Taylor Swift goes public with new A-list buddy after ditching Blake Lively

Taylor Swift has gone public with a new A-list pal after reportedly falling out with bestie Blake Lively.

Swift, 35, was spotted with Dakota Johnson for dinner at the Italian restaurant Via Carota in New York City on Thursday evening.

The pair made it a family outing with their brothers tagging along – Swift’s sibling Austin joined, as did Dakota’s brother Jesse.

Swift – who made a huge announcement the following day – sported a black floral print dress and hot red lipstick while Dakota donned an edgy all-black look.

Taylor’s latest alleged falling-out with Blake comes after DailyMail.com exclusively reported that the 37-year-old Gossip Girl star had threatened to leak embarrassing private text messages from her former bestie unless the songstress agreed to publicly back her in her ongoing feud with her It Ends With Us costar and director, Justin Baldoni.

Swift was even subpoenaed as a witness into the legal war by Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman, and her team issued a scorching response to the legal move as they insisted she ‘never set foot on the set’ of the film and only licensed a song for the film. The subpoena was subsequently withdrawn.

A source has since exclusively told DailyMail.com that the singer ‘is done’ with Lively after the private text drama emerged.

It would appear Swift is now strengthening her other friendships in light of the alleged rift.

She was seen heading to the celebrity hotspot exuding confidence, her hair slicked back into a high ponytail and her face all done up.

She carried a chic leather purse on her arm and strutted towards the eatery in Christian Louboutin high heels.

Dakota, meanwhile, looked chic from head-to-toe.

Seemingly after their dinner, Dakota was seen being walked out on the arm of a helpful man as she flashed a smile.

The friendship isn’t completely out of left field, with Taylor earning a mention in Dakota’s Saturday Night Live monologue last year where she referred to the songstress as ‘the most powerful person in America’ as she mocked President Donald Trump.

Earlier this year, reports surfaced that Swift was taking a step back from her friendship with Lively after feeling like she was used as an ‘intimidation tactic’ by the actress in a lawsuit she never wanted to be embroiled in.

The singer was dragged into the explosive legal feud between Lively and Baldoni when he claimed his costar used Swift to intimidate him at a meeting with Reynolds about edits she had made to a rooftop scene in their film, It Ends with Us.

In his $400 million lawsuit, filed in January, Baldoni said Swift showed up and made him feel like he ‘needed to comply with Blake’s direction for the script’.

Lively later appeared to threaten Baldoni by comparing herself to Game of Thrones character Khaleesi in a series of text messages in which she referred to Reynolds, 48, and her best friend as her ‘dragons’.

Khaleesi, also known as Daenerys Targaryen and Mother of Dragons, is one of the main characters in Game of Thrones, which aired between 2011 to 2019.

A source previously told DailyMail.com: ‘Taylor has politely backed away from it all. She is conscious of her own image and hates that she was even mentioned.’

According to Baldoni’s lawsuit, Lively threatened to withhold approval of the film trailer if she did not get extra time working on a cut of the movie with her own personal editor.

He claimed in the suit that the actress threatened to ‘change her mind’ about reaching out to Swift to secure the use of her hit 2020 track My Tears Ricochet.

The track was eventually used in the trailer but Baldoni alleged that Lively tried to use her friendship with the singer to make sure her demands were met.