“Tom thinks she’s probably and bizarrely unhireable right now.”
So wrote Sony Pictures motion pictures president Sanford Panitch in an August 2024 email—one of a passel recently released into the wild thanks to Blake Lively’s ongoing sexual harassment complaint against It Ends With Us director Justin Baldoni. “Tom,” of course, was Sony film studio chairman and C.E.O. Tom Rothman. And the word “bizarrely” was invoked because the surprise hit movie, which cost about $50 million and was on its way to grossing more than $350 million worldwide, should have catapulted Lively to the next level of movie stardom rather than sweeping her up in a tsunami of negative publicity.
Reading Panitch’s comment made me wonder: Is Lively really unhireable? I asked a bunch of people who currently run, or who have run, studios what they thought about the accuracy of his assessment—which I will get to, bear with me. Because after reading the emails and texts from Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, released in the same batch of discovery material, I started to wonder what effect some of his heated exchanges with various players might have had on the perception of a huge star who has enjoyed a pretty pristine public persona.
Reynolds’s messages offer a highly unusual peek into how an A-list actor—who in this case also happens to be a gifted writer—wields words and power to cajole or browbeat those around him. What started with a Reynolds charm offensive in 2023, before filming was underway, ended up with the Deadpool star raging at Sony executives and venting at his WME reps. At one point, he asked agent Warren Zavala whether co-founder Ari Emanuel would go “full ‘Ari’ on Tom,” as he felt the studio had not done enough to support Lively. If Ari complied, it seems that would have happened in a phone call. (Although, on the Freakonomics podcast last February—months after that Reynolds request—Ari did say, “It is a fucked-up, bad situation with what Bologna—Baldoni, whatever his name is—is doing.”)
Sources told me that long before the latest batch of texts and emails became public, some of Reynolds’s famous friends saw the publicity around his level of involvement in his wife’s battle with Baldoni as a problem for him, and even discussed some sort of intervention to urge him to back down. It’s unclear whether that happened, but it appears the concern was well-placed.
According to Parrot Analytics, which tracks public sentiment via social media mentions and video comments, Reynolds has been on a swift descent over the past few years. In January 2023, more than 80 percent of public sentiment around him was positive; by the end of 2025, that figure had dropped to just above 20 percent. That’s despite Reynolds producing, co-writing, and starring in Deadpool & Wolverine, the second-highest-grossing movie of 2024. Lively has fared even worse: Her positives dropped from a high of just over 80 percent in early 2023 to roughly 10 percent last December. Positive sentiment for Baldoni dropped from a high of 64 percent in March 2024 to just over 5 percent by the end of 2025.
Asked for comment on Reynolds’s words and deeds on his wife’s behalf, a spokesperson sent this statement: “Yes Ryan got involved—what husband wouldn’t support his wife and the mother of his children? He saw his wife fighting daily to stand up against sexual harassment in a private and respectful way, only to face retaliation for doing so. If anything, Ryan feels like he wasn’t angry enough. He passionately believes in and will stand up for the basic right to a safe workplace free of harassment and retaliation for his wife and others. Then, now, and always.”
Reps for Baldoni did not respond to requests for comment.
Honey & Vinegar
Let’s start from the beginning: Before filming on It Ends With Us got underway, Reynolds sent Baldoni a message on February 26, 2023, lavishing him with praise (“you’ve been a wonderful collaborator with B”). Then he got to the point, which was a request to accommodate his and his wife’s shooting schedules. “We’re hardwired for keeping our family together,” he said. “It’s how to win us.” (Italics mine.) What rising filmmaker wouldn’t want to “win” Reynolds?
“I’d have your line producer’s face tattooed on my perineum if he/she/they can figure out how to start two weeks earlier,” Reynolds continued. “Completely understand how big of an ask that is. But the perineum is one of the most nervy parts of the human body to expose to trauma so…” The signoff: “I happen to adore you, Justin. xo” (Author’s note: T.I.L. what the perineum is. You can look it up.) While hyperbolic flattery is nothing new in Hollywood, it does feel a bit baldly transactional in this case. It’s unclear whether the request was accommodated.
Fast-forward to May 2024, when Reynolds again doled out some praise, this time to Josh Greenstein, then co-president of the Sony Motion Picture Group (now at Paramount as co-chairman of the film studio and vice chairman of platforms). “You really pulled off a marketing triumph,” he wrote, referring to The Garfield Movie’s $35 million opening weekend. Pivoting to the point, Reynolds thanked Greenstein for “backstopping [Lively’s] vastly better version of the film.” (Recall that Lively and Baldoni had competing cuts of the film, and Lively’s won out.) In language that wouldn’t be lost on any studio exec, Reynolds continued: “You have a lifetime supply of admiration, respect and friendship from me. If there is any way I can pay it forward, any time, say the word and I will show up for you. Try me.” Naturally, Greenstein responded, “Would be a dream to have both of you making movies at Sony in the future.” (Given what’s transpired since, it’s a pretty safe bet that won’t be happening anytime soon.)
But Reynolds would soon sour on Greenstein, who he believed had promised to go on the record supporting Lively. That wasn’t in the cards. After all, Sony was in a somewhat awkward position: It was distributing the film, but 75 percent of the financing had come from Baldoni’s company, Wayfarer. (Baldoni co-founded Wayfarer with billionaire Steve Sarowitz, founder of payroll software firm Paylocity.) So Sony’s role was limited, but Reynolds and Lively could hardly turn to Wayfarer to address their complaints about Baldoni.
By the time the movie debuted, in August 2024, the acrid aroma of discord between the filmmaker and the star had made its way into the public’s nostrils. At the New York premiere, Baldoni didn’t appear in any group photos with the lead castmembers. (Reynolds and Lively had wanted Baldoni disinvited from the event, but Reynolds’s reps talked him out of that position.) Reynolds wrote to WME’s Zavala that Baldoni first saw the finished film at the premiere, adding, “It’s baffling that he has the lazy-lidded confidence to even show up.” (Disclosure: WME represents Puck, but not me personally.)
In a more entertaining vein, Reynolds wrote in a congratulatory email to Colleen Hoover, who wrote the book on which the film was based, “At one point I was three feet from you at the afterparty but I couldn’t extract myself from the Sony Studios Chairman’s mouth. I’m still in here and a little shocked I have service.” (Take your best guess whether this refers to Sony Pictures Entertainment’s then-chairman and C.E.O. Tony Vinciquerra or studio chairman Rothman.)
With the movie opening just after Deadpool & Wolverine, Reynolds and Lively had back-to-back hits—one of the few times in Hollywood history that a married couple held the top two spots at the box office. This didn’t lead either of them to reconsider the war they were waging, however. On August 14, 2024, about a week after the movie opened, Vinciquerra gave a statement to The Hollywood Reporter praising Lively’s “passion and commitment to advancing the conversation around domestic violence.” He added, “We love working with Blake, and we want to do 12 more movies with her.” For a reticent executive like Vinciquerra, this unusual statement must have seemed like a major concession. But not to Reynolds. A couple of days later, he wrote to Zavala, “The thing they did with THR is a joke.”
With strong box office returns still rolling in, Reynolds complained bitterly to Zavala about executive producer Todd Black and Sony executive Ange Giannetti. “Instead of aggressively implementing steps to create a safe work environment for Blake and every woman on the set, they responded in laughably impotent and meek ways,” Reynolds wrote. “Todd and Ange are fucking textbook, ineffectual elderly people with no ideas or thoughtful communication skills. Just blunt instruments with six catch phrases and about 5 key words.” (Giannetti is in her 50s and Black in his 60s; Reynolds is 49.)
I don’t know Giannetti, but while reporting a recent story on another topic entirely, several sources praised her. Black has a long list of producing credits, including Denzel Washington’s Equalizer movies. An executive who had no involvement with the It Ends With Us battle, but who has known Reynolds for many years, told me he was “shocked” reading that comment. “Todd and Ange are accomplished people,” he said. “They’re not idiots. Ryan looks childish and petulant.” He added that Reynolds “is very protective of his image. It’s his worst nightmare to have this stuff exposed.”
Ever more frustrated, Reynolds went up the ladder at WME (which also reps Lively) and turned to Patrick Whitesell, then still executive chairman at parent company Endeavor. “The thing that I believe my wife and I are missing in this debacle is your rage,” he wrote. “I have never had anything but an intense love and admiration for WME and the entire company. But I’ve also never needed WME like I do at this moment.” Whitesell responded: “I am sorry that you haven’t felt the proper advocacy from us. I can assure you that going forward that won’t be the case. [Agents] Warren, Doug [Lucterhand] and I had a conversation tonight and will be deploying in the morning with the town.” WME would drop Baldoni as a client in December, after The New York Times published a story alleging that he was behind an online smear campaign aimed at Lively. WME publicly denied that Reynolds had pressured the agency to act.
Meanwhile, Reynolds still hadn’t given up on Sony, in part due to the negative online reaction aimed at his wife. On August 17, he wrote to Zavala: “They just need to fucking go straight at this. … This is the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen in this business. Sony needs to step up for real. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.” Zavala responded, “I plan to call Ari tomorrow and have him give his good friend Tom a call,” to which Reynolds replied, “Yea. Please. All hands on deck.”
Zavala subsequently reported that he had talked to Rothman. “We argued about a statement which he … said isn’t possible due to liability. … We left it that he’s putting himself and the studio into a position with you and Blake legally. … I will have Ari talk to him.” Reynolds later replied, “Any update on Sony? And can Ari go full ‘Ari’ on Tom?” Zavala’s response: “He will willfully [sic] go full Ari on all of them. But we want to know what we are having him accomplish.” (It is good to be specific when asking for Ari intervention.)
One thing that Reynolds had in mind was a three-paragraph statement that he had scripted for Baldoni and producer Jamey Heath in which they would accept blame for the conflict with Lively and vow: “For the foreseeable future, our mission is to examine and reexamine the objectionable behavior and inadequate decision-making skills which clearly hurt and offended people who placed their trust in us.”
Live and Let Lively
No such statement was released, of course, and now texts and emails that were never intended to be public are being dissected on Reddit. While Lively doesn’t seem to be getting much sympathy online, all of the execs I polled thought she would work again. “I would say she is still not unemployable,” said one top film executive. In casting her, “you would almost have to be playing into what the public now knows about her and thinks about her. Hollywood operates with a herd mentality. You have to be brave to go against the grain. That was true with Will [Smith] and the slap, and there’s still some overhang with him. But at some point it will dissipate. There’s awareness that she’s not untalented and the movie was a hit. At some point down the line, there’s going to be an opportunity.”
Meanwhile Apple has been sitting on a finished Skydance movie, Mayday—a comedic survival story starring Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh—for more than a year. Sources say a release date will be announced soon. (It will go straight to streaming, likely in September.) Apple declined to comment. Reynolds has other projects on the runway: He’s exec producer and a voice in Animal Friends from Warners and Legendary, which drops in late May, and he’s in production on Eloise for Netflix.
Sources say Reynolds is also wisely focused on the next Deadpool movie, which will give him a chance to be seen as the public loves him most. But one source who was tasked with helping him fight this battle has been left shaking his head. He understood, he said, Reynolds’s need to support Lively and hold Baldoni accountable if she truly felt she’d been harassed. “Having said that,” this source added, “if that isn’t the case, this is the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
With additional reporting by Julia Alexander.
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