NEW YORK — Blake Lively wants a Manhattan federal court to hear Justin Baldoni’s alleged comments about her weight when their nearly 18-month legal battle comes to a head at trial next month.

The “Gossip Girl” star, 38, sued her 42-year-old “It Ends with Us” director and co-star at the end of 2024, alleging sexual harassment on the set of the domestic violence drama. Lively claims Baldoni’s camp then waged a retaliatory smear campaign to bury her claims. He filed a since-tossed $400 million defamation lawsuit against Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and her publicist Leslie Sloane, as well as a since-dismissed $250 million libel lawsuit against The New York Times for its deep dive into Lively’s side of the story.

Earlier this month, Judge Lewis Liman dismissed most of Lively’s claims, including those relating to harassment, as he dubbed her an independent contractor — rather than an employee — who could not file the complaint under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Lively subsequently said she’s grateful that “the pervasive RETALIATION I faced” will still be on trial when they head to court on May 18.

In her initial complaint, Lively — who filmed the movie while postpartum after welcoming her and Reynolds’ fourth child — accused Baldoni of having “routinely degraded” her through “back channel ways of criticizing her body and weight.” She claimed he “secretly called her fitness trailer … and implied that he wanted her to lose weight in two weeks.”

In this month’s court documents, viewed by the Daily News, Lively’s camp argues: “Baldoni’s weight-related comments are plainly relevant to Lively’s FEHA retaliation claim,” referring to California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act.

“The weight-related comments form part of the context in which Lively experienced and assessed Baldoni’s conduct and therefore bear directly on the reasonableness of her belief that she was opposing unlawful behavior,” the filing states.

Lively doubled down that she merely wants to convey her “state of mind” at that time and denied Baldoni’s claim that she’s just looking to frame him “in a negative light or suggest a propensity to engage in inappropriate behavior.”

The court documents added that, even if a given comment was not “itself harassing, or whether Lively could have reasonably believed it to be so,” it remains relevant as “‘sexual harassment claims must be viewed based on the totality of the circumstances.”

It’s unclear where Liman will come down on this particular issue.

©2026 New York Daily News. Visit nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.