If Taylor Swift is the type-A mastermind that we all believe her to be, she has already started on wedding plans. Maybe she has venues in mind or knows what song she wants to walk down the aisle to, but the big question is this: Who’s on the guest list? Specifically, will Blake Lively be there when Swift says her vows? The two women, who were friends for nearly a decade before Lively’s legal troubles reportedly blew things up, seem to be completely on the outs at the moment. How did we even get here? And will it be possible for them to repair their friendship in time for one of Lively’s daughters to be the flower girl? Let’s check in on what exactly has been going on with these two.
How close were these two before all this?
Very! Swift and Lively’s friendship began in 2015, when people falsely accused the Gossip Girl actress of shading the singer in an Instagram post. In order to clarify, Lively made a follow-up post with the caption “Umm whoever thought I was throwin’ shade clearly doesn’t know I have a ‘Taylor Swift Please Be My Wife’ Voo Doo Doll #obsessed.” And thus a best friendship was born. Swift is the godmother to Lively’s three daughters and even named the characters in her song “Betty” after all of them. In 2021, Lively made her directorial debut with Swift’s music video for the Red (Taylor’s Version) track “I Bet You Think About Me.” Lively was also one of Swift’s go-to plus-ones for football games when she started dating Travis Kelce — she even joined her for the Super Bowl in 2024.
So, why aren’t they friends right now?
Based on what some sources have been telling the tabloids, Swift does not appreciate that she’s been dragged into Lively’s legal battle with Justin Baldoni. Lively filed her initial sexual-harassment complaint against her It Ends With Us director and co-star in December 2024. When Baldoni filed his countersuit, he alleged that Lively used her relationship with Swift to pressure him into accepting her rewrites on a scene from the movie. Lawyers for both parties have denied all allegations made against their clients.
As part of his argument that Lively had seized creative control of his movie and then fabricated her claims to shut him up, Baldoni claimed that Lively rewrote the movie’s so-called “rooftop scene.” At some point before production on It Ends With Us began, his suit claimed, he arrived at Lively’s apartment to find Ryan Reynolds and “a famous, and famously close, friend” of the couple, who vocally supported Lively’s version of the scene. While most of the names in those texts are redacted, one screenshot shows Baldoni making reference to “Ryan and Taylor.” In other text messages included in Baldoni’s filing, Lively appeared to have called herself “Khaleesi” and referred to Swift and Reynolds as her “dragons.”
A source later told TMZ that Swift had actually arrived at the end of Lively and Baldoni’s meeting, and that the singer believed she had been invited over specifically so that Lively could engineer a run-in between the two. Swift was also reportedly perplexed by the “dragon” texts. “It’s weird to say that about a friend,” the source told TMZ.
In February, a source gave a quote to Us Weeklythat suggested the pair’s friendship was on the rocks as a result of Swift’s involvement in the suit. “While she and Blake are friends, this case is now a legal matter for the courts to resolve,” the source said. “Dragging Taylor into it is unnecessary and misrepresents what really happened.”
Exactly how far did Swift get dragged in?
After the Us Weekly report, news about the former BFFs died down until May 9, when it became public that Baldoni’s legal team had subpoenaed Swift to testify at trial, which is scheduled for March 2026. A representative for Swift then came forward to say that she didn’t even see It Ends With Us until weeks after it was released, and that the only reason she was being subpoenaed was to “use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.”
But Baldoni’s team remained fixated on hashing out Swift’s involvement in this mess. On May 14, his lawyer Bryan Freedman filed a letter with the court accusing Lively of blackmailing Swift, citing an anonymous source who was “highly likely to have reliable information.” Freedman claimed that one of Lively’s lawyers contacted Swift’s team and “demanded” she make a public show of support for the actress amid the legal battle, and intimated that if she did not, “private text messages of a personal nature in Ms. Lively’s possession would be released.”
Lively’s lawyers vehemently denied any such efforts, prompting Freedman to double down. He filed a sworn affidavit stating that his source claimed Lively’s lawyer “requested, on Ms. Lively’s behalf, that Taylor Swift make a social media statement in support of Ms. Lively given her absence from the Super Bowl that year, and stated that if Ms. Swift failed to do so, Ms. Lively would release ‘10 years’ of private texts with Ms. Swift.” The judge in the case eventually struck both Freedman’s letter and his affidavit from the record, but the accusations had already been immortalized by the tabloids.
Then, on May 22, Baldoni’s legal team withdrew their subpoena for Swift. That same day, a source told the Daily Mail, “Right now, if Taylor had one wish, it would be that she never met Blake.Although there have been good times during their relationship, the issues now concerning the Baldoni case have outweighed them.”
In the ultimate twist, the Daily Mail reported on May 25 that the insider who told Baldoni’s team about Lively’s alleged threat to share her texts with Swift was none other than Scott Swift, Taylor’s dad. “Scott Swift did not want his daughter to be dragged into this any further and he voluntarily gave up this information as part of a deal that would include [Baldoni’s team] withdrawing their subpoena for Taylor,” the source told the tabloid. Scott Swift has not commented on this allegation.
So, it was a pretty intense month for Swift and Lively. On May 31, a source told Us Weeklythat the two’s friendship had “stalled” and that there had been “radio silence” between the two after the subpoena was dropped.
And how are they doing now?
On June 10, Judge Liman dismissed Baldoni’s countersuit against Lively. Would this be the impetus for Swift reaching back out and finally replying to what “Page Six” reported were the “texts, voicemails and even emails” Lively had been sending? Nope. According to a source in Us Weekly, “Taylor has not been in touch with Blake and still does not want to discuss anything to do with the lawsuit.” That source said that Lively was “hopeful” about an eventual rekindling of their friendship, but noted that there was “still distance” between the women.
Things started looking even worse on June 14, when a source told “Page Six” that Swift was “deeply wounded” by Lively. “She will forever be furious at how Blake quite clearly was using her for clout and leverage in her dealings with Justin. She really hates that Blake would even think like that, let alone write the things she did in that text,” the source said. “The damage Justin did by revealing those texts — the ‘dragons’ text most especially, and by his initial subpoena, even though he dropped it — is lasting and probably permanent.”
“The truth is, the text wasn’t even accurate,” the source added.” That’s not the kind of friendship they ever had — Taylor would never think of herself as Blake’s ‘dragon,’ or protector, or someone who would interfere on her behalf.” Apparently, Lively’s choice to “use her name in that context was really hurtful.”
Despite Baldoni’s case being dropped, Swift is still included in the narrative. On June 19, Baldoni’s legal team won their bid to get access to Lively and Swift’s texts, but only the ones having to do with It Ends With Us. Lively had filed a motion to keep the texts out of it, but Judge Liman determined they were “relevant.” “Lively herself has identified Swift as someone likely to have knowledge about complaints or discussions regarding the working environment on the set of It Ends With Us,” the judge wrote.
Did Blake react to Taylor’s engagement?
Well, first of all, it should be noted that Swift announced her engagement to Kelce the day after Lively’s birthday. Purposefully shady, or a woman so in love she didn’t even notice? We’ll never know, but it is notable timing. Anyway, Lively did not join Swift’s squad in sharing a congratulatory post for the happy couple and instead stuck to resharing birthday wishes.
“Blake didn’t reach out and isn’t going to,” a source told the Daily Mail shortly after the engagement announcement. “This isn’t the time. What would be the point of reaching out now? It really makes no sense. [Lively] has bigger fish to fry.”
And do we think she’ll be invited to the wedding?
It looks doubtful. According to the Daily Mail’s source, the answer is a resounding no. The same source who told the tabloid that Lively didn’t reach out about Swift’s engagement had this to say about the actress attending to the wedding:
This is something that we would’ve talked about in the past, like what was going to happen, if she was going to be in the wedding, what that would look like. All of that. But now, it’s just silence. There’s no “will she or won’t she” about Blake being in the wedding, because she just won’t. She knows that, and I don’t think she particularly wants to talk about that.
To add insult to injury, some Swifties have speculated that “Ruin the Friendship,” a track on the upcoming The Life of a Showgirl, might be about Lively. It’s more likely that it’s about hooking up with a pal and making things messy than it is about something that involves ongoing litigation, but only time will tell on that one.
While we can’t say for certain whether Lively will get invited to the wedding or be the subject of a Swift diss track, I think it is safe to say that any Chiefs gear she’s accumulated over the last two years will be staying at the back of the closet this season.
The Cut has reached out to representatives for Swift and Lively, and will update this post if we hear back.
Will Blake Lively Be Invited to Taylor Swift’s Wedding?
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