Blake Lively is shaking up her inner circle, parting ways with longtime publicist Leslie Sloane months after settling her bruising legal battle with “It Ends With Us” co-star Justin Baldoni.
According to Page Six sources, Lively removed Sloane from her team, ending a partnership that stretched back more than two decades to Lively’s early “Gossip Girl” days. Sloane, who is widely credited with helping build Lively into a household name, brought the actress along as a client when she launched her own firm, Vision PR, in 2014.
The split comes after Sloane found herself pulled directly into Lively and Baldoni’s legal fight. Baldoni’s $400 million countersuit, filed in January 2025, accused Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, and Sloane of orchestrating a retaliatory smear campaign against him following Lively’s harassment allegations tied to the making of “It Ends With Us.” A federal judge dismissed Baldoni’s claims against Lively, Reynolds and Sloane in June 2025, though the broader legal war between Lively and Baldoni continued for months afterward.
The two sides ultimately reached a settlement in May 2026, just weeks before the case was set to go to trial, closing out a courtroom battle that had reportedly cost both stars a combined tens of millions of dollars in legal fees. Even after the truce, the legal bills kept coming: Lively later sought more than $8 million in fees and costs from the case, though a judge ultimately awarded her roughly $400,000.
Sources say there had been tension behind the scenes in Lively’s camp throughout the legal saga, including her decision to bring in the high-powered law firm Susman Godfrey as the case intensified. Sloane’s exit marks the latest change to Lively’s team following the fallout, though it’s not yet clear who, if anyone, has stepped in to handle her publicity going forward.
Neither Lively nor Sloane has publicly commented on the split.
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Source: TMZ
M Adnan Akram is the founder and lead writer at Back Casting Room, where he covers celebrity biographies, family histories, and the lesser-known figures behind well-known names. His work focuses on separating verified public information from speculation, drawing on publicly available records, interviews, and credible reporting to build accurate, well-researched profiles.
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