'Healing': Baldoni speaks after Lively legal battle

That prompted him and his Wayfarer Studios to hit back with a countersuit against the 38-year-old and her husband Ryan Reynolds, accusing the Hollywood couple of defamation and extortion.

In April, the couple reached an out-of-court settlement, and now Baldoni has spoken in an Instagram video with his wife Emily.

"We have not spoken publicly for the better part of the last two years," he said.

Baldoni said it was not because they did not have anything to say, but "it just didn't feel like the right time".

Emily - who married Baldoni in 2013 and has kids Maiya, 11, and Maxwell, eight, with the actor - said they felt "immense gratitude for so many things, and so many people, and so many things that have happened to us".

"That gratitude, it doesn't negate the injustice and the pain that we have also felt in the last few years," she said.

The couple had had to "wrestle with so many things", Emily said, "like how could something like this even happen, let alone disguised as a fight for women?"

Emily claimed the family had had "a lot of trauma" to move through.

Baldoni said: "We are healing. And if you've ever been through something traumatic, you know that healing isn't linear, it looks different every day, and we have had to rethink for ourselves what is real and what matters."

He insisted "thank you does not feel like enough" for everyone who supported him during his legal battle.

Baldoni had his countersuit claims dismissed by a judge and in April, Lively's sexual harassment claims were tossed out on jurisdictional grounds, leading to them reaching an out-of-court settlement, just two weeks before they were set to go to trial in New York.

In June, a court ruling said Lively could only seek legal costs from Baldoni, but not damages under a Californian law designed to protect anyone making sexual misconduct allegations.

Baldoni's legal team claimed they "won", while Lively's lawyers insisted she "is the prevailing defendant".