NEED TO KNOW
- Ryan Reynolds was profiled as part of Time Magazine’s Most Influential Companies 2025
- Asked about headlines and gossip affecting his many businesses, the actor-entrepreneur called what people say about him “meaningless”
- Reynolds and his wife Blake Lively have been embroiled in a legal battle with her It Ends with Us director-costar Justin Baldoni since December
Ryan Reynolds is hinting at the ongoing legal conflict with Justin Baldoni — and how it affects his many businesses.
In his profile for the TIME100 Companies issue published Thursday, June 26, the Deadpool & Wolverine producer-star addressed whether “online discourse” surrounding the legal war have impacted his bottom line. “I can read something that says, ‘He should be drawn and quartered.’ I could read something that says I should win a Nobel Prize. Both are meaningless,” Reynolds, 48, said. “None of us are comprised of our best moments. None of us are defined by our worst moments. We are something in the middle.”
Pressed on the turbulent year he and wife Blake Lively are having following her December 2024 sexual-harassment complaint against Baldoni, 41, alleging misconduct on the set of their movie It Ends with Us, Reynolds said, “Accessibility and accountability are a big part of how I do things… The people that I work with know me, so there’s never a question of anything like that. If you operate with some degree of core values and integrity, they’re going to help you up. If you’re an a–hole, they’re not. And that’s pretty simple.”
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In January the Jane the Virgin alum denied Lively’s claims and filed a $400 million countersuit against her, Reynolds and their publicists alleging extortion, defamation and more. On June 9 after much legal back and forth, a federal judge dismissed both that lawsuit and Baldoni’s suit against The New York Times for its coverage of Lively’s initial complaint.
In addition to working as an actor and producing screen projects via production company Maximum Effort, Reynolds has investments in businesses including Mint Mobile, 1Password and the Welsh soccer team Wrexham AFC.
The Time article indicated that he and Lively, 37, who at one point appeared during the interview to offer snacks, are declining to speak specifically about the legal saga with Baldoni. Of feeling balance amid what the publication called “tumultuous turns in his public life,” Reynolds brought up conflict-resolution workshops he attended in his twenties.
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“Conflict resolution changed my life in a way that I can’t quantify,” he explained. “You don’t have to agree with the person. You can empathize, you can validate. You can do all those things and get closer to them without having to just blindly agree or win or lose.”
Although Baldoni was permitted to amend his claims against Lively of breach of implied covenant and tortious interference with contract, his lawyer announced on Tuesday that they were not moving forward with such amendments and were instead “pursuing additional legal options that are available to us.”
Earlier this month, the case’s judge also denied Lively’s motion for a protective order to keep her communications with pal Taylor Swift regarding It Ends with Us out of Baldoni’s hands. Lively v. Wayfarer Studios et al. is scheduled for trial in March 2026.
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