Remaining faithful to what’s left of her reputation, Blake Lively might end up regretting the day she playfully inquired with Henry Golding: ‘Hey nice to meet you, can I grab your nuts really hard?’

It turns out the actress did indeed go ahead and reach out for Golding in that area – and later even found amusement in the situation – while ad-libbing a scene with the then-relatively unknown British actor for their 2018 movie, A Simple Favor.

It could be considered an odd move by someone who, several years later, asserts she felt extremely uncomfortable with another co-star, Justin Baldoni, and his supposed ‘spontaneous physical closeness’ during the shooting of their film It Ends With Us to the point where she took legal action in December, accusing him of sexual misconduct.

Indeed, social media sleuths have delighted in the discovery of Lively’s old improv admission – and so too has Baldoni’s team who, a source tells the Daily Mail, believe it could be the ‘smoking gun’ in their rancorous legal fight with the actress. (Baldoni has countersued for defamation).

The clip in question comes from the recorded commentary for the Blu-Ray release of A Simple Favor.

On screen, we see Lively, in character as Emily Nelson, taunting her husband Sean, played by Golding. As the pair lean in for a kiss, she grabs his crotch.

‘One of my favorite additions that you came up with – grabbing his nuts,’ director Paul Feig can be heard saying in the recorded commentary playing over the film. ‘You really went for it too.’

Laughing, Lively adds: ‘That’s always awkward – ‘hey nice to meet you can I grab your nuts really hard? Not because I want to but because I feel like [my character, Emily] would’.’

‘This video will absolutely be used by Justin Baldoni’s legal team in the case against Blake,’ a source close to Baldoni told Daily Mail. ‘It is a significant piece of evidence that caught everyone off guard. It is a smoking gun.

‘Blake admitted to grabbing her co-star’s crotch as improvisation and Paul confirmed that it was an unscripted addition. The video captures Blake doing exactly what she is now accusing Justin of, except worse. If Justin had grabbed Blake’s crotch or her breasts without her consent, she likely would have pursued criminal charges for assault. Yet, when she did it in A Simple Favor, she laughed it off.’

Lively’s crotch grab is seen as all the more pertinent considering Baldoni, 41, stands accused of blindsiding the actress, 37, when he dragged his lips down her neck and told her ‘it smells so good’ as they shot intimate scenes for their movie.

In December, Lively filed a a damning lawsuit against Baldoni, his production company Wayfarer Studios and some of his associates, accusing him of sexual harassment and embarking on a ‘calculated and malicious smear campaign’ to destroy her reputation.

For his part, Baldoni fired back with a blistering $400 million countersuit against Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds, 48, in January, claiming the Hollywood couple conspired to trash his reputation.

He has also launched a $250 million libel lawsuit against the New York Times for its reporting on Lively’s claims. All parties have vehemently denied the allegations against them.

Baldoni has vowed to take down Lively, once Hollywood’s golden girl, with a ‘mountain of concrete evidence’ disproving her allegations.

One such piece of evidence was a video, obtained exclusively by the Daily Mail in January, which appeared to obliterate Lively’s claims about his ‘smells so good’ comment.

She insisted that nobody had heard him say it – but, as the behind-the-scenes footage shows, Baldoni’s sound equipment did pick up the actors’ small talk, seeming to show his comment about her scent was in response to Lively talking about her recent spray tan.

In response to that video, Lively’s legal team said: ‘Justin Baldoni and his lawyer may hope that this latest stunt will get ahead of the damaging evidence against him, but the video itself is damning.

‘[It] shows Mr. Baldoni repeatedly leaning in toward Ms. Lively, attempting to kiss her, kissing her forehead, rubbing his face and mouth against her neck […] Every frame of the released footage corroborates, to the letter, what Ms. Lively described in […] her Complaint.’ 

But as Baldoni has tried to chip away at Lively’s many allegations, people’s accounts of allegedly hellish encounters with the actress have also trickled out.

Earlier this year, film producer and an assistant director on A Simple Favor, Barbara Szeman, branded Lively the ‘worst actor I have ever worked with’, adding that she ‘made me cry several times’.

Kaitlyn Cooper, a one-time fan from Houston, Texas, accused Lively of following her to her car after she taken an innocent video of the actress when she realized they were staying in the hotel.

While hair stylist Emanuel Millar has said in since-deleted posts on Instagram that Lively was ‘self-centred’ when they worked together on the 2011 film Hick.

In an apparent attempt to save face this week, Lively surprised her fans by putting on an apron and serving donuts at a friend’s Connecticut bakery.

But there is no denying that the crotch-grab discovery is another big hurdle.

‘The backlash that Blake is receiving over this is completely organic,’ our source said. ‘It is entirely her own doing and Baldoni’s team is celebrating this new discovery.’