Justin Baldoni to Sue It Ends with Us Costar Blake Lively ‘Soon’ Following Her Sexual Harassment Complaint (Exclusive Details)

Almost two weeks after Blake Lively accused her It Ends with Us costar Justin Baldoni of sexual harassment and lauching a retaliatory public smear campaign against her, Baldoni’s lawyer says the actor/director plans to fire back with his own countersuit.

When asked by NBC News in an interview that aired Thursday, Jan. 2, if his client plans to sue Lively, attorney Bryan Freedman replied, “Absolutely … yes.”

“We plan to release every single text messages between the two of them,” Freedman told NBC News. “We want the truth to be out there. We want the documents to be out there. We want people to make their determination based on receipts.”

PEOPLE has exclusively learned that the plaintiffs will include Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios (his production company behind It End with Us), his publicist Jennifer Abel and crisis publicist Melissa Nathan. They plan to name Lively, her publicist Leslie Sloane and Baldoni’s former publicist Stephanie Jones in the suit. (Jones sued Baldoni, Wayfarer, Abel and Nathan on Dec. 24.)

It will be in response to Lively’s allegations in her Dec. 20 complaint, in which she claimed that Baldoni’s alleged behavior while making It Ends with Us and during its promotion caused her “grief, fear, trauma, and extreme anxiety.” Lively’s complaint includes allegations that during production he showed her explicit images and videos, asked her about her personal sex life and attempted to add intimate scenes to the film that she had not originally agreed to. She also claimed that Baldoni, alongside his publicist Jennifer Abel and crisis firm TAG PR’s Melissa Nathan, attempted to manipulate social media and work alongside the press to “destroy” her reputation.

On Tuesday, Dec. 31, Baldoni sued The New York Times for libel in response to its Dec. 21 article “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.” The suit alleges the newspaper used “‘cherry-picked’ and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead” in its article regarding Lively’s lawsuit and behind-the-scenes trouble on It Ends with Us.

Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and It Ends with Us producers Jamey Heath and Steve Sarowitz, along with Jed Wallace, and publicists Nathan and Abel are named as plaintiffs in that lawsuit.

The New York Times defended its article as “meticulously and responsibly reported” in response to Baldoni’s suit.

In a statement Lively shared with The New York Times, she said, “I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted.”

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In response to Lively’s complaint, filed in California, Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman, told PEOPLE in a statement that it was filed to “fix her negative reputation,” and called her allegations “false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt.”

Lively has since filed a federal complaint, against Wayfarer Studios and others involved in producing It Ends with Us in the Southern District of New York.

“Nothing in this lawsuit changes anything about the claims advanced in Ms. Lively’s California Civil Rights Department Complaint,” said attorneys for Lively, 37, in a Dec. 31 statement obtained by PEOPLE. “While we will not litigate this matter in the press, we do encourage people to read Ms. Lively’s complaint in its entirety. We look forward to addressing each and every one of Wayfarer’s allegations in court.”

Since the first filing, Lively has received support from various of her famous friends, including A Simple Favor director Paul Feig and her The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants costars America Ferrera, Alexis Bledel and Amber Tamblyn. Baldoni, meanwhile, has been dropped by his talent agency, WME, which still represents Lively. His Man Enough podcast co-host announced she was stepping away from the show on Monday, Dec. 23.

Freedman told PEOPLE exclusively on Dec. 29 that Baldoni’s lawsuit against Lively would form “a deliberate pursuit of truth.”

“This lawsuit will uncover and expose the false and destructive narrative that was intentionally engineered by a trusted media publication who relied upon nefarious sources and neglected a thorough fact checking process to confirm the validity of these texts,” he said at that time.