Taylor Swift has agreed to sit for a deposition in Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s bitter legal feud over the movie It Ends With Us, Baldoni’s camp claims in new court filings.
Baldoni has been saying for months that Swift’s friendship with Lively makes her a key witness in the lawsuit, in which Lively alleges Baldoni sexually harassed her on the set of It Ends With Us and then orchestrated a retaliatory smear campaign after she complained.
In June, the federal judge overseeing the legal battle granted Baldoni’s request to access Swift and Lively’s text messages as part of the document discovery process. Now, Baldoni wants to depose Swift.
The current discovery schedule has all depositions concluding by the end of September, in anticipation of a March 2026 trial date. But lawyers for Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios, want an extension so they can question Swift during the week of Oct. 20 — saying in a Thursday (Sept. 11) court filing that the pop superstar “has agreed to appear for deposition” but cannot do so any earlier because of “preexisting professional obligations.”
Swift is notably in the midst of rolling out her highly anticipated twelfth album, The Life of a Showgirl, which arrives on Oct. 3. Swift’s reps have not confirmed whether she has indeed agreed to appear for a deposition, and they previously slammed Baldoni for “creating tabloid clickbait” by dragging the star into the case despite her minimal involvement in It Ends With Us.
Lively’s lawyers have similarly lambasted Baldoni for involving Swift in the litigation, writing in a Friday (Sept. 12) court response that the strategy is designed “to generate a media spectacle.”
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The Lively team is against extending the discovery cutoff to question Swift, saying it’s Baldoni’s own fault for waiting until this week to contact the singer’s counsel about scheduling her deposition.
“The Wayfarer defendants’ lack of diligence, and disrespect for Ms. Swift’s privacy and schedule, is astounding,” wrote Lively’s lawyer Michael Gottlieb. “Ms. Swift is someone whose calendar should be presumed to be packed with professional obligations for months in advance. At any point over the past six months, the Wayfarer defendants could have noticed a deposition, served a subpoena and negotiated an agreeable time and place for this deposition. But they did not.”
Judge Lewis J. Liman has not yet ruled on Baldoni’s discovery extension request.
The fiery legal battle between Lively and Baldoni has been in full force since last December, when the actress brought sexual harassment and retaliation claims against her It Ends With Us co-star and director.
Baldoni vehemently denied the allegations and countersued Lively and her inner circle for defamation, though Judge Liman later dismissed Baldoni’s counterclaims as legally invalid. Now, only Lively’s original allegations are headed toward trial this coming spring.
The Baldoni team has sought to involve Swift since the early days of the case, writing in court filings that Lively weaponized the “influential and wealthy celebrities” in her orbit to gain leverage over him while making It Ends With Us.
