December 22, 2024
According to Blake Lively’s new lawsuit, Justin Baldoni organized an online smear campaign against the actress amid their It Ends With Us feud.
In her lawsuit, Lively shared screenshots of Baldoni’s text messages with PR executive Jennifer Abel and crisis management expert Melissa Nathan where he allegedly plans a smear campaign using Hailey Bieber’s example.
In one of the screenshots used in the lawsuit (obtained by People), Baldoni shares a screenshot of a post about Hailey Bieber shared on X (formerly Twitter) which read: "Hailey Bieber's history of bullying many women."
"This is what we would need," the Jane the Virgin star wrote along the image.
Abel replied: "Yes I literally just spoke to Melissa about this on the break about what we discussed last night for social and digital. Focus on Reddit, TikTok, [Instagram]."
The lawsuit further alleged that Abel sent a message to Nathan the same day, which read: "I'm having reckless thoughts of wanting to plant pieces this week of how horrible Blake is to work with… Just to get ahead of it."
"Same," Nathan replied, sharing that a journalist pal of hers was "ready when we are.”
In the lawsuit, the Gossip Girl actress also claims that crisis talks were held for the movie at her request and were attended by her husband Ryan Reynolds. The actress shared a list of demands which were allegedly accepted by the studio and included, “no more personal, physical touching of, or sexual comments by, Mr. Baldoni or Mr. Heath to be tolerated by [Blake Lively] and/or any of her employees, as well as any female cast or crew without their express consent.”
Further requests included: "no more adding of sex scenes, oral sex or on camera climaxing by BL outside the scope of the script BL approved when signing onto the project."
Fans noticed tension between Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively when during the promotion of the movie, the duo didn’t do any interviews together. Even at the lavish premiere of It Ends With Us, there were two clear teams of the cast and other executives at the red carpet.