Blake Lively’s claims against Justin Baldoni highlight Hollywood’s ‘hostile’ tactics

Actress Blake Lively may have been the internet’s number one enemy for weeks over the summer. Now she’s launched an explosive lawsuit that she claims exposes a “hostile work environment” designed to damage Hollywood’s reputation and make people question who to believe and what to believe.

Blake Lively has always been a pretty harmless actress.

She has starred in successful TV shows and movies such as Gossip Girl and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. She married superstar Ryan Reynolds. She is friends with Taylor Swift.

Then in August, while promoting her latest film, It Ends With Us, she suddenly became controversial, on the verge of cancellation.

She was criticized for comments that appeared to downplay domestic violence, the film’s subject; while embarrassing old interviews were recovered and recast as evidence of bullying.

Public opinion – at least among those who knew and cared – seemed to have turned against her.

Then the movie came out, the furore died down, and social networks continued to spin.

But Lively has now launched a lawsuit alleging she was sexually harassed by director and It Ends With Us director Justin Baldoni — and that when she complained, he and his studio Wayfarer retaliated by launching a campaign to “destroy » her reputation.

She was the target of a “sophisticated, coordinated and well-financed retribution plan” designed to silence her, involving a “weaponized digital army” and false stories fed to “unwitting reporters”, her lawyers claimed. – and that’s why she got into the center of negative publicity.

Throughout the nearly 80-page complaint, Lively’s team repeatedly accuses Badoni and Wayfarer of creating a “hostile work environment that nearly derailed the film’s production.”

Her attorneys released text messages sent between Baldoni’s publicist, Jennifer Abel, and Melissa Nathan, a crisis communications specialist hired by his studio to help handle the harassment complaint. They seem to provide a rare glimpse into conversations that are usually kept out of the spotlight.

According to legal documents, Nathan proposed a strategy of “starting threads of theories” on social media to “create, upload and promote content that appears authentic” and engage in “social manipulation.”

“You know we can bury anyone,” Nathan wrote to Abel in one of the damning discussions.

Now the people hired to do crisis PR for Baldoni are doing crisis PR for themselves.

Abel said Lively’s attorneys were “selecting” messages to include in their case without significant context, and that “there was no ‘smack’ going on.

“No negative press was ever promoted, no social plan to fight, although we were ready for it, because our job is to be ready for any scenario.

“But we didn’t have to implement anything because the Internet did the work for us.”

The backlash against Lively happened naturally and didn’t need their help, Abel said.

Attorney Brian Friedman, who represents Baldoni and his studio, as well as Abel and Nathan, echoed that.

He said Baldoni hired a crisis manager because of the “numerous demands and threats” Lively allegedly made, including “threats not to (show up) on set, threats to stop promoting the film, which would ultimately lead to its termination during the rental if her requirements were not met.”

He said the plan devised by Nathan’s firm “turned out to be unnecessary as audiences found Lively’s own actions, interviews and marketing during the promotional tour distasteful and organically reacted to it, which the media themselves picked up on.”

Overall, Friedman called Lively’s complaint “disgraceful” and full of “categorically false allegations.”

In recent days, Lively has received support from a number of her former colleagues and others in Hollywood.

The name of one of her fans stands out.

Amber Heard, ex-wife of Johnny Depp, NBC said: “Social media is the absolute personification of the classic saying, ‘A lie flies halfway around the world before the truth can.’

“I’ve seen it firsthand and up close. It’s as horrifying as it is devastating.”

Heard was the target of animosity on social media during two high-profile defamation trials against Depp in the UK and US in 2020 and 2022. Nathan also reportedly worked for Depp.

Friedman responded to Heard, saying that the only connection between her and Lively was that “for decades, their every move was made available to everyone” so that the public could “decide — which they did organically.”

Tortoise Media head of investigations Alexi Mostraus, who hosted the podcast, called Who Trolled Amber? earlier this year, while examining the abuse she suffered, said there were parallels.

“In both the Blake Lively case and the Amber Heard case, you see PR firms working with digital media specialists and other ‘contractors’ to push stories online that benefit their high-net-worth clients in non-transparent and obscure ways.” — he told the BBC. News.

“It’s an unregulated world where all kinds of tactics can go on behind closed doors.”

A variety of words Lively’s case “exposes a show business process that must operate in the shadows – hiring expensive crisis communications experts to influence opinion and galvanize clients.”

Her allegations point to a “sinister shadow campaign” that has gone “beyond what most advertising companies in Hollywood consider acceptable.” Written by Sharon Waxman of The Wrap.

According to Rory Lynch, partner and head of reputation management at Gateley Legal, it’s a “fairly common tactic” in Hollywood and business controversies where “PRs on both sides plant negative stories, sometimes false, about the opposition.”

“Even in the Golden Age of Hollywood, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were rumored to be using public relations specialists to give negative briefings against each other.”

However, PR people working for Baldoni and his studio “dropped the ball a bit” when discussing the tactics in the texts, he told BBC News.

“I am not surprised, especially in the US and Hollywood, that you have quite aggressive crisis PR people.

“But the way they put it in writing, I think, was maybe not the wisest thing. Normally they could do something like that over the phone.’

Lively herself is a “sophisticated operator” who “will also have PR people working in the background,” Lynch added.

The New York Timeswhich released the story of Lively’s complaint last weekend, said she “denies that she or any of her representatives planted or spread negative information about Mr. Baldoni or Wayfarer.”

The paper also noted that “it is impossible to know how much of the negative publicity” about Lively was initially generated by those working on Baldoni’s behalf, “and how much was noticed and amplified.”

Many fans who opposed Lively now see the situation in a different light.

“We are so manipulated into hating a woman that it only takes a concerted public relations effort to side with a victim of domestic violence or America’s long-loved sweetheart.” – wrote Maddie Mussen in the Standard.

“Now that our eyes are open, will it be harder to deceive us? Or will we still want some excuse to turn against a famous woman who is suddenly worthless in our eyes and the eyes of those who manipulate us?”

The Guardian’s Laura Snapes wrote that she and her friends now “look back with horror at what we have said about her in recent months.”

She added: “Lively’s complaint blew my mind. Why can you really trust me?”