Ryan Reynolds Accused of Mocking Justin Baldoni in Deadpool and Wolverine

Ryan Reynolds is accused of making fun of Justin Baldoni in Deadpool & Wolverine.

Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, claims that Reynolds — who cowrote and coproduced the movie — based a character on Baldoni to mock him amid issues between Baldoni, 40, and Reynolds’ wife, Blake Lively, on the set of It Ends With Us. In December, Lively, 37, filed a lawsuit against her costar and director, accusing him of sexual harassment, among other things.

In the Deadpool sequel, Reynolds, 48, plays various variations of Deadpool, including “Nicepool,” a man bun-sporting version of Deadpool who appears to make a sexist remark. “Wait til you see Ladypool. She is gorgeous. She just had a baby, and you can’t even tell,” he says, to which Deadpool responds, “I don’t think you’re supposed to say that.” Nicepool replies, “That’s OK. I identify as a feminist.” (Baldoni has previously sported a man bun and has been vocal about his avid feminism.)

According to Freedman, the character is a clear shot at Baldoni.

“If your wife is sexually harassed, you don’t make fun of Justin Baldoni,” Freedman said on the Tuesday, January 7, episode of SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Show after being shown the scene from the movie.

He continued, “You don’t make fun of the situation. You take it very seriously. You file HR complaints. You raise the issue. You follow a legal process. What you don’t do is mock the person and turn it into a joke.”

“There’s no question it relates to Justin. Anybody that can watch that … the hair bun, the comment about pregnancy. It’s pretty obvious what’s being done,” he added.

Us Weekly has reached out to Reynolds and Lively’s representatives for comment.

In her December 31 federal lawsuit, and an earlier complaint filed with the California Civil Rights Department, Lively claimed that Baldoni body-shamed her and implied she should lose weight just months after she gave birth to her and Reynolds’ fourth child, son Olin. “Mr. Baldoni also routinely degraded Ms. Lively by finding back channel ways of criticizing her body and weight,” as stated in the lawsuit, obtained by Us.

“A few weeks before filming began and less than four months after Ms. Lively had given birth to her fourth child, Ms. Lively was humiliated to learn that Mr. Baldoni secretly called her fitness trainer, without her knowledge or permission, and implied that he wanted her to lose weight in two weeks,” the docs continue. “Mr. Baldoni told the trainer that he had asked because he was concerned about having to pick Ms. Lively up in a scene for the movie, but there was no such scene.”

In a statement to Us, Lively’s legal team points out: “Ms. Lively’s federal litigation before the Southern District of New York involves serious claims of sexual harassment and retaliation, backed by concrete facts. This is not a ‘feud’ arising from ‘creative differences’ or a ‘he said/she said’ situation. As alleged in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and as we will prove in litigation, Wayfarer and its associates engaged in unlawful, retaliatory astroturfing against Ms. Lively for simply trying to protect herself and others on a film set. And their response to the lawsuit has been to launch more attacks against Ms. Lively since her filing.

“While we go through the legal process, we urge everyone to remember that sexual harassment and retaliation are illegal in every workplace and in every industry. A classic tactic to distract from allegations of this type of misconduct is to ‘blame the victim’ by suggesting that they invited the conduct, brought it on themselves, misunderstood the intentions, or even lied. Another classic tactic is to reverse the victim and offender, and suggest that the offender is actually the victim.

“These concepts normalize and trivialize allegations of serious misconduct. Most importantly, media statements are not a defense to Ms. Lively’s legal claims. We will continue to prosecute her claims in federal court, where the rule of law determines who prevails, not hyperbole and threats.”

In addition to fat-shaming and social manipulation claims, Lively’s suit alleges that Baldoni behaved inappropriately in the workplace, “constantly” hugging cast and crew, referring to people as “sexy” and discussing his alleged previous “pornography addiction” and sex life. She also claimed Baldoni improvised unwanted kissing, attempted to add more sex scenes and nudity. The New York Times broke the news of Lively’s bombshell allegations last month.

In a lawsuit against The New York Times over its reporting of Lively’s claims, Baldoni claimed that Reynolds berated him for allegedly “fat-shaming” Lively before filming began. He said he was subject to an “inappropriate and humiliating berating” at the couple’s New York City apartment that was “delivered, perhaps intentionally, as other celebrity friends were coming in and out of their penthouse.”

Speaking to host Megyn Kelly, Freedman denied Lively’s claims in her lawsuit that Baldoni and his publicity team were behind a “social manipulation” campaign to “destroy” the actress’ reputation.

“I would say all of it did not generate with his PR team,” said Freedman. “Since I’ve been involved in this case, I’ve gotten 50 texts, emails, or things to my firm’s website — more than 50 actually — about, ‘This is was my experience with Blake Lively.’ [They said], ‘We weren’t allowed to talk to her on the set. We weren’t allowed to ask for an autograph. We were treated like this.’ These things aren’t coming because we’re doing an investigation. These things are completely organic.”

Freedman also reiterated that Baldoni intends to file his own lawsuit against Lively and others, including Reynolds. Asked if Baldoni plans to sue Lively, Freedman responded, “Into oblivion.”

“It’s coming up soon,” Freedman said. “It’s all gonna be based on evidence … it’s gonna be the kind of lawsuit that is full of evidence, admissions, [and] documents, which prove exactly what she did and how she bullied her way through the process to take over the movie and used her PR people to try and destroy Justin.”