Blake Lively’s statements against Justin Baldoni have highlighted Hollywood’s ‘hostile’ tactics

Actress Blake Lively was arguably the Internet’s public enemy number one for several weeks over the summer. Now she has filed an explosive legal lawsuit that she claims exposes a “hostile work environment” created to damage reputations in Hollywood – and it’s making people question Who should we believe and what should we believe in?

Blake Lively has always been a pretty gentle type of actress.

She has starred in successful TV shows and movies such as Gossip Girl and The 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 caused controversy, to the brink of cancellation.

She was criticized for comments that seemed to downplay domestic violence, the film’s subject; while awkward old interviews are resurfaced and reused as evidence of bullying.

Public opinion – at least among those who know and care – seems to have turned against her.

Then the movie came out, the outrage died down and social media continued to grow.

But Lively has now filed a lawsuit claiming she was sexually harassed by It Ends With Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni – and when she complained, he and his label Wayfarer retaliated by waging a The translation was intended to “destroy” her reputation.

She was the subject of “a sophisticated, coordinated and well-funded retaliation plan” designed “to silence her”, involving “a weaponized digital army” and sentences The fake story was provided to “unwitting reporters”, her lawyer has alleged. – and that’s why she became the focus of negative publicity.

Throughout the roughly 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 lawyers released text messages sent between Baldoni journalist Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan, a crisis communications expert hired by his studio to help resolve harassment complaints. They appear to offer a rare glimpse into conversations that are usually kept private.

According to legal papers, Nathan devised a strategy to “start theoretical threads” on social media, to “create, seed and promote content that appears authentic” and to engage in ” social manipulation”.

“You know, we can bury anyone,” Nathan wrote to Abel in an astonishing discussion.

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

Abel has said that Lively’s lawyers “cherry-picked” the messages to include in their case without important context and that “no ‘smear’ was committed”.

“No negative press was facilitated, there was no plan for social struggle, although we were prepared for that because it is our duty to be ready for any situation.

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

Abel said the backlash against Lively happened naturally and without their help.

Attorney Bryan Freedman, who represents Baldoni and his studio as well as Abel and Nathan, agreed.

He said Baldoni hired a crisis manager due to “multiple demands and threats” allegedly made by Lively, including “threats to not [show] willingly, threatened not to promote the film, eventually leading to the film being shut down during its release, if her demands were not met”.

He said the plan outlined by Nathan’s company ” proved unnecessary as audiences found Lively’s actions, interviews and marketing during the promotional tour distasteful and reacted naturally with that, which the media themselves discovered”.

Overall, Freedman called Lively’s complaint “shameful” and full of “false accusations.”

In recent days, Lively has received support from a series of former co-stars and others in Hollywood.

The name of one of her supporters stands out.

Amber Heard, ex-wife of Johnny Depp, told NBC: “Social media is the absolute personification of the classic saying, ‘A lie travels halfway around the world before the truth can put on its shoes.’

“I witnessed this up close. It was horrifying and devastating.”

Heard was subjected to social media hostility during two high-profile libel trials involving Depp in the UK and US in 2020 and 2022. Nathan is also said to have worked for Depp.

Freedman responded to Heard by saying that the only connection between her and Lively was that “for decades, every move they made was published for everyone to see” so that the public could “decide for themselves – which they did naturally”.

Tortoise Media’s head of investigation Alexi Mostrous, who hosts a podcast called Who trolled Amber? earlier this year when looking into the abuse she received, said there were similarities.

He told the BBC: “In both the Blake Lively case and the Amber Heard case, you see PR firms working with digital media experts and other ‘contractors’ to promote favorable stories online to their wealthy clients in ways that are unclear and not well understood.” News.

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

diversity he said Lively’s case “exposes a show business that operates in the shadows – the hiring of expensive crisis communications experts to influence opinion and uplift customers”.

Her allegations reveal a “sinister shadow campaign” that has gone “far beyond what most Hollywood advertising agencies consider acceptable”, The Wrap’s Sharon Waxman wrote.

According to Rory Lynch, partner and head of reputation management law at Gateley Legal, it’s a “fairly common tactic” in Hollywood and business disputes that “require PR from both sides to pump out negative stories, sometimes false stories, about the opposition.”

“Even during Hollywood’s golden era, there were rumors that Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were using PR professionals to spread negative information against each other.”

However, PR people working for Baldoni and his studio “failed a bit” when discussing text message tactics, he told BBC News.

“I’m not surprised, especially in America and Hollywood, that there are PR people who are quite aggressive in times of crisis.

“But I think it probably wasn’t the wisest thing for them to write that down. Normally they could do something like that over the phone.”

Lively himself is “a complex operator” who will “have his own PR people working in the background,” Lynch added.

New York Timesbroke the story of Lively’s complaint over the weekend, saying she “denies that she or any of her representatives planted or spread negative information about Mr. Baldoni or the Traveler.”

The newspaper also pointed out that it was “impossible to know how much of the negative publicity” towards Lively was initially seeded by those working on Baldoni’s behalf, “and how much it was noticed and amplified”.

Many fans who once opposed Lively now see the situation from a different perspective.

“We can be so manipulated into hating a woman that all it takes is a concerted PR effort to change sides against a domestic abuse victim or a long-beloved American, ” wrote Maddy Mussen in the Standard.

“Now that our eyes are open, will it be harder for us to be fooled? Or are we still looking for excuses to betray a famous woman who suddenly, in our eyes and in the eyes of our manipulators, is no longer worthy?”

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

She added: “Lively’s complaint makes my head spin. What can you really trust?”