Baldoni and Lively have been engaged in a battle over misconduct allegations on the set of their drama adaptation It Ends With Us since its release last year, with the latter formally filing a lawsuit in December 2024 accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment and retalation. Baldoni also countersued both Lively and the New York Times, accusing both the actress and newspaper of deliberately misconstruing leaked texts to support Lively’s case. However, his legal team may have found a peculiar line of inquiry against Lively… through her role in last year’s Marvel blockbuster Deadpool & Wolverine.
As Deadline reports, Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman was a recent guest on The Megyn Kelly Show, where he accused Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds—who’s married to Lively—of making fun of deliberately targeting Baldoni with the “Nicepool” variant of Deadpool seen in the movie.
Nicepool, also played by Reynolds, is a long-haired, unmasked version of Deadpool that riffs on themes of toxic positivity, masking crude commentary about women under a faux-feminist persona. At one point in the film, Nicepool makes a derogatory comment about a female variant of Deadpool named Ladypool (played by Lively in a cameo appearance), telling Deadpool and Wolverine that “you can’t even tell” that she had just given birth to a child.
“I don’t think you can say that,” our version of Deadpool interjects in the scene, only for Nicepool to respond “That’s okay, I identify as a feminist.”
Was Ryan Reynolds taking a shot at Justin Baldoni with his “Nicepool” character in new “Deadpool” movie?
Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman: “There’s no question it relates to Justin…If someone is seriously sexually harassed you don’t make fun of it, it’s a serious issue.”… pic.twitter.com/vuDgShvK84
— The Megyn Kelly Show (@MegynKellyShow) January 8, 2025
“What I make of that, is that if your wife is sexually harassed, you don’t make fun of Justin Baldoni,” Freedman said on The Megyn Kelly Show, accusing Reynolds and Lively of using Deadpool and Wolverine to make light of Baldoni with the implication that Lively’s accusations about his behaviour during the production of It Ends With Us were otherwise baseless. “There’s no question it relates to Justin. I mean, anybody that watched [Nicepool’s] hair bun–if somebody is seriously sexually harassed, you don’t make fun of it. It’s a serious issue.”
While Freedman’s comments pertaining to the lawsuits between Lively and Baldoni might seem absurd, he’s not the only person to have made a connection between Nicepool and Baldoni–for several months, blind item and true crime fans have taken to platforms like TikTok to poke fun at the idea, saying that the parallels between the character and Baldoni are clear. Whether that was ever the explicit intention of the film, we may never know. It’s potentially unlikely, considering that Deadpool & Wolverine and It Ends With Us were in production at similar times–both began filming in spring 2023, and both saw their production interrupted by the Hollywood strikes of that same summer.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that many people have encountered the “Nicepool” type in real life somewhere along the line, so perhaps Freedman drawing direct lines between the portrayal and Baldoni is a case of seeing things that aren’t exactly there. In the realm of parody law, who knows where this claim in the countersuit will land.
Additional reporting by James Whitbrook.
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