Blake Lively says Justin Baldoni secretly sent her to weight loss specialist without her realising

Blake Lively’s lawsuit alleges that Justin Baldoni secretly sent her to see a weight loss specialist after she’d contracted strep throat.

The Gossip Girl star filed a legal complaint against her It Ends With Us co-star on Friday (20 December), where she accused him of sexual harassment and an alleged 'social manipulation' campaign against her.

In the legal complaint obtained by The New York Times, Lively accused Baldoni, who also directed the film, of adding 'improvised gratuitous sexual content' to the script following her acceptance of the role of Lily Bloom in the adaptation of Colleen Hoover's novel and having a 'shocking lack of boundaries' while on set.

According to Lively, this led to a meeting during production - which her husband, Ryan Reynolds, also supposedly attended - where she allegedly listed a number of demands.

She also accused Baldoni and his team of allegedly orchestrating a 'social manipulation' campaign to 'destroy' her reputation - with text messages allegedly showing this included in the complaint.

Amid claims he ‘routinely degraded' her about her weight and age during the production of It Ends with Us, 37-year-old Lively’s legal complaint also accuses Baldoni of ‘crying’ in her dressing room over her appearance.

Blake Lively has accused Justin Baldoni of sending her to a weight-loss specialist (Gotham/GC Images)

Baldoni allegedly ‘made the rest of the cast and crew wait for hours while he cried in Ms. Lively's dressing room, claiming social media commentators were saying that Ms. Lively looked old and unattractive based on paparazzi photos from the set'.

The lawsuit further claims: "She tried to reassure him that she should look authentic in the scenes depicted in the photos, which were just after her character had been abused by her fictional husband, rather than 'hot'.”

The legal filing also alleges that when the mother-of-four caught strep throat, Baldoni offered to put her in touch with an ‘expert’ he had on retainer, with the legal complaint reading: “When Ms. Lively caught strep throat, Mr. Baldoni offered as a ‘gift’ to connect her with an expert he had on retainer to help her with probiotics and to combat the sickness.

“When Ms. Lively went to fill out the privacy forms, she saw the expert was not what Mr. Baldoni had represented her to be, but was instead a weight-loss specialist.”

The filing added: “Ms. Lively felt, once again, that Mr. Baldoni was shaming her for her body and weight.”

Tyla has contacted representatives of Baldoni and Freedman for further comment.

Following the release of the complaint, Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, released a statement, where he called the allegations against his client and Baldoni’s production company, Wayfarer Studios, ‘completely false, outrage and intentionally salacious'.

Baldoni's lawyer has refuted the claims against his client (Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)

As per Variety, he said that the team 'did nothing proactive nor retaliated' against Lively and the PR team was only hired 'due to the multiple demands and threats made by Ms Lively during production'.

In a statement to The New York Times, Lively said: "I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted.”

Following the public release of the lawsuit, celebs involved with Lively and the film have come out in support of the star.

It Ends With Us author, Colleen Hoover, wrote that she has been ‘nothing but honest, kind, supportive and patient since the day we met’.

“Thank you for being exactly the human that you are. Never change. Never wilt,” she wrote in a social media post.

Meanwhile, Lively's co-star, Brandon Sklenar, urged people on his social media to read the whole complaint, adding: "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD READ THIS.”