Blake Lively’s effort to save her embattled reputation by being named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people may have bought her some limited good will, but she’ll soon be confirmed as the “Mean Girl” actress who tried to “bastardize” the #MeToo movement by falsely accusing Justin Baldoni, her director and co-star, of sexual misconduct in the most public way possible.
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That is, this comeuppance for Lively is inevitable if Megyn Kelly has anything to say about it — as the brash YouTuber and podcaster said on her show the day after Lively was honored. Kelly spoke with some authority about the Time event because she, too, walked its red carpet and was honored that night as one of today’s 100 most influential people.
“I don’t think what she’s doing to Justin Baldoni is in any way fair, gracious, nice or just, and so I couldn’t help looking at her the whole night like some sort of twisted, mean girl, like there’s something wrong with this person, because all the allegations that she’s launched against him have fallen apart, virtually every single one of them,” Kelly said on her April 25 show.
Kelly’s opinion of Lively could matter because she has become influential in ways Lively isn’t — at least on the right — with her top-ranked daily YouTube show and podcast. Kelly also is among a crowd of popular “content creators” who have been winning fans across the political spectrum with their aggressive coverage of Lively’s legal fight with Baldoni, who directed her and co-starred with her in the 2024 film “It Ends With Us.”
Kelly certainly pulled no punches on the red carpet at the Time 100 event. Instead of politely demurring from commenting, as controversy-avoidant celebrities tend to do, she came out and told a reporter that Lively shouldn’t be honored.
“It’s a ridiculous joke,” Kelly said. “I think she launched a fake #MeToo allegation against (Baldoni), and she’s lived to regret doing it, because virtually every allegation she has made has fallen apart. And so for her to be honored for doing that, to try to ruin a man over absolutely nothing, is a scandal.”
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – APRIL 24: Megyn Kelly attends the 2025 TIME100 Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 24, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for TIME)
Kelly also took Time magazine to task on her show. While she said that the Time editors and staff were “lovely” to her, especially given her pro-Trump politics, she said she couldn’t help but find the whole event “off-putting.” She admitted that she wrestled with whether to attend, though getting her photo taken on the red carpet was tempting. Once she decided to go, she knew she wasn’t going hold back if asked by Lively.
On her show, her guest, journalist Mark Halperin, a former editor at Time, agreed that the Time 100 gala is “a scam” that exploits the publication’s journalism brand.
“It is not an exercise in journalism. It’s an exercise in stroking and cultivating advertises,” said Halperin — also a former political analyst for NBC and MSNBC who notably from those networks in late 2017 after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct amid the launch of the #MeToo movement.
Kelly also famously had her #MeToo moments, being one of multiple women who accused for the late Fox News chief Roger Ailes of sexual harassment. It’s clear that Kelly doesn’t put Halperin in the same category of predator as Ailes, given that she had him on her show and sought input from him on her assertion that Lively is trying to become a “MeToo heroine.”
With Halperin, Kelly also expressed dismay about a speech that Lively gave at the gala, which focused on her mother, Elaine Lively, being a survivor of a workplace sexual assault.
“I have so much to say about the last two years of my life, but tonight is not the forum,” Lively began, alluding to her controversial legal battle with Baldoni.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – APRIL 24: (L-R) Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds and Elaine Lively attend the 2025 TIME100 Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 24, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for TIME)
“What I will speak to separately is the feeling of being a woman who has a voice today,” the “Gossip Girl” star said. With that, she spoke about her mother surviving “the worst crime that someone can commit against a woman” and said it was important that women speak up about such crimes “instead of shutting down in fear and unfair shame.”
But instead of being moved by Lively’s words, Kelly accused her of using her “mother’s rape” to garner sympathy and to and “improve her standing (with) a whole legion of people who no longer like her.”
“It’s like, ‘Feel sorry for my mom, feel sorry for me, because I understand trauma,’ and the-wink-and-a-nod-piece of it was is that ‘I, too, am a victim’ and like, ‘the torch has been passed,” Kelly said.
“I just thought it was such an obviously manipulation of her image,” Kelly continued. “I have no idea what happened to her mother, but I thought it was just one of the most cynical displays.”
In that vein, others online have joined Kelly in deriding Time’s claim that it was giving Lively an honor that recognizes the leaders shaping the world today and defining its future.”
NewsNation columnist Paula Froelich raised questions about why Lively was honored amid her legal controversy with Baldoni.
Time magazine published a short essay by civil attorney Sherrilyn Ifill who praised Lively for donating $1 million to the NAACP six years ago and for being a “philanthropist and a student of our country’s most intractable problems.” Others online pointed out that Lively once boasted about her and husband Ryan Reynolds getting married in 2012 on a Southern plantation with a history of slavery. She thereafter launched a failed lifestyle and e-commerce site that sold pricey clothing and home decor items that were inspired by “the allure” of the antebellum South.
Froelich said there appeared to be a clear effort by Lively’s lawyers and agents to get her an award that would help whitewash a blemished reputation.
It’s not likely that Kelly will stop excoriating Lively as her legal saga with Baldoni continues to wind through the courts over the next year. “I have to tell you it’s pretty cathartic to say you you really feel, ” Kelly said.
In a lawsuit, she has accused him of being sexually inappropriate during the production of “It Ends With Us” in 2023 and 2024.
Her representatives also went to the New York Times to shared detailed allegations that formed the basis of a blockbuster news story about Baldoni that also alleged that he, his publicists and production orchestrated a smear campaign against the actress after the film’s August 2024 release. Baldoni has filed a counter-suit, denying the sexual harassment allegations and saying that Lively and Reynolds sought to wrest control of the movie from him and defamed him in the New York Times story.