Conservative commentator Candace Owens snapped a selfie with Justin Baldoni more than one year after she reacted to being “name-checked” in his lawsuit with Blake Lively.
“There was an approximate 1 in 100 million chance that I ran into Justin Baldoni at an airport in Iceland on a Friday afternoon,” Owens, 37, wrote via Instagram on Monday, August 31, alongside a selfie with Baldoni, 42. “Just incredible.”
Owens added, “#Cousins.”
Owens was a vocal supporter of Baldoni during his legal battle with Lively, 39, which began in December 2024 when the latter accused the former of sexual harassment and retaliation on the set of their movie, It Ends With Us. Baldoni denied all accusations and countersued Lively for defamation and extortion, both of which were dismissed by a federal judge. Many of Lively’s claims, including the sexual harassment allegations, were also dismissed. The battle came to an end in May when Lively and Baldoni reached a joint settlement.
Owens often discussed the court saga on her eponymous podcast, including a deep dive in February 2025, in which she criticized Lively for allegedly staging a “tactical ambush” against Baldoni.
Around that time, Owens was named in a protective order filing submitted by Lively and husband Ryan Reynolds, in which the couple asked to maintain the privacy of their personal information amid the lawsuit. The order claimed that there were “certain online content creators” who “frequently parrot [Baldoni’s production company and its associates] Wayfarer Parties’ line” and that blogger Perez Hilton had previously been represented by Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman. Lively’s legal team claimed those content creators were acting as a “manufactured echo chamber” for Baldoni amid the court drama.
The documents cited one of Owen’s X posts commenting on the legal drama.
“We took a one-day break yesterday and we somehow time-traveled to Christmas morning over here because I was recently name-checked in Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ recent filing against Justin Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios,” Owens said on her podcast in February 2025. “I did it. I made it [and] I can now retire.”
She continued, “All the haters out there who doubted me are now asking for forgiveness and I just want to say thank you to all of you who believed in me, who believed in us, who knew that this day would come.”
Owens also noted that she had “never spoken to Bryan Freedman in my life and it hurts me deeply … [like] he and I are connected in the stars.”
“I’ve never spoken to Justin Baldoni, so we’re talking [like it’s] a family that’s been torn apart, but we’ve never met each other,” she added. “What am I guilty of here? Leading the pack of people because we’re, what, psychotic and checking your filings every day and we said, ‘Oh, look, she’s filing for more protection?’… That’s what you’re doing. I don’t understand why I got name-checked.”
