Taylor Swift’s newlywed bliss under threat – as Blake Lively gets ready to speak out on their fallout
Is this a threat?
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She’s brutally cut her former BFF out of her life, but she can’t avoid being part of the story
If there’s one thing we know about Taylor Swift, it’s that she’d ‘very much like to be excluded from this narrative’. It’s the line she first uttered 10 years ago, after being embroiled in a public spat with Kim Kardashian and then husband Kanye West – and it’s the policy she’s been strictly following yet again when it comes to her ex best friend, Blake Lively.
As pop culturists will remember, Taylor, 36, and Blake, 38, had a showbiz friendship that, for over a decade, positioned Blake as the queen bee of Taylor’s girl gang. She was even entrusted with directing one of Taylor’s music videos, while Taylor was named godmother of all four of Blake and husband Ryan Reynolds’ children. But the love died early last year, when Taylor was unwittingly implicated in her BFF’s very public legal battle against actor and director Justin Baldoni.
At first, it was bad enough for the superstar to see that Blake had ostensibly used her as a bargaining chip, name-dropping her in thinly-veiled threats to Justin, and describing her as her Game of Thrones-type ‘dragon’, in what is believed to have been a bid to ‘take over’ their film, It Ends With Us, which Justin was directing. But then, jaws dropped when Blake’s private emails and texts were released, which showed that Taylor had initially colluded with Blake to help her gain the upper hand, and had referred to Justin as a ‘bitch’ and a ‘doofus’. Evidently, we saw their friendship sour before our eyes as their correspondence got colder, with Taylor eventually telling her friend she felt like she was treating her like a corporate ally in her legal battle.
Long story short, the friendship crashed and burned – and nowhere was that more obvious than at Taylor and Travis Kelce’s behemothic wedding in early July, which gathered every single celebrity you could ever possibly think of at Madison Square Garden arena. Every celebrity, that is, except Blake.
Until then, all parties had remained silent, ostensibly letting their public distancing do the talking. But then, director Justin set the cat among the pigeons just days after the wedding, when he piped up – breaking his two-year silence on his battle against Blake.
Speaking in an Instagram video alongside his wife, Emily Baldoni, he said, ‘We have not spoken publicly for the better part of the last two years, and it’s not because we haven’t had anything to say, because lord knows we have.’ They then both thanked their followers for not blindly following Blake’s narrative – which accused Justin of sexual harassment on set (charges that were dismissed) – and added, ‘So many of you had discernment, and you used your intuition, and you trusted that.’
Emily added, ‘There is so much more to say. That time will come’.
With that being said, we’re told that Blake’s feeling anxious. She and Justin reached an out-of-court settlement in May, with neither one ordered to pay damages to the other. Since then, she’s been waiting for the dust to settle, but the fact that Justin’s reclaimed his public voice has got her feeling nervous about what more he has to say – and with that in mind, she’s prepared to answer back.
As for where all this leaves Taylor, insiders say she’s absolutely fuming over what this could mean when it comes to her unwanted part in the neverending war of words. She’s already brutally – and demonstrably – cut Blake out of her life. But having Justin, and Blake in turn, speak up will inevitably mean her name gets dragged back in to the mix. What’s worse, with Blake feeling loose-lipped, we’re told Taylor’s worried she might decide to speak even more directly about her former BFF. Having been top dog in Taylor’s inner circle for so long, you can be sure she knows where all the bodies are buried, and – with nothing to lose – who knows what she could share?
‘The longer that Blake is vilified, the more likely it is that she’ll decide to have her say and explain everything she’s been through,’ says an insider close to the former friends. ‘It wouldn’t be about making money - it would simply be about clearing her name and telling her side of the nightmare. For Taylor, though, that would be a worst-case scenario because she’s incredibly sensitive about any private details coming out that she hasn’t approved.
‘Blake would never go all scorched earth on her, but – after so many years of friendship – she knows a whole lot about her, and the prospect of any of that becoming public would be an absolute disaster for her if it were to happen.’
Let’s remember, Taylor knows better than most the power of being the one to tell a story. She’s made a whole career out of it, famously singing, ‘I’ve got a blank page, baby…and I’ll write your name.’ But while she loves to tell a story, she hates being embroiled in one, which is why she was so quick to delete Blake from her life. But even if the latter does bite her tongue, there’s no guaranteeing that Justin will do the same. He’s already intimated that it’s only a matter of time before he speaks up more, and though his grievances are specifically aimed at Blake, there’s no denying that Taylor, at one point, was indeed involved. So, whether she likes it or not, she’s part of his story.
‘The reality is that she’s always going to be tied to this drama – there’s no escaping that,’ says our source. ‘So, if Blake goes ahead and hits back at Justin, it’s inevitably going to put Taylor back in the news cycle in a way that’s bound to get under her skin. It would be different if Justin was content to let this fade away, but, based on what he and his wife said, it seems pretty clear that he isn’t ready to do that. And Blake’s only human, so of course she’s going to want to defend herself, or – even better – get ahead of them and tell her side of the story.’
For now, it seems that all Taylor can do is hold her breath and hope that, if Blake and Justin do indeed start slinging mud yet again, she’ll stay largely out of the firing line. Yes, Blake must know the finer details of Taylor’s precious inner sanctum, but she also knows that having Taylor on somewhat amicable terms is better than having her as an enemy. After all, as her and Travis’ wedding attests, she has the whole of Hollywood in her corner. Blake won’t want to take on the whole army of Tinseltown. Justin, meanwhile, might be dicier – but the truth is, Taylor’s just a footnote on the massive thesis he must have to write about Blake. Let’s hope, for Taylor’s sake, she’s by and large excluded from this narrative.