Until recently, Blake Lively was rarely seen without her crew – whether that be her husband Ryan Reynolds, his Deadpool & Wolverine co-star Hugh Jackman or her posse of A-list best friends including Taylor Swift, Gigi Hadid, Emily Blunt, Karlie Kloss, Florence Welch or Salma Hayek.

Lively’s famous posse is so built into her lore, in fact, that it has come up during her ongoing legal saga with her It Ends With Us co-star, Justin Baldoni. In December, Lively filed a lawsuit accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment on set and of launching a calculated smear campaign against her during the press run of the film. Baldoni denies all allegations.

In his $400 million (£299m) counter lawsuit, he accuses her of defamation, civil extortion and false light invasion of privacy. Lively denies the allegations and says they are lifted from ‘the abuser’s playbook’. It is this counter lawsuit, however, that her famous friends have been drawn into the drama. Baldoni claims Lively leveraged her ‘mega-celebrity friend’, widely thought to be Swift, to push her script edits despite not being contractually involved in the creative or production process. Baldoni’s team shared text messages where Lively allegedly compares herself to Khaleesi from Game of Thrones and called her famous friends ‘her dragons’, adding that ‘we all benefit from those gorgeous monsters of mine’.

After Swift was subpoenaed by Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, her team released a statement saying she was not involved in any creative decisions, ‘This subpoena is designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case,’ it stated. ‘Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie […] she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film. She did not even see It Ends With Us until weeks after its public release.’

And yet, the legal drama just got uglier. Freedman claimed Swift is ‘highly likely to have reliable information’ and accused Lively of using ‘extortionate threats’ to demand a public statement of support from Swift. After Esra Hudson, Lively’s lawyer hit back that these claims were ‘unequivocally and demonstrably false’, presiding Judge Lewis Liman sided with Lively, saying Freedman’s letters were ‘improper’, ‘irrelevant’ and designed to ‘promote public scandal.’

Despite the court win, in the court of public opinion Lively is still suffering – as is her bond with Swift, apparently. This was first noticeable at the Super Bowl in February. Despite having pride of place the year before, Lively was absent from Swift’s side as the singer watched her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s team Kansas City Chiefs play Philadelphia Eagles, along with Ice Spice, Ashley Avignone and the Haim sisters – leading to speculation that there was more to the story. ‘Their friendship has halted’, a source has since told People, because ‘Taylor wants no part in this drama’.

It seems she may have been distanced from Hadid too, who was by Lively’s side last summer on the red carpet for the premiere of Reynolds’ film Deadpool & Wolverine. ‘Gigi has always had a closer friendship with Taylor and stands by her,’ the source continued. ‘Gigi hasn’t necessarily chosen sides [but] they haven’t been as close in almost a year… there are no hard feelings’.

So, who’s rallying round Lively now? Her older sisters and fellow actors Robyn and Lori Lively have been spending a lot of time with her in recent months, walking the red carpet of the Another Simple Favour premiere in April and recently joining Lively at a photography exhibition in New York. And actor Salma Hayek – who Lively was spotted out for dinner with recently in New York. Hayek has always spoken highly of Lively, who she has been friends with for more than a decade after meeting on the set of Savages in 2012.

I have never met anybody that, at such an early stage in their life, had such a sense of self, so much courage,’ she said when honouring Lively at a VarietyPower of Women luncheon in 2017. ‘I saw her take on one of the biggest bullies in this industry that everybody feared. She has a great sense of family. She has a great sense of honourability, fantastic values. She has a great sense of fashion, sense of humour. She is the ultimate mother – even to me.’

Hayek never revealed which ‘bully’ she was referring to, but evidently, her opinion of Lively hasn’t changed. Lively has also been spotted out with New York-based photographers Anna Palma and Guy Aroch this month, both highly esteemed in the art world. The actress hailed them as ‘friends I’ve cherished for over half my life’ on social media and clearly counts them as members of her inner circle.

Her crew might be less crammed with A-listers than it once was – at least until the media circus of the trial, which is scheduled for court next March, is over – but the sisterhood prevails.