Entertainment
Blake Lively emails Ben Affleck complaining about Justin Baldoni
Blake Lively privately reached out to Ben Affleck in 2024 to voice serious concerns about her experience working with Justin Baldoni, newly unsealed court documents reveal, shedding fresh light on the escalating legal battle surrounding It Ends With Us.
The email, along with text messages involving Taylor Swift and deposition statements from Jenny Slate and Isabela Ferrer, is now part of the growing paper trail tied to Lively’s lawsuit.
According to the documents, Lively emailed Affleck on May 17, 2024, describing what she called one of the worst experiences of her career.
She made it clear the message came with “zero pressure,” but explained she was seeking feedback on her own edit of the film after what she characterised as months of turmoil behind the scenes.
“I’ve just come out the other side (well almost) of the most upsetting experience I’ve ever had on a movie,” she wrote, adding that the story behind the production was more dramatic than the film itself.
In the same message, Lively claimed she rewrote and restructured the entire script and effectively directed the movie through what she referred to as a “chaotic clown ‘director’/actor/producer/financier/studio head at the center,” stressing it was “all the same person.”
She went on to allege serious internal issues, including “wild HR issues and beyond,” and described being placed in a last-minute editing “bake off” after Baldoni had been working on his version for months.
Lively asked Affleck if he would be willing to watch the film and offer notes, even welcoming feedback from his family while flagging the movie’s domestic violence themes.
Emphasising how much the project had cost her emotionally, she wrote, “This movie nearly killed me,” adding that she could think of few people whose insight she trusted more.
She also mentioned that Ryan Reynolds had asked Matt Damon to watch the film, jokingly marveling at the idea of “Jason Bourne” seeing her work, while expressing gratitude for what she called “good men showing up.”
The email surfaced amid Lively’s broader legal claims filed in December 2024, in which she accused Baldoni of sexual harassment and a coordinated effort to damage her reputation.
Baldoni has denied the allegations, with his legal team calling them false, and his countersuit was dismissed earlier this year.
The newly released documents offer a deeper look at how isolated and overwhelmed Lively says she felt as the conflict unfolded behind closed doors.
The FA Cup quarter-final draw has excited football fans by revealing the highly anticipated showdown between Premier League titans Manchester City and Liverpool.
Chelsea and Arsenal, on the other hand, secured more favourable paths to the semifinals.
The draw, conducted on Monday, March 9, pits Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City against Arne Slot’s Liverpool at the Etihad Stadium during the weekend of April 4-5.
Liverpool qualified for the quarterfinals after an emphatic 3-1 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers. Andy Robertson scored the opener with an incredible effort before assisting Mohamed Salah for the second, and Curtis Jones scored the third before Hwang Hee-chan scored for the home team.
Manchester City qualified for the quarterfinals with a 3-1 win over Newcastle United, with goals from a brace by Omar Marmoush and Savinho. The win was Manchester City’s eighth consecutive quarterfinal qualification in the FA Cup.
Additionally, Chelsea will host third-tier Port Vale at Stamford Bridge after Liam Rosenior’s side overcame Wrexham in a thrilling encounter.
Arsenal secured a second-tier Southampton, while Leeds United will face either West Ham or Brentford in London, with that fifth-round tie scheduled for Monday evening.
The complete quarter-final lineup is:
- Southampton vs Arsenal
- Chelsea vs Port Vale
- Manchester City vs Liverpool
- West Ham/Brentford vs Leeds United
Where to watch the FA Cup?
The FA Cup will be available via official broadcasting partners. Fans in the UK can watch on TNT Sports (via Disney+). While in the U.S., matches are available on ESPN+. The official coverage of quarter final draw is available on TNT Sports 1, Discovery+, and the TNT Sports YouTube channel.
Entertainment
US offers refuge to Iran women’s football team after Islamic Republic calls them ‘traitors’
United States (U.S.) President Donald Trump has offered asylum to the Iran women’s football team after the Iranian state media labelled them as “traitors” following the team’s refusal to sing the Islamic Republic of Iran’s national anthem.
The Iran women’s football team, currently in Australia for the Asia Cup, lost their final group match on Sunday and are set to return home to Iran amid the ongoing U.S.-Israel and Iran war.
Australia is facing calls to protect the team and prevent them from returning to Iran.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the U.S. president wrote: “Australia is making a terrible humanitarian mistake by allowing the Iran National Women’s Soccer team to be forced back to Iran, where they will most likely be killed.”
Trump urged the Australian prime minister to offer them asylum, adding, “The U.S. will take them if you won’t.”
This comes after the football team refused to sing Iran’s national anthem before their first match on March 2.
They have since performed the anthem in the subsequent matches but the Iranian media have described the initial act of defiance as “the pinnacle of dishonour.”
A campaign is ongoing in Australia calling for the government to “Save our girls”. An online petition calling for Australia to ensure the safety of the women’s football team has garnered more than 50,000 signatures so far.
The Australian government is yet to react to the U.S. president and human rights activists’ demands.
In a groundbreaking development, researchers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have discovered that humans successfully deflected an asteroid from its regular orbit around the Sun in a 2022 experiment, marking a historic first in planetary defence.
In 2022, NASA scientists deliberately crashed a spacecraft into a small asteroid moonlet, Dimorphos, and successfully changed its path around its parent asteroid, Didymos.
For context, a moonlet is a very small natural satellite, typically under 1-2 km in diameter, that orbits a planet, dwarf planet, or asteroid.
Now, researchers have found that the first-ever successful demonstration of human capability to change an asteroid’s trajectory also resulted in the deflection of both asteroids from their regular orbits around the Sun.
A recent study published in the journal Science Advances revealed that the spacecraft’s collision with the moonlet caused Didymos’s speed to slow by 11.7 micrometers per second.
The researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign determined the change after examining more than 6,000 orbital laps of the asteroid around the star.
This means that future missions could target the moonlets around asteroids to change their orbit, if they pose a threat to Earth.
The lead scientist for solar system small bodies at NASA Headquarters in Washington, Thomas Statler, hailed the incredible success achieved through the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART).
He said, “This is a tiny change to the orbit, but given enough time, even a tiny change can grow to a significant deflection.”
Despite the success, NASA has warned that there are no other DART-like spacecraft ready for launch if the need arises.
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