Justin Baldoni's voice notes calling Blake Lively 'beautiful', 'great writer' goes viral; Fans react

Before Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively battle it out in court, a new voice clip of the director's friendly chat with his 'It Ends With Us' lead actress has been released online.The audio clips reportedly date back to the casting, scripting and pre-filming phase of the adaptation, when both Baldoni and Lively seemed to be on friendly and cordial terms. In the message, Baldoni thanks Lively for sharing photographs from her costume fittings, saying he “legit got the chills” upon seeing them and telling her that she “looked beautiful.” Justin Baldoni's voice note goes viralIn the series of voice notes, Baldoni also discusses casting decisions, particularly around choosing a younger actress to portray the younger version of Lively’s character - Lily Bloom. Speaking from a 'marketing' perspective, he dabbles with the idea of casting fan-favourite Abigail Cowen, noting her popularity among readers of Colleen Hoover’s novel. He says he wanted to 'give fans what they wanted' with the casting, but expressed his reservation as she did not look anything like Lively and that making her wear a wig would take away from the story. Despite Abigail's popularity, the role went to Blake Lively, with author Colleen Hoover opting to age up the characters from the book, meanwhile, Isabella Ferreira was cast as young Lily in the film. In another clip, Justin touches upon Blake's writing, presumably her inputs to the film's script. While appreciating her writing , wit and humour, he goes on to call her a 'great writer', but ends with a request to 'not add to the pages'. Reacting to the new voice clips, fans siding with the director in the upcoming lawsuit, shared their feedback. One said, "My opinion: Justin Baldoni asking Blake Lively for her input is bc he wanted her to be 'part of' he thought they had a professional relationship . Unfortunately by the text we seen she was love bombing him while texting Taylor how awful he was. This new narrative won't work."Another referenced the infamous unsealed Taylor Swift messages and wrote, "While Justin Baldoni was sending Blake Lively sweet and thoughtful voice notes, she was texting her friends calling him a doofus and a clown."Months after the release of the film and its box office success, Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment and allegedly running a smear campaign against her. Baldoni denied the allegations and chose to countersue her. However, the case was later dismissed. With their court documents, texts, emails and voice clips now unsealed, fans hooked onto the legal drama have since been debating online about the findings in the documents in contrast to the actress' allegations. The two will soon head to court to battle it out in May 2026.See More: 'Dhurandhar 2 The Revenge' teaser: Ranveer Singh’s menacing and stylish avatar dominates Lyari town; backstory teased