It was a girl’s dinner in New York’s Meatpacking district that revealed the identity of Blake Lively’s new A-list buddy.
The beleaguered actress was spotted sharing laughs with her older sister Robyn and fellow actress Salma Hayek as they departed the RH Rooftop Restaurant. This outing came shortly after news broke that Lively’s friendship with Taylor Swift had abruptly ended.
Allegedly, the singer severed ties when Lively threatened to release private messages unless Swift supported her amidst a tense dispute with her co-star Justin Baldoni.
Only days later, Hayek gushed about her new bestie at the 2025 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue launch party in New York.
She revealed she’s been friends with both Lively and husband Ryan Reynolds for years and is close with their four children.
‘I got a chance to go play with them. They got to see their tía[aunt] Salma,’ she cooed. ‘They can also speak some Spanish.’
Blake Lively has filed a complaint claiming Baldoni sexually harassed her during the making of the movie It Ends With Us
Now, her burgeoning friendship with Salma Hayek (center) is the latest buzz in Hollywood, especially following US District Court Judge Lewis Liman’s stunning dismissal of the £400million defamation suit that Baldoni filed against Lively.
The message was clear: Lively’s got a new bestie. Indeed, her new bosom friendship with Hayek is now the talk of Tinseltown, after US District Court judge Lewis Liman’s sensational dismissal of the £400million defamation lawsuit filed by Baldoni against Lively.
By sheer coincidence, the judge, a graduate of both the London School of Economics and Yale Law School, is the brother of Doug Liman, a major Hollywood director.
Doug, known for working on hits such as The Bourne Identity and Mr & Mrs Smith, is represented by Creative Artists Agency – the same agency Hayek’s billionaire husband François-Henri Pinault bought a controlling stake in back in 2023.
One Hollywood insider said: ‘While the judgment came as a surprise to many, it is not an unfair decision. The connections are there – but then I guess it is Hollywood after all, and everyone knows everyone.’
The whole sorry saga unfolded last year when Lively – best known as Upper East Side ‘It girl’ Serena van der Woodsen in Gossip Girl – filed a civil rights complaint claiming Baldoni sexually harassed her during production of a film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestseller It Ends With Us.
She alleged he then retaliated when she spoke out. Baldoni, for his part, strenuously denied everything. Lively later escalated her claims, launching a formal lawsuit against Baldoni.
The actor – and his company Wayfarer Studios – hit back in January with a £400million countersuit, accusing Lively and her husband Reynolds, Deadpool actor and owner of Welsh football club Wrexham AFC, of defamation and extortion.
US District Court judge Lewis Liman, right, a graduate of both the London School of Economics and Yale Law School, is the brother of Doug Liman, left, a major Hollywood director
But last week, Judge Liman threw out key parts of Baldoni’s case. He ruled that the 41-year-old can’t sue Lively, 37, for defamation over claims she made in a lawsuit, as legal filings are protected speech and therefore exempt from libel claims. He also said Baldoni’s accusation that Lively hijacked creative control of the film didn’t count as extortion under California law.
And the judge addressed Baldoni’s claims that Lively threatened not to promote the film by pointing out Wayfarer never showed she had a legal obligation to do so.
Liman said Baldoni’s team may revise the lawsuit and pursue different claims related to whether Lively breached a contract. But it’s clear the tide has turned.
The judge also tossed out Baldoni’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, which had reported on sexual harassment allegations. Lively and Reynolds are said to be thrilled by the ruling, especially after enduring Baldoni’s vicious PR war.
This was first exposed in December, when messages emerged between Baldoni’s team and London-born crisis comms guru Melissa Nathan. ‘He wants to feel like she can be buried,’ a publicist working with Baldoni wrote to Nathan last August.
‘You know we can bury anyone,’ she replied.
Nathan – who has worked with the likes of Johnny Depp, Drake, Travis Scott and Simon Cowell – allegedly worked behind the scenes to kill stories damaging to Baldoni and spin negative ones against Lively.
Nathan’s briefings to journalists – which some described as a ‘smear campaign’ – is nothing out of the ordinary in Hollywood. But some have suggested that perhaps she was too confident in her abilities to take down Lively.
Nathan wasn’t the only one. Indeed, thanks to her tactics, many insiders genuinely feared Lively had no chance of winning the case – and that the couple were headed for financial ruin.
‘Melissa has some of the biggest journalists in America on her side, so the inference you’d have got if you were a reader of the celebrity publications in the States, and indeed in Britain, was that Justin would win this hands down,’ said one source.
‘Melissa would do anything for her clients, as would others in Justin’s camp. But what we’ve seen in the end came down to evidence seen by a judge – and it didn’t go Justin’s way. It’s definitely 1-0, or even 2-0 to Blake here. Team Baldoni are unlikely to have liked this one little bit.’
Lively’s legal team said in an impassioned statement yesterday: ‘Today’s opinion is a total victory and a complete vindication for Blake Lively, along with those that Justin Baldoni and the Wayfarer Parties dragged into their retaliatory lawsuit, including Ryan Reynolds, [publicist] Leslie Sloane and The New York Times.’
They added that they are now going after legal fees and damages, meaning this courtroom showdown is far from over.
Baldoni hit back with his own statement to the Daily Mail through his lawyer Bryan Freedman, insisting Lively’s claims of sexual harassment that sparked the legal war ‘are no truer today than they were yesterday’ and also thanking the public for their ‘unmitigated support’.
Perhaps Lively’s team will now be hoping that this setback will convince Baldoni to drop his lawsuit altogether.
One thing’s for sure: Lively’s new best friend Salma Hayek will be throwing the party of all parties if she beats Baldoni once and for all.
