The ‘It Ends with Us’ actress-producer posted a cryptic quote attributed to Eeyore from ‘Winnie the Pooh’
- Blake Lively’s legal battle with Justin Baldoni over It Ends with Us continues to escalate
- The actress-producer posted a cryptic quote to her Instagram Stories on April 7
- The quote, about “looking for sunshine,” was attributed to Eeyore from ‘Winnie the Pooh’
Blake Lively is looking for a bright spot amid her legal battle with Justin Baldoni.
The actress-producer, 37, took to her Instagram Stories on Monday, April 7 to post a cryptic message: an image of flowers on a tree branch covered in water droplets, set to the tune “Little April Shower” from the 1942 animated movie Bambi.
“It never hurts to keep looking for sunshine,” she added, attributing the quote to Winnie the Pooh‘s Eeyore. Along with an image of that morose donkey character, Lively added the animated word “April” complete with rain over a flower.
Related: Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s Legal Saga to Be Explored in New Docuseries A Hollywood Feud
The legal battle between the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants star and Baldoni, 41, over the making of their 2024 movie It Ends with Us and its aftermath continues to escalate. It began when Lively sued Baldoni, her costar and director, in December 2024, claiming sexual harassment on the Colleen Hoover adaptation’s set and an alleged retaliatory smear campaign against her. Baldoni has denied the allegations and filed a countersuit for defamation and extortion against Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and their publicity team.
Both cases in Lively v. Wayfarer Studios et al. are scheduled for trial in March 2026. Most recently in the legal back and forth, Lively and Reynolds, 48, each filed to dismiss Baldoni’s January lawsuit, calling it “frivolous” and citing a California law prohibiting retaliation tied to public disclosures of sexual harassment.
The director-star’s attorneys asked the judge to deny the couple’s motion to dismiss, arguing that it was “abhorrent” for Lively to “dismiss herself from the self-concocted disaster she initiated” and naming Reynolds “a key player in the scheme” of the alleged smear campaign against Baldoni and members of his production company Wayfarer Studios.
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Lively recently published glimpses of herself promoting Another Simple Favor (streaming on Prime Video May 1) at the SXSW Film Festival premiere on social media. The Paul Feig-directed sequel to the 2018 mystery thriller A Simple Favor reunites Lively with Anna Kendrick. The actress also posted the trailer for Secrets of the Penguins, the National Geographic docuseries she narrates which premieres April 20.
Related: Which Winnie the Pooh Character You Are, Based on Your Zodiac Sign
Legal expert Gregory Doll, a lawyer and partner at Doll Amir & Eley in Los Angeles who is not representing Lively or Baldoni, told PEOPLE in December that a settlement is likely to happen before March 2026. But, he added, “It’s very nasty, and I think it’s going to get nastier.