JUSTIN BALDONI: SHOCKING CINEW CLAIMS

AS THE IT ENDS WITH US ACTOR/DIRECTOR PREACHES GENDER AND RACIAL EQUALITY, CLAIMS FROM A FORMER STAFFER REVEAL HIS BEHAVIOR WAS CALLED INTO QUESTION YEARS BEFORE BLAKE LIVELY'S BOMBSHELL SUIT.

- BLAKE LIVELY

IN a 2017 Ted Talk, Justin Baldoni questioned what he saw as his toxic masculinity. Describing himself as a feminist, he admitted he had silenced the woman closest to him — his wife, Emily Foxler — despite pledging to amplify women’s voices. “So I had to ask myself a tough question: Am I man enough to just shut the hell up and listen?”

The Man Enough podcaster seemed to be doing the work, exploring what it means to be a “woke” man. But the 41-year-old’s integrity received a major blow in December, when his It Ends With Us costar Blake Lively filed a civil suit against the actor/director, publicly accusing him of sexually harassing her on the set of their film then retaliating against her with a smear campaign when she pushed back. Now Star can reveal it’s not the first time Justin or his company, Wayfarer Studios, has been accused of mistreatment and retaliation. As shocking legal documents reveal, as early as 2020, a former staffer alleged that Justin and his company fired him because of his race and retaliated against him when he sought legal recourse.

Four years before the legal war with Blake, 37, Shane Norman was hired to serve as general manager of Justin’s Man Enough brand, which produces his popular podcast and advocates against toxic masculinity. But before the year was out, Shane had been stripped of his $225,000-a-year salary and let go. In December 2020 court papers, Shane, a Black man, made bombshell claims alleging he’d been misled about his employment contract, subjected to racial discrimination and wrongfully terminated and retaliated against after raising his concerns. In the court papers, Shane claims his personal views on the Black Lives Matter movement were seen as a threat by his coworkers.