Sony has been silent since Blake Lively filed sexual harassment and retaliation claims against her It Ends with Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni, but now the movie’s distributor is speaking out as more and more of Hollywood offers support for the Gossip Girl alum.
“We have previously expressed our support for Blake in connection with her work on and for the film,” a spokesperson for the studio said Monday afternoon after SAG-AFTRA made a public backing of Lively as more and more details of a crisis PR smear campaign against the actress emerged. “We fully and firmly reiterate that support today. Further, we strongly condemn any reputational attacks on her. Any such attacks have no place in our business or in a civil society.”
Late last week, IEWU star/producer Lively filed a graphic complaint illustrated with text messages against Baldoni, along with his company Wayfarer Studios, co-founder James Heath and others with California’s Civil Rights Department. While not formally a lawsuit, Lively’s action is a clear tip of the legal hat of an official filing in the courts to follow. After the claims of sexual harassment, retaliation and a social media campaign allegedly orchestrated to smear Lively, Baldoni on December 21 abruptly was dropped from their mutual agency WME, which also reps Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds.
Lively’s 10-claim complaint gives a specifically detailed list of misconduct by Baldoni and his Wayfarer co-founder on the 2023 set of the film based on Colleen Hoover’s 2016 novel about a toxic and violent relationship and attempts to straighten things out once the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes of last year were over. Her complaint also puts the invisible hand and tactics of crisis PR in a harsh spotlight. To be specific, Lively and her lawyers allege that Baldoni’s personal rep Jennifer Abel, formerly of Joneswork, and the pricey Melissa Nathan and her company The Agency Group PR LLC teamed up for an online and media “astroturfing” of the actress to destroy her reputation as rumors started getting out that all was not good on the movie.
Though Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman denies any wrongdoing on his client’s part, the matter seems to be escalating quickly with many Hollywood A-listers flocking to Lively’s side and further industry blowback against Baldoni.
As the you-know-what hit the fan over the weekend, both sides pointed their media cannons at each other. Abel took to a PR Facebook group to air her side of the story, stressing that no attack on Lively ever actually occurred because influencers and others organically took her to task for so-called missteps present and past. “We sophomorically reveled and again joked privately to each other about the internet’s feedback to the woman whose team was making our lives incredibly difficult over the course of the campaign,” Abel admitted via social media. “I’m human.”
While writing “what kind of woman would work against another woman who was victim of all the things being claimed,” Abel rejected Lively and her lawyers’ telling of events and circumstances. It should be noted she and other Baldoni reps either ignored or made little of a January 4 “all hands” meeting with Lively, Deadpool star Reynolds, Sony execs, Wayfarer brass and Baldoni on the repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behavior by Mr. Baldoni and Mr. Heath.
At the end of that meeting, Lively and Baldoni’s sides agreed to disagree on specifics, but “Wayfarer, Sony and Production respectfully acknowledge that [Ms. Lively] has concerns regarding safety, professionalism and workplace culture” in a post-meeting statement.
RELATED: Justin Baldoni Dropped By WME Following Blake Lively’s Sexual Harassment Complaint
With the “untraceable” strategy of “astroturfing” by TAG for “social manipulation,” as texts and other extensive communications between Baldoni’s crew indicate, the fallout and now Sony stepping into things, Lively’s action pulls back the veil on just how pervasive the power and execution of social media now is for PR and communications specialists in molding messaging and controlling the narrative of the modern star machine and rollout through fact, fiction and revenge served with a digital iciness.
In the same Facebook missive, Abel said it was news to her that sometimes immature texts and other communications had been acquired and “cherry-picked” by Lively’s Manatt, Phelps & Phillips attorneys and Willkie Farr & Gallagher lawyers Calling a New York Times article on the so-called BTS of IEWU, and other media exposes of Baldoni a “coordinated effort” by Lively’s team that she has seen before. Abel also said, “I had recently left my previous firm, at which I was still during this campaign (with a team who all participated in the campaign and a boss who oversaw) and who had access to my work emails and work phone, so you can deduce from that what you will.”
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The barbed implications of RWA Communications founder Abel’s “what you will” statement point fingers at Joneswork — which is true, to some extent.
“The subpoena disclosed and referenced in the Complaint was served on Jonesworks LLC,” a member of Lively’s Manatt, Phelps & Phillips attorneys and Willkie Farr & Gallagher legal team told Deadline today. “The internal documents referred to in the Complaint were produced subject to that subpoena. We expect that further details regarding the subpoena process will be disclosed during discovery.”
That means whatever communications between Abel, Nathan, Joneswork, TAG and Wayfarer has been made public so far might just be the tip of the iceberg.
In terms of another iceberg, Sony seemed set to remain mum on the latest turn in Lively’s It Ends with Us ills, even after her complaint was filed.
That ended as the the way the wind was blowing in Lively’s favor in Tinseltown became obvious.
Not that Sony hadn’t been very pro-Lively — and, by inference, hoping to stay in business with her blockbuster spouse — earlier this year.
Back in August as the $25 million budget IEWU was set to debut, a Sony insider boasted to Deadline that Lively, as a producer and motion picture marketing guru, was an integral part of the pic’s social media promotional push and “a creative tour de force.” In full Blake bloom, the same Sony studio staffer gushed “I wish she worked for us full-time” as It Ends with Us had a $50 million opening weekend.
The movie went on to earn $351 million globally, which is why the Blake business is looking good.
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