It ends with Blake Lively

New Delhi:

Blake Lively is not your everyday damsel in distress. First, she’s a Hollywood A-lister. She has the money and the strength to fight a fight. It doesn’t really matter that the person she’s going head-on against is a director, actor and blessed with the kind of looks that often let men get away with a lot. Justin Baldoni. The man who wanted to “bury” Blake.

Lively took him to court.

Blake Lively’s 80-page complaint against Justin Baldoni, her co-star and director of this year’s breakout hit It ends with ushas sent all of Hollywood into a spiral. Lively accuses Baldoni, his company Wayfarer Studios and its CEO Jamey Heath of a range of misconduct ranging from an outright smear campaign to sexual harassment and astroturfing.

Astroturfing is the practice of “posting opinions or comments on the Internet, in the media, etc., that appear to come from ordinary members of the public, but actually come from a particular company or political group.”

Here is an overview of 80 page complaint:

• There are disturbing details of Baldoni “crying” in Blake’s vanity carriage “over her weight”.
• There’s Baldoni lingering on Blake’s lips long after the camera stopped rolling.
• There are allegations that Baldoni added sex scenes without Lively’s consent, did not have an intimacy coordinator on set and improvised kissing scenes.
• Baldoni made lewd, sexual comments and showed Lively nude photos of other women, including his wife.
• Baldoni went into Blake’s trailer while she was nursing.
• Baldoni and Jamey Heath discussed pornography and Baldoni’s past addiction.
• Baldoni claimed he could communicate with Lively’s recently deceased father.

When Lively complained that the men on set “repeatedly violated personal boundaries and made sexual and other inappropriate comments to her,” the studio agreed to have an intimacy coordinator on board.

But for the men, Baldoni and CEO Heath, it was the beginning of a long and orchestrated smear campaign against the actress, Lively’s complaint alleges.

Baldoni allegedly hired the crisis management agency TAG to, well, manage the crisis with Baldoni at the center. Melissa Nathan, Baldoni’s crisis manager, has Drake, Travis Scott and Johnny Depp among her former clients. It wasn’t all rosy.

During the promotions of the film, hawk-eyed internet speculators spotted something amiss. Baldoni was nowhere to be seen. Blake Lively was up for promotion without Baldoni.

At the premiere in New York It ends with us, Blake was accompanied by her husband Ryan Reynolds and co-star Brandon Sklenar. Baldoni had disappeared again.

It didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to sniff out something was wrong. Rumors of a feud between the leads began to drive conversations in Hollywood and on TikTok.

Press tour of It ends with us was also a little off for a film about domestic violence. There were flowers, pink carpets and a lot of focus on pep talks for ‘survivors’ of domestic violence. It was tone deaf.

Lively was criticized for her choice of words: “Grab your friends, put on your flowers and go see it.” All around there were questions about “why”. Lively was criticized for promoting the film as if it were “a sequel to Barbie”. The abundance of pink was not lost on anyone.

The only time Baldoni talked about Lively was during their weeks-long press tour Todaywhere he called her a “dynamic creative” who “had her hands in every part of this production and everything she touched made (it) better.”

On the other hand, the media was asked to refrain from asking questions about Justin Baldoni by Blake Lively’s team.

While all of this played out publicly behind closed doors on set, the story was a little different. Ironic, if you will. A film about domestic violence; on the set, a different kind of violence unfolded.

Justin Baldoni tried to “shift the narrative against Blake Lively”.

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni on the set of It Ends With Us. Image courtesy: Getty

The crisis manager was hired. Nathan began microdosing the media about how Blake “weaponized feminism”. Blake went from being the victim to the perpetrator of everything that was wrong in Baldoniland.

Baldoni knew he had to change the narrative and do it quickly, very quickly.

After all, in a world of one-click decisions, split seconds cost famous people their reputations.

Lively had to turn off comments on her personal Instagram page after ‘crisis management’ by TAG, which prompted hordes of burner accounts to attack her brands.

TAG, the crisis management agency hired by Baldoni, issued a “scenario planning document” as a ‘recommendation’ to get ahead of the narrative.

The document, which is part of an exhibit in Blake Lively’s complaint against Baldoni, contained a hint of misleading messages that:

1. ” (p)production members lost their jobs due to (Ms Lively’s) takeover and insisted on involvement”;

2. Mrs. Lively “involved her husband to create (an) balance of power between her and (Mr. Baldoni)”;

3. Ms. Lively has a “less than favorable reputation in the industry”;

4. Ms. Lively had “a clear, probable motive… to bully herself into buying the rights to It starts with us“- the sequel to It ends with us currently owned by Baldoni’s production house, Wayfarer Productions.

The scenario planning document did not meet the standards Baldoni expected. His texts after reading the document read, “not sure I feel the protection I felt during the call.”

TAG’s response was cautious, but promised to take care of Baldoni: “You know, we can bury anybody. We can’t write it to him (Baldoni). Imagine if a document that says all the things he wants , ends up in the wrong hands.”

When the astroturfing campaign against Lively was launched, Nathan wrote in an email: “Majority of socials are so pro Justin and I don’t even agree with half of them lol.”

Over the years, Justin Baldoni has carefully crafted his image as that of an ally, and not just an advocate for feminism. His podcast, man enough were in the same direction. His public appearances were the same.

The affair It ends with us shows us that maybe it was all a hoax at best. A sham that ends with Blake Lively.