Blake Lively appeared to shoot Ryan Reynolds a nervous look as he made a veiled joke about the ongoing Justin Baldoni scandal on Saturday Night Live’s 50th anniversary special.
On Sunday, Reynolds, 48, who was sat in the studio audience with Lively, 37, stood up for a Q&A skit opposite Tina Fey, 54, and Amy Poehler, 53.
‘I have a question,’ he asked the two comedy legends.
They then commented: ‘Oh Ryan Reynolds, how’s it going?’
In an apparent reference to the It Ends With Us drama, the Deadpool actor quipped: ‘Great – why, what have you heard?’
After Reynolds made the joke, Lively turned her head in his direction and looked anxious.
The power couple and Baldoni, 41, have been embroiled in a legal battle that started last December months after the release of the film adaptation of Coleen Hoover’s book It Ends With Us.
The Gossip Girl actress filed a bombshell lawsuit against her co-star accusing him of sexual harassment and orchestrating a smear campaign to damage her reputation.
The details of Lively’s suit include that Baldoni added a number of unwanted intimate scenes to the script, was overly revealing about his sex life and asked about hers, and entered her dressing room uninvited while she was breastfeeding.
Refuting that he caused Lively ‘severe emotional distress,’ Baldoni is seeking damages of $400million (£323m) in his countersuit following her attempt to ‘destroy’ his reputation and career.’
Lively is also being sued by crisis publicist Jed Wallace for $7million (£5,620,461) for defamation after she alleged in a lawsuit that he was involved in Baldoni’s alleged smear campaign against her.
Earlier this year, before lawyers representing Baldoni and Lively appeared in court for a pretrial meeting at federal court in Manhattan, New York, Baldoni published a website Entitled Lawsuit Info.
The site includes a 168-page ‘Timeline of Relevant Events,’ which recalls Baldoni’s version of happenings leading up to and following production on It Ends With Us, beginning with his first email exchange with Hoover in January 2019.
Lively’s team previously offered a lengthy statement to Metro over Baldoni’s allegations, part of which reads: ‘This latest lawsuit from Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and its associates is another chapter in the abuser playbook.
‘This is an age-old story: A woman speaks up with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation and the abuser attempts to turn the tables on the victim. This is what experts call DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim Offender.’
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