Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.
If you’re the type of person who likes to read lawsuits for fun, it’s your lucky day, because a slew of documents in the Blake Lively–Justin Baldoni legal battle were just unsealed on Wednesday. The thing everyone seems to want to talk about are Lively’s text and email conversations with other celebrities, especially Taylor Swift, and I won’t deny that they’re juicy. But I think these bits of evidence reveal more than the obvious truth that Lively knows a lot of famous people. They also reveal that Lively is in possession of a rare and increasingly underappreciated skill in our modern world: She is really good at email.
Consider the email Lively sent to the actor Ben Affleck in May 2024, in which she asked him to watch her cut of It Ends With Us, the movie at the center of the controversy. Despite headlines decrying the message as “desperate,” “cringe,” and worse, I was more surprised at how warm and even jokey it was, and how hard a time I would have had crafting one nearly as good in a similar situation:
Can you believe Blake Lively wrote this? I was hooked from the very first line: “It’s Blake. Don’t hang up.” This is such a nimble—and dare I say funny—way to acknowledge that it’s been a while and maybe even that Lively is not a person the recipient is especially eager to hear from. Lively and Affleck starred together in the 2010 movie The Town, which he also directed, but they don’t seem to have maintained a close relationship in the time since. What’s more, there have been rumors over the years that they may have had some sort of romantic involvement around the time of that movie (which was made during Affleck’s marriage to Jennifer Garner). So Lively is reaching out to a very famous and powerful guy she probably hasn’t talked to in a while and may even have an awkward past with, giving the writing of this email quite a high difficulty level. I don’t know when the last time you tried to write an email to an incredibly famous person whose marriage you were accused of interfering with, but I would imagine it’s not easy.
Don’t get me wrong—it’s a pretty bold ask. But Lively comes across as sincere and surprisingly human in caring about the project and wanting to do what she can to help it succeed. She’s not asking for anything unreasonable, just for him to watch a movie and tell her what he thinks. She also emphasized that it was OK for him to decline. (Given that no response appears among the unsealed documents, it seems as if he did exactly that.) I am fully going to steal “I’m writing with a zero pressure ask” the next time I need a favor.
Does Lively lay the compliments on a little thick, by praising not only Affleck but his then wife, Jennifer Lopez, and the other love of his life, Matt Damon? Maybe, but framing watching the movie as “good men showing up” also strikes me as the right way to appeal to this particular audience. Her jokes at the end add a nice touch too.
The email is not perfect—Lively probably regrets insinuating that Baldoni, who practices the Baha’i faith, is part of a cult. You may find the email off-putting regardless—if you’re inclined to believe Lively is an elitist who socializes only with other elites and looks down on normal people (you know, like Baldoni), you can definitely find further grist for that take here. But I don’t think she has anything to be embarrassed by. This email, and many of the other pieces of evidence that have come out, reveals Lively to be a conscientious, hardworking person who cares about niceties like writing someone a gracious email to ask for a favor.
When the initial news story about Lively’s lawsuit came out in the New York Times, Anne Helen Petersen wrote that it changed her opinion of Lively and made her see the actress for the first time as savvy. It didn’t have that effect on everyone, clearly, and no one knows how this case will turn out. But if Lively ever wants to take a step back from Hollywood, she should definitely consider becoming an email ghostwriter.
