Over the weekend, the New York Times reported on a legal complaint filed by Blake Lively against Justin Baldoni, her costar and director in the movie It Ends With Us; Jamey Heath, the movie's lead producer; Wayfarer, the studio that made the film, and its billionaire cofounder; and a set of crisis public relations experts.
It's an important story, even if you did not see the movie and do not care for Blake Lively.
The complaint alleges – with massive documentation – that after Lively complained of sexual harassment during the filming of the movie, Baldoni, Heath, and the studio retained a crisis PR team to smear Lively as a way of preemptively defending their clients.
The details are gross: On January 4, 2024, Lively had held a meeting with Baldoni, Heath, and a long list of studio executives to set new ground rules before filming resumed following the Hollywood writers strike. Here are the first 13 of 30 things she was asking for:
1) No more showing nude videos of images of women, including producer's wife, to BL [Blake Lively] and/or her employees.
2) No more mention of Mr Baldoni's or Mr Heath's previous 'pornography addiction' or BL's lack of pornography consumption to BL or to other crew members.
3) No more discussions to BL and/or her employees about personal experiences with sex, including as it relates to spouses or others.
4) No more mention to BL or her employees of personal times that physical consent was not given in sexual acts, as either the abuser or the abused.
5) No more descriptions of their own genitalia to BL.
6) No more jokes or disparaging comments to be made to BL and/or her employees about HR complaints Wayfarer [Baldoni's production studio] has already received on set, or about 'missing the HR meeting'.
7) No more inquiries by Mr Baldoni to BL trainer without her knowledge or consent to discuss her weight.
8) No more mention by Mr Baldoni of him 'speaking to' BL's dead father.
9) No more pressing by Mr Baldoni for BL to disclose her religious beliefs, or unsolicited sharing of his.
10) If BL and/or her infant is exposed to COVID again, BL must be provided with immediate notice as soon as Wayfarer or any other producers become aware of such exposure, without her needing to uncover days later herself.
11) An intimacy coordinator must be present at all times when BL is on set in scenes with Mr Baldoni.
12) No more personal, physical touching of, or sexual comments by, Mr Baldoni or Mr Heath to be tolerated by BL and/or any of her employees, as well as any female cast or crew without their express consent.
13) No more improvising of kissing. All intimate touch must be choreographed in advance with BL and an intimacy coordinator. No biting or sucking of lip without BL consent. And all intimate on camera touch and conversations must be 'in character' and not spoken from Mr Baldoni to BL personally.
Notice the times it says "no more." "No more showing nude videos of images of women." "No more personal, physical touching of, or sexual comments by, Mr. Baldoni or Mr. Heath to be tolerated by BL and/or any of her employees, as well as any female cast or crew without their express consent."
In translation, the demands say that these men were creating an atmosphere of pervasive sexual harassment of Blake Lively and other women on set. They came to an agreement to cease those behaviors for the remainder of the filming. But what came out of the rollout of the movie? Lively's reputation took a big hit, as stories circulated painting her as difficult, entitled, mean. That's because, the complaint alleges, Baldoni and co hired a crisis PR team to make that happen.
After Baldoni pressed for a more aggressive campaign against Lively, one of the women on his PR team wrote to another:
“I think you guys need to be tough and show the strength of what you guys can do in these scenarios. He wants to feel like she can be buried.”
“Of course- but you know when we send over documents we can’t send over the work we will or could do because that could get us in a lot of trouble,” Ms. Nathan responded, adding, “We can’t write we will destroy her.”
Moments later, she said, “Imagine if a document saying all the things that he wants ends up in the wrong hands.”
“You know we can bury anyone,” she wrote.
Following this, go figure, stories circulated about how Blake Lively was terrible.
There are many, many more details in the complaint, but we should all take this as a jumping-off point both for a reassessment of a number of stories about allegedly terrible women in Hollywood – one of the PR people Baldoni hired had worked to discredit Amber Heard – but also to deepen our understanding of how easily public opinion can be manipulated. Blake Lively is a major movie star married to an even more major movie star (Ryan Reynolds). She is close friends with Taylor Swift. She didn't have a bad reputation prior to this campaign. If she is vulnerable to this – where "this" means both the kind of treatment she was demanding end on set and the reputational damage she took afterward – imagine what women without her power and money face on both those fronts.
This isn't the first time we've seen this, of course. Think of all the women in Hollywood – women with big roles and public accolades, daughters of successful men in the entertainment industry – who former Miramax head Harvey Weinstein first sexually assaulted and then professionally damaged if he didn't like their responses. He didn't even have to hire experts to do that. He just put the word out that they were "difficult" and their careers evaporated.
But this isn't just a story about the movie industry. It's a story about how easily public opinion is manipulated. Particularly against women, where sexism is always there to do half the work for the smear campaign. And yes, that's a story that's very relevant to electoral politics – to how we understand certain recent elections, and how we think about moving forward.
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