Blake Lively tore into The Hollywood Reporter for what her team calls its “sexist” cover image, an illustration showing the actress as the Biblical David attacking Justin Baldoni’s Goliath with a sling loaded not with a stone, but a smartphone.

The cover story, “Blake vs. Baldoni: An Exclusive Look Behind the Battle Lines of Hollywood’s Uncivil War,” was published Friday and written by Peter Kiefer. It delves deeply into Baldoni’s strong Baha’i faith, a universalist religion founded in what’s now Iran in the mid-19th century, and how its culture might have influenced the now-infamous feud.

“The Hollywood Reporter should be ashamed of itself,” a spokesperson for Lively told the Daily Mail late Friday. “The framing in this picture is outrageously insulting as it plays into every sexist trope about women who dare file a workplace complaint, turning them into the aggressor, and suggesting they...