Justin Baldoni could drag Taylor Swift even further into his battle with her bestie Blake Lively, with his lawyer saying they may choose to subpoena the popstar to give a deposition.
“I don’t know that we’re going to depose Taylor Swift or not. I think that’s probably going to be a game-time decision,” attorney Bryan Freedman told TMZ on Wednesday’s episode of the “Two Angry Men” podcast. “I can tell you this: Anybody that reasonably has information that can provide evidence in this case is going to be deposed.”
The legal drama started when Lively sued Baldoni in December, accusing him of sexual harassment on the set of “It Ends With Us,” followed by a smear campaign meant to destroy her reputation.
Swift was first brought into the mess on Jan. 16 when Baldoni filed a counter lawsuit against Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and publicist Leslie Sloane. Among the allegations, including defamation and civil extortion, Baldoni claims Lively leveraged her celebrity “dragons” to pressure him into making changes to the film he directed.
While Swift herself is not being sued, Baldoni cites the singer’s attendance at a contentious meeting over rewrites to the script. He claims Lively enlisted Swift and her superstar power as a means to send a message that he “needed to comply” with Lively’s demands.
Freedman says that given Swift was “there for that meeting,” it’s very possible they could call her to be deposed.
But according to TMZ legal analysts Harvey Levin and Mark Geragos, it’s unlikely Lively and Reynolds would want to involve their A-list pal in the highly public legal proceedings. The threat of Swift being deposed could be used as a bargaining chip to force a settlement in the case before going to trial next year, the analysts contend.
“I think they are going to do everything they can to avoid going to court,” Levin said Wednesday. “The last thing they want is to have their friend, the biggest star in the world now, sitting on a stand being grilled by Bryan Freedman.”
“We’ll see if they can try to avoid a deposition,” Freedman replied.
How Swift would perform in the courtroom drama is anyone’s guess, but the “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” singer is known to be up for a legal fight. In 2015, she sued DJ David Mueller for sexual assault regarding a 2013 incident in which he groped her during an event at his Denver radio station.
The case went to trial in 2017, with Swift claiming victory and a symbolic $1 payout from Mueller.