The extent of the sexual harassment is SO DISGUSTING and beyond what anyone could have imagined. I knew that he was so so sketch based on his interviews but MY GOD. BL solidarity.
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Even tho I'm subscribed, I wasn't able to vote on Severance recaps but PLEASE YES!
Definitely a sleeper and I loved it. I was worried it would be sad but it was the opposite, joyful and life-celebrating! I've been telling everyone to watch it.
I loved it!! I was afraid for a moment it would be too sad but it's just the right amount of sad. There was a part I laughed out loud about so hard when the parents are trying to find her and they say re: Richard Roundtree, "You know he has a show tonight, right?" It's a good one to watch with the parents--any parents. I also loved the tiny look Thelma and her grandson give each other when the adult parents are going off.
Since Blake filed a lawsuit, I don't think she was trying to drop this story on the sly. With the holidays, maybe December 20th was the last day she could file in 2024.
HUGE kudos on the mea culpa on the Baldoni/Lively discourse. The whole thing was so yuck and I for one feel bad for even participating in it. Boobs Legsey forever. :-)
I have been looking forward to DWB discussion on the Lively/Baldoni lawsuit!
Mea culpa here too. While the fact that Baldoni was promoting alone and everyone else on the cast had aligned with BL was clearly a red flag, I also eventually believed in the mean girl internet hype, and regret that now. Even if BL was rude to that interviewer (who also posted pro-Johnny Depp content during his trial so something is fishy there), and even if the hair care rollout was a poor choice, she doesn’t have to be a perfect person to deserve a professional, respectful workplace. I’m making my way through the complaint and it’s appalling.
And 100% what you said: if someone of her fame and resources is subjected to that level of harassment on-set, it is horrifying to contemplate what women of more precarious professional footing are subjected to.
I’m sorry to see David Harbour and Lily Allen might be splitting up. They were very cute together and I loved their Vegas wedding photos. I didn’t love her criticism of Beyoncé doing a country album, and then immediately promoting her own country album plans, though.
I always thought something was very suspicious about that interview getting so much attention. It was like 8 years old so first, if you have to dig that far to find a mean one it’s not a pattern of behavior it’s an anomaly, and second, honestly the way the interviewer phrased it (maybe not intentionally! It’s pretty British!) it sounded more like an insult about weight gain than about the pregnancy and I can empathize with a tired actress feeling sensitive about weight gain and reacting. So the fact that was used as ‘proof’ she was a ‘mean girl’ felt like a real stretch to me and made me suspect a bit of a smear campaign- though of course no idea of the extent and my original view was similar to TFG- that the truth was somewhere in the middle as it is so often…
That interview getting dug up felt for me as par for the course when the internet turns on a woman. It never occurred to me that there was a coordinated smear campaign going on because this is what the internet does to women especially ones who get labeled "unlikeable." But, I had and still have zero skin in this game. I was never an avid viewer of Gossip Girl, nor did I have any clue who Justin was, and I could care less about a film adaptation of a Colleen Hoover novel. I also don't care about who follows who on Instagram nor who has unfollowed any particular celebrity. I honestly thought this was just a regular old Hollywood feud where both parties are equally culpable. Now I know this is not what happened.
That's how I feel- you never start at this level, you do little things that don't get stopped so you get increasing. But then he kinda disappeared after Jane the Virgin- was there a reason?
I did watch gossip girl and generally appreciated Blake’s acting work but no deep investment and the knowledge that a bunch of people unfollowed him seemed shady to me so I was never on the anti Blake train.
Not to mention the narrative that BL must have been the "bad guy" because she's part of this power couple, and Taylor's friend, and pooooooooor Justin couldn't possible be the aggressor because he has so much less power.
Whatever. People want to hate on women, regardless of who they are, and he was the DIRECTOR and had the entire studio on his side. Hardly powerless.
You make an excellent point that this was an anomaly, not a pattern of behavior, if someone has to search back 8 years for one example of BL being irritated in an interview. Anyone can have an off day, and anyone can feel sensitive to having weight gain commented on. It’s heartening to see the level of public support she’s getting, even with the predictable crappy comments as well.
Once that interviewer released a similar video of Anne Hathaway being "mean" I thought "maybe you're just bad at interviewing celebrities?" Asking someone to sing their responses is cringe and I guess she was going for cute/creative but it felt cringe. Not to be an AH apologist but she wasn't rude, she just declined to sing her answers. Both those old videos reek of "gotcha!"
I totally agree with this! I think it’s hard to fathom these marathon days of tons of interviews and if something rubs you the wrong way, after 20 of them, I can see just being so over it!
I remain pretty agnostic re the Lively/Reynolds branding machine supermerger, but that's a completely separate question from what happened on that set. Absolute jerks can be victims, AND that doesn't make their abusers any less culpable or vile (BL may or may not be a total jerk, but it is very clear that Baldoni is something much, much worse than one, and so is his billionaire business partner).
For me, this is similar to how there is no celebrity I am less inclined to allow the grace of a "the aughts were really really toxic!" revisit than Paris Hilton (I worked at Bunim-Murray, I know damn well that woman was ten times worse than any media portrayal), but I fully support her efforts to burn the abusive "bad kids reeducation camp" unregulated boarding school industry to the ground. Not only is Blake's character, good or bad, irrelevant here, no matter HOW much an ass she may or may not have been at any other point, I hope she salts the earth over these creeps' metaphorical charred bodies.
I'm not trying to pat myself on the back, but I never trusted the Baldoni camp. The other actors and Colleen un-following of Justin and not wanting to appear with him--that ALONE had me believing the women. Something stunk.
The only part I thought was a bad look from BL was the simultaneous product launches, but I admit there's a lot we don't know about motives.
I was HEARTBROKEN but not surprised at that text or whatever between the two PR women when the one says something along the lines of "kinda sad how well this is working-how much people want to hate on women." Not sure how she puts her head on the pillow. Sigh
Agreed, I knew something was up when Jenny Slate was asked about Justin’s directing and she wouldn’t even say his name and gave some weird non-answer. Though I’ll admit I did side eye Blake about the timing of her hair care line and the flowery marketing, but as ever Heather did such a thoughtful response on why Blake may have done that. I was very much looking forward to seeing what DWB had to say when all this dropped.
And for the flowery marketing--it's now public info that that was the decided-upon strategy--for everyone to market it as a story of female empowerment, as opposed to a heavy movie about DV (not that it's not about DV, but position it as a strong woman survives as opposed to is a victim). Justin/his team decided to break with that when they saw an opportunity to bring BL down. He started talking about DV to make her look bad/like she was glossing over it. BUT THAT WAS THE AGREED-UPON STRATEGY.
Look, I never saw Gossip Girl, and I'd only seen BL in Simple Favor, or whatever that (great) movie with Anna Kendrick was. I'm not any sort of super-fan. But to me, it's just been so clear something stunk with JB. I wish I could say I was surprised, but sadly, I'm not.
I'd never heard of him before the movie launched, and have been skeptically neutral on her since she doubled down on "antebellum style" or whatever it was on her GOOP-lite site, so without the writeup here a few months back I wouldn't have even been aware there was a potential controversy to be aware of (I was not aware that Colleen Hoover was the new Danielle Steel, either). But again: it doesn't matter if she sucks or is an angel. He's very clearly a nightmare, and lost all benefit of the doubt when he hired Johnny Depp's crisis team.
I will also say, in the not-patting-myself-on-the-back, that I credit Lainey Gossip entirely for my OG stance of "believe the women" and side-eyeing Justin. What Sarah and Lainey were writing from the beginning (last summer) really landed for me. Links to just two of their early posts below, if anyone is interested. They talked about it quite a lot towards the end of the summer and it turns out, now that we have BL's court filing, they nailed it.
I feel the exact same way! In fact I looked back to see what I Tweeted/texted during the height of it and yeah, to me it was always kind of obvious that 1) Justin was the problem 2) many ppl relied on their confirmation bias about/against Blake. It was a case of, “believe women, unless it’s one I don’t really like, and then, eh.” Even after this story came out, there were ppl unwilling to believe that they’d been manipulated and they still considered Blake to be the issue. I also totally believe that the negative internet chatter about her came from real people and not bots, bc as the PR lady’s text said, people are just that inclined to hate women. Their Johnny Depp/Amber Heard playbook worked so well the first time of course they replicated it to much success, sadly.
"I never actually disliked her before, but she's female and pretty and female, so yeah I've always not liked her."
Being female is so hazardous.
And somehow MEN feel like they have the right to be aggrieved! (Well, the ones who leapt to shred Amber Heard, in defense of Johnny Depp of all men in the world)
As soon as this story broke I wanted to talk about it here! I couldn't work out why the rest of the cast was hating him, so this definitely explains a lot.
My initial reaction to this was that sexual harassment is wrong and she didn't deserve that treatment. I'm curious if that will legally actually amount to retaliation, which I think has a specific definition. I think the goal is more to tell her story, and that's certainly worked.
But it does sound like a lot of the negative reaction online to Blake was down to things like marketing her own products. I didn't realize the studio insisted on the marketing plan for the movie, but she also could have potentially not launched the hair line. That said, it is depressing how easy it is for everyone to hate a woman.
From the NYT story, it sounds like Justin was afraid that Blake was going to speak out about the harassment, and hired the crisis PR folks to get ahead of that. So they amplified the negative reactions on social media enough that the industry mags picked up the stories.
It probably didn’t help that Blake’s haircare line isn’t that great. I bought the mask that Heather said smelled really good, and it does indeed smell good but I don’t know that it’s anymore conditioning than regular conditioner.
I think retaliation legally is like, getting demoted, or having your hours changed. I'm not a lawyer, so maybe someone who is can comment, but I thought she was specifically claiming retaliation.
If she's just claiming they planned to damage her reputation, they certainly did that - but like Heather said, that's going on every day in Hollywood. It's practically business as usual, but maybe that will change as a result of this.
Yeah, I think the haircare was a misstep. Might have helped if it was better, but ultimately probably not the time.
She demanded that he stop harassing her in her workplace, and in turn he orchestrated an intentionally misleading campaign to damage her reputation (which would, of course, lead to her getting fewer jobs). Pretty classic retaliation, to be honest.
To be clear, what he did sounds awful. I just wasn't sure what the legal requirements were. My take was the suit was more about getting her story told then an expectation of being able to go forward legally. And good for her for doing so.
I saw something online that said the haircare launch happening in the same month of the movie premiere was 100% a coincidence and happened because the movie got pushed back.
I believe it's true just because of the logistics to launch an entire line in a place like Target is going to be a huge undertaking and require months if not years to accomplish for a new brand. If Blake was partnering with L'Oreal or Proctor and Gamble or Estee Lauder and just slapping her name onto products designed from their labs, then the time to market would have been shorter and Blake could have tied the launch to her movie.
We don't know how many of the negative online comments about Blake were real. They might have all been paid comments by his crisis mgmt PR team. Or the CM PR team might have just gotten the ball rolling negative and sat back and occasionally nudged it.
That's the problem with social media - no one knows if there is a REAL person behind the comments or a Russian bot. And now we are aware that there are crisis mgmt PR teams out there trying to turn the tide - so even if it's a real person making the comments - is it the person's real thought or are they being paid, and how many identities are they posting under.
Such a good point! The PR team's involvement makes it hard to know how real any of this was. One thing I'm learning from this is to question impressions I have about a person I don't actually know. It's really eye opening to how much media opinion can be manipulated and how easily.
I have to believe the CM PR team got the ball rolling secure in the knowledge that the internet loves to take a woman down a few pegs and Blake is not a perfect angel (though no human being is, and her faults do not warrant the treatment she received from Justin). Blake has some strikes against her like the plantation wedding and her defense of Woody Allen that make it easier for people online to jump on the hate train. Sony also did her no favors with the "grab your girlfriends and wear your flowers" thing. And Justin knew that was the approach the studio was taking and that Blake was going to follow it.
The CM PR also knew how to manipulate algorithms so that those who had not taken a side just yet and wanted to do their own research would get results that heavily skewed in Justin's favor.
Yup. I know bots are an issue online BUT real people really are happy to jump on a hate train, especially against a woman. (I’ve noticed the tendency to blame bots when it’s mostly women/women-centric spaces doing the hating, but that’s a convo for another day). Sorry if this topic is forbidden but the same thing happens w/hate that Meghan Markle gets: it’s not (all) bots, some actual people ARE just that awful on the internet.
I found out earlier this year that there are subreddits devoted to hating on (though the users there would say snarking) Meghan Markle. I use Reddit but am not all that interested in celebrity gossip, but I have to assume the celebrity gossip subreddits are much the same. And it would take just a nudge to get the majority of the sub to turn on Blake.
I have also made the mistake of viewing the comments on gossip pages like Crazy Days and Nights, and there is another forum devoted to hating on women.
I'm familiar! A lot of Redditors hide their vile thoughts about something behind "snark" or "I'm a fan, I just have (a wild amount of) critiques!" Just...be a hater out loud lol. I think it's a lot of expended energy on someone you clearly dislike. At times though, I admit I have gone through certain snark pages to see if anyone else has picked up on XYZ quality, but I liken it to reading one-star book reviews to validate my thoughts lol.
Also, yeah I heard CDAN has gone full-on conspiracy crazytown, unfortunate!
Of all the horrendous things in that list, I can’t get over him claiming he could speak to Blake's deceased father. She should legally be allowed to hit him with a very large stick.
A friendly reminder to never put in writing anything that you wouldn’t want to see in a legal document. You don’t own your electronic communications, your employer or the tech company do. Also, more importantly, don’t be an asshole and especially not a professional asshole.
That is also what stood out to me when reading about this. One would think a PR firm would know to not leave a paper trail when discussing the takedown of a person.
My take was that they forgot that electronic communications is a 'paper trail'. It sounds like they weren't producing documents but still texting about it. Just wow.
This sort of campaign absolutely happens often in political comms, but I think those people have been able to avoid leaving evidence like this.
I can see that, but when it's a minicomputer provided by your workplace you should be able to put two and two together to figure out nothing on that phone is private. Or at least use an encrypted form of communication when discussing sensitive things.
This is the height of professional incompetence. In 2007 I was told that anything I wrote or sent o my work phone/Blackberry was discoverable. It’s not rocket science- have separate work and personal phones, don’t put anything in writing that you don’t want read in court.
Legal document? My rule is always on the front page of the local newspaper (course I say more than in writing, don't do something that can't go on the front page).
Seriously, we get told this all the time where I work and it's not even a PR firm. My boss is always reminding us to be careful about what we write on work-related platforms because we're subject to FOIA requests. If a bunch of librarians know to be careful about things like this, then an actual PR professional sure as heck should.
Well, we librarians are a bit more up-to-date on things like FOIA than most corporate employees. I have not personally helped a patron with a FOIA request, but I do know many others have.
I also live in a purple state, so I keep up with the various stories that break dealing with libraries. I know it's a matter of when not if the book banners, Moms for Liberty, Kirk Cameron, etc. show up at my library. I know not to use my personal phone in any capacity for work so I can't get subpoenaed. Though the joke would be on them having to read boring texts and wade through various Cleveland Browns memes.
I'm a school librarian in NM which definitely has deep red parts but is mostly a blue state and we recently had a pastor from NC who basically goes around speaking for book bans who was sponsored by Moms for Liberty at a school board meeting. It was apropos of nothing but to rabble-rouse.
And I've definitely had several "take this offline" conversations. It's never really anything interesting but more of a better safe than sorry situation.
Librarian here. What sucks for us is we use Microsoft teams which requires authentication to log in and you need a phone to do so. We all have to use our private phones. Frustrating.
We use a key fob for authentication for email and logging in. I realize I may have misspoke in my previous comment. I do have to have my work email on my phone, but I do not use said phone for anything else work related outside of the 5 days a year I need to contact staff or my director after hours. My employer does offer a work phone that I declined because I don't want to have to carry 2 phones around all the time and my IT guy is an Apple guy while I prefer my Android. I do have some coworkers who use their work phones as their personal phones, and I do not comprehend that one at all.
Yeah I've worked at companies where text messages and emails have been subpoenaed for lawsuits. It really sucks to have someone's text l, complete with 'LOL' in the newspaper
I'm very disappointed that you, as the authors of this site, do not issue any sort of real apology. A vague, "we were hoodwinked kinda", sentence is not, we wrote about it a whole bunch and we were wrong. Several other websites, substacks, columns have actually said they were sorry. It's all in a day's work for PR folks? How about, and we were a part of their targeted demographic and performed as they wanted? I've enjoyed your takes on so much, but this is not a situation you should take so lightly.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. The original piece took everything Baldoni said at face value and spent paragraphs blaming Lively--there were some balancing phrases but as a whole it got the message across that she was the problem. You (and almost everyone commenting) fully fell for that campaign, and I was hoping for more self-reflection there.
Kudos to the two people in those comments who actually called the situation correctly.
In the original piece I expressed that I didn’t care for how people were jumping on Blake for everything and assuming she was an evil person when she was actually just trying to get a job done (the story about the competing cuts is not in dispute, I don’t think), and I remember at the time feeling like I was gonna be on an island even just with that; in retrospect rereading the piece, I don’t think I said it strongly enough (and I may be conflating things I said in the comments with things I thought I put in the piece itself?). In an attempt to lay out what was happening as it was unfolding, I definitely landed too quickly in “Everyone probably just made each other mad” territory. And for sure I did fall for thinking Blake was behind the bad marketing. You’re right that I could have been clearer in being sorry — not simply for being wrong, but for how wrong — because I really am. I was not Team Baldoni but I wasn’t firmly Team Blake either; I often tend to be Team The Truth Is Somewhere In the Middle and I wish I hadn’t been. I wish I had read between all the lines correctly and agree that full kudos go to the people who nailed it. Blake, I am sorry and I owe you several; ditto to our readers. —H
Thank you, Heather, for setting a classy example here. I read Andrea and Daisy's comments yesterday and came back today to see if you had responded. I did go back and read your piece from August or whenever that was, so I was curious if you would engage here, now. I love this response--it is so honest and authentic and real.
I think about this a lot--how my opinions are shaped by whom and what I listen to and who is controlling that content? I imagine as writers and owners of a popular site like this one, you think about that as your responsibility, too. I love that you wrote what you did above and I admire you even more.
I'm trying to keep my Blake takes to myself, kind of, because I'm still struggling with a dislike for her (which I harbored before this movie/PR mess!) while also being horrified at the smear campaign. I'm thinking yet again about the Amber Heard hit campaign and of course have been following the Gisèle Pelicot trial and, you know, just raging at men in general.
Ditto-- Blake has always been BEC for me, doubled when she got with Ryan and they seem more annoying together. I'm total "always believe the woman in such cases" but a bit of whataboutism is sneaking in at times with her, which is wrong. Not only nice people get harassed....
Also in believing the women-- Pacey, pay! I watch your show, use that money!
I will start by echoing that – yes, Broads – if you’re toying with the idea of getting a subscription to this substack. DO IT. The awards show live chats, alone, are worth it.
The Blake/Baldoni news is wild, and – as you so aptly put: “I feel like we are all peering within this week and trying to figure out which bait we took, and why.” … Admittedly, I had presumed the tension to stem from creative differences, and thought that her (and RR’s) money/power/fame had created weird power dynamics. I feel like an asshole.
[I still dislike the flowery campaign and the hair care tie-in, but you make good points about those.] A good lesson not to jump to conclusions in the absence of information.
I LOL’d at “you’d wonder what year it was” re: the JLo, Jewel and Costner bit. So true! Good for them, I guess? Staying power across the decades.
Sad to hear it about Lily and David (if true, of course.) … They seemed quite smitten. I still remember her so-cute wedding dress. I only really know her from GFY, so I did a bit of a dive through your links. It seems like she is incredibly talented (and gorgeous). I was sad to read about her mental health struggles, but power to her for her openness there. I wish her well. (And him, too.)
Excited for Severance. Love that show. Can’t believe it’s been three years!
Adding Thelma to the list.
NO, PACEY. DO BETTER.
Thank you for this newsletter, and all DWB content. This places is a treasure.
Thanks so much for this thoughtful newsletter. I’ve always thought of myself as pretty savvy in how I consume news, but the only things that seemed off to me with the Blake Baldoni movie was that she is normally pretty on top of things, the other actors seemed to be with her, and his connection with Depp’s PR firm. That last one especially gave me pause because of how terribly wronged Amber Heard was (and still is). But I accepted the core story of him being a good guy and her being really off target.
I appreciate the thoughts about the larger pr existential concerns. I hope I am more discerning in the future, but I unfortunately do not think this is rare or won’t happen again.
I didn’t know anything about him but a lot of people seemed to REALLY like him and I remember saying ‘I don’t think I could trust a man in Hollywood that much mostly’ and yikes did that turn out to be correct
On a flight recently, both my mom and I watched Thelma, and enjoyed it. (Though I also watched Quiz Lady, which I enjoyed a smidge more. Highly recommend!) HOWEVER...after watching the movie, my mother became increasingly concerned about being scammed, so when a Christmas gift from my brother arrived in the mail, she threw it away, convinced it was a scam. Oops!
To clarify, Alison was working on a different film which she did not name.
The extent of the sexual harassment is SO DISGUSTING and beyond what anyone could have imagined. I knew that he was so so sketch based on his interviews but MY GOD. BL solidarity.
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Even tho I'm subscribed, I wasn't able to vote on Severance recaps but PLEASE YES!
If you cannot get the poll to work on the webpage, try the Substack app.
thanks! that works and I voted.
I loved Thelma & have been telling everyone I know to watch. It’s just one of those movies that makes you smile.
I agree! I adored Thelma!
Definitely a sleeper and I loved it. I was worried it would be sad but it was the opposite, joyful and life-celebrating! I've been telling everyone to watch it.
I loved it!! I was afraid for a moment it would be too sad but it's just the right amount of sad. There was a part I laughed out loud about so hard when the parents are trying to find her and they say re: Richard Roundtree, "You know he has a show tonight, right?" It's a good one to watch with the parents--any parents. I also loved the tiny look Thelma and her grandson give each other when the adult parents are going off.
June Squibb is the best!
DWB coverage was my first thought when this broke!
Such gross stuff in the complaint. So depressing.
Do you think dropping this dec 20/21 was by design? Seems like a time when people want to bury things but of course nothing could bury this story…
Since Blake filed a lawsuit, I don't think she was trying to drop this story on the sly. With the holidays, maybe December 20th was the last day she could file in 2024.
I imagine if they did it in LA that most courts are on a slower pace this week and Friday is the “take out the trash day”.
HUGE kudos on the mea culpa on the Baldoni/Lively discourse. The whole thing was so yuck and I for one feel bad for even participating in it. Boobs Legsey forever. :-)
I have been looking forward to DWB discussion on the Lively/Baldoni lawsuit!
Mea culpa here too. While the fact that Baldoni was promoting alone and everyone else on the cast had aligned with BL was clearly a red flag, I also eventually believed in the mean girl internet hype, and regret that now. Even if BL was rude to that interviewer (who also posted pro-Johnny Depp content during his trial so something is fishy there), and even if the hair care rollout was a poor choice, she doesn’t have to be a perfect person to deserve a professional, respectful workplace. I’m making my way through the complaint and it’s appalling.
And 100% what you said: if someone of her fame and resources is subjected to that level of harassment on-set, it is horrifying to contemplate what women of more precarious professional footing are subjected to.
I’m sorry to see David Harbour and Lily Allen might be splitting up. They were very cute together and I loved their Vegas wedding photos. I didn’t love her criticism of Beyoncé doing a country album, and then immediately promoting her own country album plans, though.
I always thought something was very suspicious about that interview getting so much attention. It was like 8 years old so first, if you have to dig that far to find a mean one it’s not a pattern of behavior it’s an anomaly, and second, honestly the way the interviewer phrased it (maybe not intentionally! It’s pretty British!) it sounded more like an insult about weight gain than about the pregnancy and I can empathize with a tired actress feeling sensitive about weight gain and reacting. So the fact that was used as ‘proof’ she was a ‘mean girl’ felt like a real stretch to me and made me suspect a bit of a smear campaign- though of course no idea of the extent and my original view was similar to TFG- that the truth was somewhere in the middle as it is so often…
That interview getting dug up felt for me as par for the course when the internet turns on a woman. It never occurred to me that there was a coordinated smear campaign going on because this is what the internet does to women especially ones who get labeled "unlikeable." But, I had and still have zero skin in this game. I was never an avid viewer of Gossip Girl, nor did I have any clue who Justin was, and I could care less about a film adaptation of a Colleen Hoover novel. I also don't care about who follows who on Instagram nor who has unfollowed any particular celebrity. I honestly thought this was just a regular old Hollywood feud where both parties are equally culpable. Now I know this is not what happened.
I knew Justin from “Jane the Virgin” and had kind of followed him after that, and he did seem like he was a good guy.
I’m kind of surprised other stories haven’t come out yet — I absolutely believe Blake, but she can’t be the first woman he’s harassed like this.
That's how I feel- you never start at this level, you do little things that don't get stopped so you get increasing. But then he kinda disappeared after Jane the Virgin- was there a reason?
There has to be, right?
I’m trying to remember if his Ted Talk and book on toxic masculinity came out while JtV was still going or afterward…
(Speaking of JtV, one of the reasons I wish “Schmigadoon” was still going is Jaime Camil was just delightful on both.)
I feel like it was after or right at the end… I always loved him on the show and thought that was genuine- but clearly not!
I did watch gossip girl and generally appreciated Blake’s acting work but no deep investment and the knowledge that a bunch of people unfollowed him seemed shady to me so I was never on the anti Blake train.
But god this was so much worse than I thought.
Not to mention the narrative that BL must have been the "bad guy" because she's part of this power couple, and Taylor's friend, and pooooooooor Justin couldn't possible be the aggressor because he has so much less power.
Whatever. People want to hate on women, regardless of who they are, and he was the DIRECTOR and had the entire studio on his side. Hardly powerless.
You make an excellent point that this was an anomaly, not a pattern of behavior, if someone has to search back 8 years for one example of BL being irritated in an interview. Anyone can have an off day, and anyone can feel sensitive to having weight gain commented on. It’s heartening to see the level of public support she’s getting, even with the predictable crappy comments as well.
Once that interviewer released a similar video of Anne Hathaway being "mean" I thought "maybe you're just bad at interviewing celebrities?" Asking someone to sing their responses is cringe and I guess she was going for cute/creative but it felt cringe. Not to be an AH apologist but she wasn't rude, she just declined to sing her answers. Both those old videos reek of "gotcha!"
I totally agree with this! I think it’s hard to fathom these marathon days of tons of interviews and if something rubs you the wrong way, after 20 of them, I can see just being so over it!
Interestingly, Anne Hathaway sent an apology to the report for her behavior https://variety.com/2024/film/news/anne-hathaway-apologizes-cringe-interview-2012-1236173278/.
I remain pretty agnostic re the Lively/Reynolds branding machine supermerger, but that's a completely separate question from what happened on that set. Absolute jerks can be victims, AND that doesn't make their abusers any less culpable or vile (BL may or may not be a total jerk, but it is very clear that Baldoni is something much, much worse than one, and so is his billionaire business partner).
For me, this is similar to how there is no celebrity I am less inclined to allow the grace of a "the aughts were really really toxic!" revisit than Paris Hilton (I worked at Bunim-Murray, I know damn well that woman was ten times worse than any media portrayal), but I fully support her efforts to burn the abusive "bad kids reeducation camp" unregulated boarding school industry to the ground. Not only is Blake's character, good or bad, irrelevant here, no matter HOW much an ass she may or may not have been at any other point, I hope she salts the earth over these creeps' metaphorical charred bodies.
I'm not trying to pat myself on the back, but I never trusted the Baldoni camp. The other actors and Colleen un-following of Justin and not wanting to appear with him--that ALONE had me believing the women. Something stunk.
The only part I thought was a bad look from BL was the simultaneous product launches, but I admit there's a lot we don't know about motives.
I was HEARTBROKEN but not surprised at that text or whatever between the two PR women when the one says something along the lines of "kinda sad how well this is working-how much people want to hate on women." Not sure how she puts her head on the pillow. Sigh
Agreed, I knew something was up when Jenny Slate was asked about Justin’s directing and she wouldn’t even say his name and gave some weird non-answer. Though I’ll admit I did side eye Blake about the timing of her hair care line and the flowery marketing, but as ever Heather did such a thoughtful response on why Blake may have done that. I was very much looking forward to seeing what DWB had to say when all this dropped.
And for the flowery marketing--it's now public info that that was the decided-upon strategy--for everyone to market it as a story of female empowerment, as opposed to a heavy movie about DV (not that it's not about DV, but position it as a strong woman survives as opposed to is a victim). Justin/his team decided to break with that when they saw an opportunity to bring BL down. He started talking about DV to make her look bad/like she was glossing over it. BUT THAT WAS THE AGREED-UPON STRATEGY.
Look, I never saw Gossip Girl, and I'd only seen BL in Simple Favor, or whatever that (great) movie with Anna Kendrick was. I'm not any sort of super-fan. But to me, it's just been so clear something stunk with JB. I wish I could say I was surprised, but sadly, I'm not.
I think it says in the lawsuit that the company set up the date to launch a year in advance and it was a coincidence
I'd never heard of him before the movie launched, and have been skeptically neutral on her since she doubled down on "antebellum style" or whatever it was on her GOOP-lite site, so without the writeup here a few months back I wouldn't have even been aware there was a potential controversy to be aware of (I was not aware that Colleen Hoover was the new Danielle Steel, either). But again: it doesn't matter if she sucks or is an angel. He's very clearly a nightmare, and lost all benefit of the doubt when he hired Johnny Depp's crisis team.
I will also say, in the not-patting-myself-on-the-back, that I credit Lainey Gossip entirely for my OG stance of "believe the women" and side-eyeing Justin. What Sarah and Lainey were writing from the beginning (last summer) really landed for me. Links to just two of their early posts below, if anyone is interested. They talked about it quite a lot towards the end of the summer and it turns out, now that we have BL's court filing, they nailed it.
https://www.laineygossip.com/what-is-going-on-with-it-ends-with-us-press-tour-directorstar-justin-baldoni/78691
https://www.laineygossip.com/should-blake-lively-be-vilified-not-sticking-landing-portrayal-domestic-abuse-survivor-on-it-ends-with-us-press-tour/78716
Those articles really are on point!
I feel the exact same way! In fact I looked back to see what I Tweeted/texted during the height of it and yeah, to me it was always kind of obvious that 1) Justin was the problem 2) many ppl relied on their confirmation bias about/against Blake. It was a case of, “believe women, unless it’s one I don’t really like, and then, eh.” Even after this story came out, there were ppl unwilling to believe that they’d been manipulated and they still considered Blake to be the issue. I also totally believe that the negative internet chatter about her came from real people and not bots, bc as the PR lady’s text said, people are just that inclined to hate women. Their Johnny Depp/Amber Heard playbook worked so well the first time of course they replicated it to much success, sadly.
"I never actually disliked her before, but she's female and pretty and female, so yeah I've always not liked her."
Being female is so hazardous.
And somehow MEN feel like they have the right to be aggrieved! (Well, the ones who leapt to shred Amber Heard, in defense of Johnny Depp of all men in the world)
As soon as this story broke I wanted to talk about it here! I couldn't work out why the rest of the cast was hating him, so this definitely explains a lot.
My initial reaction to this was that sexual harassment is wrong and she didn't deserve that treatment. I'm curious if that will legally actually amount to retaliation, which I think has a specific definition. I think the goal is more to tell her story, and that's certainly worked.
But it does sound like a lot of the negative reaction online to Blake was down to things like marketing her own products. I didn't realize the studio insisted on the marketing plan for the movie, but she also could have potentially not launched the hair line. That said, it is depressing how easy it is for everyone to hate a woman.
From the NYT story, it sounds like Justin was afraid that Blake was going to speak out about the harassment, and hired the crisis PR folks to get ahead of that. So they amplified the negative reactions on social media enough that the industry mags picked up the stories.
It probably didn’t help that Blake’s haircare line isn’t that great. I bought the mask that Heather said smelled really good, and it does indeed smell good but I don’t know that it’s anymore conditioning than regular conditioner.
I think retaliation legally is like, getting demoted, or having your hours changed. I'm not a lawyer, so maybe someone who is can comment, but I thought she was specifically claiming retaliation.
If she's just claiming they planned to damage her reputation, they certainly did that - but like Heather said, that's going on every day in Hollywood. It's practically business as usual, but maybe that will change as a result of this.
Yeah, I think the haircare was a misstep. Might have helped if it was better, but ultimately probably not the time.
She demanded that he stop harassing her in her workplace, and in turn he orchestrated an intentionally misleading campaign to damage her reputation (which would, of course, lead to her getting fewer jobs). Pretty classic retaliation, to be honest.
To be clear, what he did sounds awful. I just wasn't sure what the legal requirements were. My take was the suit was more about getting her story told then an expectation of being able to go forward legally. And good for her for doing so.
Um... are you really rules-lawyering something this blatant? Whyyyyy?
Like I said initially, I was literally curious what would happen legally. Just as part of a discussion on the topic.
I saw something online that said the haircare launch happening in the same month of the movie premiere was 100% a coincidence and happened because the movie got pushed back.
Oh if that's true, that's unfortunate. I think more parts are out of people's control then we'd realize.
I believe it's true just because of the logistics to launch an entire line in a place like Target is going to be a huge undertaking and require months if not years to accomplish for a new brand. If Blake was partnering with L'Oreal or Proctor and Gamble or Estee Lauder and just slapping her name onto products designed from their labs, then the time to market would have been shorter and Blake could have tied the launch to her movie.
We don't know how many of the negative online comments about Blake were real. They might have all been paid comments by his crisis mgmt PR team. Or the CM PR team might have just gotten the ball rolling negative and sat back and occasionally nudged it.
That's the problem with social media - no one knows if there is a REAL person behind the comments or a Russian bot. And now we are aware that there are crisis mgmt PR teams out there trying to turn the tide - so even if it's a real person making the comments - is it the person's real thought or are they being paid, and how many identities are they posting under.
Such a good point! The PR team's involvement makes it hard to know how real any of this was. One thing I'm learning from this is to question impressions I have about a person I don't actually know. It's really eye opening to how much media opinion can be manipulated and how easily.
I have to believe the CM PR team got the ball rolling secure in the knowledge that the internet loves to take a woman down a few pegs and Blake is not a perfect angel (though no human being is, and her faults do not warrant the treatment she received from Justin). Blake has some strikes against her like the plantation wedding and her defense of Woody Allen that make it easier for people online to jump on the hate train. Sony also did her no favors with the "grab your girlfriends and wear your flowers" thing. And Justin knew that was the approach the studio was taking and that Blake was going to follow it.
The CM PR also knew how to manipulate algorithms so that those who had not taken a side just yet and wanted to do their own research would get results that heavily skewed in Justin's favor.
Yup. I know bots are an issue online BUT real people really are happy to jump on a hate train, especially against a woman. (I’ve noticed the tendency to blame bots when it’s mostly women/women-centric spaces doing the hating, but that’s a convo for another day). Sorry if this topic is forbidden but the same thing happens w/hate that Meghan Markle gets: it’s not (all) bots, some actual people ARE just that awful on the internet.
I found out earlier this year that there are subreddits devoted to hating on (though the users there would say snarking) Meghan Markle. I use Reddit but am not all that interested in celebrity gossip, but I have to assume the celebrity gossip subreddits are much the same. And it would take just a nudge to get the majority of the sub to turn on Blake.
I have also made the mistake of viewing the comments on gossip pages like Crazy Days and Nights, and there is another forum devoted to hating on women.
I'm familiar! A lot of Redditors hide their vile thoughts about something behind "snark" or "I'm a fan, I just have (a wild amount of) critiques!" Just...be a hater out loud lol. I think it's a lot of expended energy on someone you clearly dislike. At times though, I admit I have gone through certain snark pages to see if anyone else has picked up on XYZ quality, but I liken it to reading one-star book reviews to validate my thoughts lol.
Also, yeah I heard CDAN has gone full-on conspiracy crazytown, unfortunate!
I love how this newsletter gives advice to JLo and Joshua Jackson, and I truly hope they are reading this and take the advice.
Me too!! ….but I fear that they are not. 😞
Of all the horrendous things in that list, I can’t get over him claiming he could speak to Blake's deceased father. She should legally be allowed to hit him with a very large stick.
Wait what? Which link was that in?
It's in the legal filing here on page 22: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.1.0.pdf . The wxact quote is ' Mr. Baldoni engaged in other behaviors that were shocking and emotionally distressing. For example, he claimed he could speak to the dead, and on several occasions told her
that he had spoken to her dead father. It was off putting and violative for Ms. Baldoni to claim a
personal relationship with her recently deceased father.' Sorry, I'm not sure if this link specifically is in the article!
A friendly reminder to never put in writing anything that you wouldn’t want to see in a legal document. You don’t own your electronic communications, your employer or the tech company do. Also, more importantly, don’t be an asshole and especially not a professional asshole.
That is also what stood out to me when reading about this. One would think a PR firm would know to not leave a paper trail when discussing the takedown of a person.
My take was that they forgot that electronic communications is a 'paper trail'. It sounds like they weren't producing documents but still texting about it. Just wow.
This sort of campaign absolutely happens often in political comms, but I think those people have been able to avoid leaving evidence like this.
I can see that, but when it's a minicomputer provided by your workplace you should be able to put two and two together to figure out nothing on that phone is private. Or at least use an encrypted form of communication when discussing sensitive things.
This is the height of professional incompetence. In 2007 I was told that anything I wrote or sent o my work phone/Blackberry was discoverable. It’s not rocket science- have separate work and personal phones, don’t put anything in writing that you don’t want read in court.
And use Signal instead of texting, with a password different from your unlock password that your company has!
Legal document? My rule is always on the front page of the local newspaper (course I say more than in writing, don't do something that can't go on the front page).
Seriously, we get told this all the time where I work and it's not even a PR firm. My boss is always reminding us to be careful about what we write on work-related platforms because we're subject to FOIA requests. If a bunch of librarians know to be careful about things like this, then an actual PR professional sure as heck should.
Well, we librarians are a bit more up-to-date on things like FOIA than most corporate employees. I have not personally helped a patron with a FOIA request, but I do know many others have.
I also live in a purple state, so I keep up with the various stories that break dealing with libraries. I know it's a matter of when not if the book banners, Moms for Liberty, Kirk Cameron, etc. show up at my library. I know not to use my personal phone in any capacity for work so I can't get subpoenaed. Though the joke would be on them having to read boring texts and wade through various Cleveland Browns memes.
I'm a school librarian in NM which definitely has deep red parts but is mostly a blue state and we recently had a pastor from NC who basically goes around speaking for book bans who was sponsored by Moms for Liberty at a school board meeting. It was apropos of nothing but to rabble-rouse.
And I've definitely had several "take this offline" conversations. It's never really anything interesting but more of a better safe than sorry situation.
Librarian here. What sucks for us is we use Microsoft teams which requires authentication to log in and you need a phone to do so. We all have to use our private phones. Frustrating.
We use a key fob for authentication for email and logging in. I realize I may have misspoke in my previous comment. I do have to have my work email on my phone, but I do not use said phone for anything else work related outside of the 5 days a year I need to contact staff or my director after hours. My employer does offer a work phone that I declined because I don't want to have to carry 2 phones around all the time and my IT guy is an Apple guy while I prefer my Android. I do have some coworkers who use their work phones as their personal phones, and I do not comprehend that one at all.
Yeah I've worked at companies where text messages and emails have been subpoenaed for lawsuits. It really sucks to have someone's text l, complete with 'LOL' in the newspaper
I'm very disappointed that you, as the authors of this site, do not issue any sort of real apology. A vague, "we were hoodwinked kinda", sentence is not, we wrote about it a whole bunch and we were wrong. Several other websites, substacks, columns have actually said they were sorry. It's all in a day's work for PR folks? How about, and we were a part of their targeted demographic and performed as they wanted? I've enjoyed your takes on so much, but this is not a situation you should take so lightly.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. The original piece took everything Baldoni said at face value and spent paragraphs blaming Lively--there were some balancing phrases but as a whole it got the message across that she was the problem. You (and almost everyone commenting) fully fell for that campaign, and I was hoping for more self-reflection there.
Kudos to the two people in those comments who actually called the situation correctly.
In the original piece I expressed that I didn’t care for how people were jumping on Blake for everything and assuming she was an evil person when she was actually just trying to get a job done (the story about the competing cuts is not in dispute, I don’t think), and I remember at the time feeling like I was gonna be on an island even just with that; in retrospect rereading the piece, I don’t think I said it strongly enough (and I may be conflating things I said in the comments with things I thought I put in the piece itself?). In an attempt to lay out what was happening as it was unfolding, I definitely landed too quickly in “Everyone probably just made each other mad” territory. And for sure I did fall for thinking Blake was behind the bad marketing. You’re right that I could have been clearer in being sorry — not simply for being wrong, but for how wrong — because I really am. I was not Team Baldoni but I wasn’t firmly Team Blake either; I often tend to be Team The Truth Is Somewhere In the Middle and I wish I hadn’t been. I wish I had read between all the lines correctly and agree that full kudos go to the people who nailed it. Blake, I am sorry and I owe you several; ditto to our readers. —H
Thank you, Heather, for setting a classy example here. I read Andrea and Daisy's comments yesterday and came back today to see if you had responded. I did go back and read your piece from August or whenever that was, so I was curious if you would engage here, now. I love this response--it is so honest and authentic and real.
I think about this a lot--how my opinions are shaped by whom and what I listen to and who is controlling that content? I imagine as writers and owners of a popular site like this one, you think about that as your responsibility, too. I love that you wrote what you did above and I admire you even more.
I'm trying to keep my Blake takes to myself, kind of, because I'm still struggling with a dislike for her (which I harbored before this movie/PR mess!) while also being horrified at the smear campaign. I'm thinking yet again about the Amber Heard hit campaign and of course have been following the Gisèle Pelicot trial and, you know, just raging at men in general.
Ditto-- Blake has always been BEC for me, doubled when she got with Ryan and they seem more annoying together. I'm total "always believe the woman in such cases" but a bit of whataboutism is sneaking in at times with her, which is wrong. Not only nice people get harassed....
Also in believing the women-- Pacey, pay! I watch your show, use that money!
Ooo – I have so many thoughts to share.
I will start by echoing that – yes, Broads – if you’re toying with the idea of getting a subscription to this substack. DO IT. The awards show live chats, alone, are worth it.
The Blake/Baldoni news is wild, and – as you so aptly put: “I feel like we are all peering within this week and trying to figure out which bait we took, and why.” … Admittedly, I had presumed the tension to stem from creative differences, and thought that her (and RR’s) money/power/fame had created weird power dynamics. I feel like an asshole.
[I still dislike the flowery campaign and the hair care tie-in, but you make good points about those.] A good lesson not to jump to conclusions in the absence of information.
I LOL’d at “you’d wonder what year it was” re: the JLo, Jewel and Costner bit. So true! Good for them, I guess? Staying power across the decades.
Sad to hear it about Lily and David (if true, of course.) … They seemed quite smitten. I still remember her so-cute wedding dress. I only really know her from GFY, so I did a bit of a dive through your links. It seems like she is incredibly talented (and gorgeous). I was sad to read about her mental health struggles, but power to her for her openness there. I wish her well. (And him, too.)
Excited for Severance. Love that show. Can’t believe it’s been three years!
Adding Thelma to the list.
NO, PACEY. DO BETTER.
Thank you for this newsletter, and all DWB content. This places is a treasure.
Thanks so much for this thoughtful newsletter. I’ve always thought of myself as pretty savvy in how I consume news, but the only things that seemed off to me with the Blake Baldoni movie was that she is normally pretty on top of things, the other actors seemed to be with her, and his connection with Depp’s PR firm. That last one especially gave me pause because of how terribly wronged Amber Heard was (and still is). But I accepted the core story of him being a good guy and her being really off target.
I appreciate the thoughts about the larger pr existential concerns. I hope I am more discerning in the future, but I unfortunately do not think this is rare or won’t happen again.
I didn’t know anything about him but a lot of people seemed to REALLY like him and I remember saying ‘I don’t think I could trust a man in Hollywood that much mostly’ and yikes did that turn out to be correct
Is there a way to give gift subscriptions? I know so many people who would love this ...
I think so!
FYI, is your username intentionally your email address?
Try this link
https://drinkswithbroads.substack.com/subscribe?utm_source=menu&gift=true&next=https%3A%2F%2Fdrinkswithbroads.substack.com%2F
Only my screen there's a purple button in the upper right corner of this page that says 'Gift a subscription'. It's next to my avatar.
On a flight recently, both my mom and I watched Thelma, and enjoyed it. (Though I also watched Quiz Lady, which I enjoyed a smidge more. Highly recommend!) HOWEVER...after watching the movie, my mother became increasingly concerned about being scammed, so when a Christmas gift from my brother arrived in the mail, she threw it away, convinced it was a scam. Oops!
Oh no!