £400million countersuit, accusing Vigorous and her husband Reynolds, Deadpool actor and proprietor of Welsh soccer membership Wrexham AFC, of defamation and extortion.
US District Court docket choose Lewis Liman, proper, a graduate of each the London Faculty of Economics and Yale Regulation Faculty, is the brother of Doug Liman, left, a significant Hollywood director
However final week, Decide Liman threw out key elements of Baldoni’s case. He dominated that the 41-year-old can’t sue Vigorous, 37, for defamation over claims she made in a lawsuit, as authorized filings are protected speech and subsequently exempt from libel claims. He additionally mentioned Baldoni’s accusation that Vigorous hijacked inventive management of the movie didn’t depend as extortion beneath California legislation.
And the choose addressed Baldoni’s claims that Vigorous threatened to not promote the movie by declaring Wayfarer by no means confirmed she had a authorized obligation to take action.
Liman mentioned Baldoni’s crew could revise the lawsuit and pursue totally different claims associated as to whether Vigorous breached a contract. However it’s clear the tide has turned.
The choose additionally tossed out Baldoni’s defamation lawsuit towards The New York Instances, which had reported on sexual harassment allegations. Vigorous and Reynolds are mentioned to be thrilled by the ruling, particularly after enduring Baldoni’s vicious PR warfare.
This was first uncovered in December, when messages emerged between Baldoni’s crew and London-born disaster comms guru Melissa Nathan. ‘He needs to really feel like she could be buried,’ a publicist working with Baldoni wrote to Nathan final August.
‘ we are able to bury anybody,’ she replied.
Nathan – who has labored with the likes of Johnny Depp, Drake, Travis Scott and Simon Cowell – allegedly labored behind the scenes to kill tales damaging to Baldoni and spin adverse ones towards Vigorous.
Nathan’s briefings to journalists – which some described as a ‘smear marketing campaign’ – is nothing out of the extraordinary in Hollywood. However some have urged that maybe she was too assured in her talents to take down Vigorous.
Nathan wasn’t the one one. Certainly, because of her ways, many insiders genuinely feared Vigorous had no probability of profitable the case – and that the couple have been headed for monetary damage.
‘Melissa has a few of the largest journalists in America on her facet, so the inference you’d have gotten in the event you have been a reader of the celeb publications within the States, and certainly in Britain, was that Justin would win this arms down,’ mentioned one supply.
‘Melissa would do something for her purchasers, as would others in Justin’s camp. However what we’ve seen ultimately got here all the way down to proof seen by a choose – and it didn’t go Justin’s manner. It’s positively 1-0, and even 2-0 to Blake right here. Group Baldoni are unlikely to have preferred this one little bit.’
Vigorous’s authorized crew mentioned in an impassioned assertion yesterday: ‘Right now’s opinion is a complete victory and an entire vindication for Blake Vigorous, together with those who Justin Baldoni and the Wayfarer Events dragged into their retaliatory lawsuit, together with Ryan Reynolds, [publicist] Leslie Sloane and The New York Instances.’
They added that they’re now going after authorized charges and damages, which means this courtroom showdown is much from over.
Baldoni hit again along with his personal assertion to the Each day Mail by way of his lawyer Bryan Freedman, insisting Vigorous’s claims of sexual harassment that sparked the authorized warfare ‘aren’t any more true in the present day than they have been yesterday’ and likewise thanking the general public for his or her ‘unmitigated help’.
Maybe Vigorous’s crew will now be hoping that this setback will persuade Baldoni to drop his lawsuit altogether.
One factor’s for positive: Vigorous’s new greatest good friend Salma Hayek might be throwing the get together of all events if she beats Baldoni as soon as and for all.
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