Justin Baldoni’s ex-publicist is suing him and his PR team following Blake Lively’s complaint

On By Littum

A former publicist for actor Justin Baldoni claims his current publicity team conspired to harm her and steal her clients in their efforts to allegedly launch a “smear campaign” against his “It Ends With Us” co-star Blake Lively.

In one lawsuit filed in New York Supreme Court on Tuesday, Stephanie Jones and her agency Jonesworks are suing Baldoni’s publicist Jennifer Abel for breach of contract, claiming she violated the terms of her employment by creating a competing firm and stealing documents and clients from under Jones. It also accuses Abel of defamation, according to a copy of suit.

Jones’ suit, which was first reported by The New York Times, comes days after a separate complaint filed by Lively with the California Civil Rights Department against some of the same defendants alleging that Baldoni sexually harassed her on set and then engaged in a retaliatory campaign facilitated by Abel and crisis communications representative Melissa Nathan. Nathan is also named as a defendant in Jones’ complaint, along with Baldoni and his company, Wayfarer Studios.

Lively’s claims have sent shockwaves through the industry. Her complaint has also put the role of crisis PR firms in the spotlight, with many online reconsidering some of the negative headlines surrounding Lively during the promotional tour for “It Ends With Us.”

Jones represented Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios from 2017 until August of this year. Abel worked for Jonesworks from 2020 until August. Several of Abel’s text messages and emails, obtained via a Jonesworks subpoena, according to the suit, were heavily cited in Lively’s complaint.

The movie “It Ends With Us,” an adaptation of the popular Colleen Hoover novel, was released in theaters in August. Lively portrays heroine Lily Bloom, while Baldoni plays her abusive romantic partner, Ryle Kincaid. Baldoni also adapted and directed the project.

According to Jones’ suit, in August Baldoni “began to fear that the increased attention given to him and the film would cause reports of allegations of his misconduct to come out.” Nathan and Abel subsequently “began to formulate an unsustainable strategy to discredit and suppress any potential revelations about Baldoni’s on-set behavior” without Jones’ knowledge or approval, the suit alleges.

“Behind Jones’s back, they secretly coordinated with Baldoni and Wayfarer to conduct an aggressive media smear campaign against Baldoni’s co-star, then used the crisis as an opportunity to drive a wedge between Jones and Baldoni and publicly lay the blame for it. smear campaign on Jones — when Jones had no knowledge or involvement in it,” the lawsuit states.

Abel and Nathan “leveraged their teams to create and perpetuate negative content about Lively on social media platforms such as Reddit and TikTok,” according to the suit.

“At the same time that Abel and Nathan worked to protect Baldoni from negative press attention, they actively worked on their media contacts to plant negative stories about Jones and Jonesworks,” Jones’ suit states. They used “more than a dozen fake social media accounts and dark web accounts that defamed Jones and Jonesworks.”

Bryan Freedman, an attorney representing Baldoni, Wayfarer, Abel and Nathan, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Jones’ case on Tuesday.

In an earlier response to Lively’s complaint, Freedman wrote that Nathan’s company, The Agency Group PR, “acted as any crisis management firm would when hired by a client experiencing threats from two extremely powerful individuals with unlimited resources,” referring to Lively and her husband. Ryan Reynolds. Freedman also referred to Lively’s claims as “completely false, outrageous and deliberately poor.”

In her case, Jones cited some text messages she said she got from Abel’s work phone after terminating Abel in August. Some of the texts that Jones included in her own suit were previously unpublished, including one allegedly sent by Abel that called Baldoni “unlikable and unrealistic as a leading man.”

“I can’t stand him. He’s so pompous. A men’s retreat during the release, is he crazy?!” said one of the texts from Abel’s phone. “He doesn’t need a retreat. He must be humiliated.”

In the wake of demands from Lively, who asked Baldoni and Wayfarer CEO Jamey Heath to stop certain behaviors, including entering her trailer while she was in a state of undress and adding unscripted sexual scenes to the film, Jones claimed that she had originally planned to counter the burgeoning media narrative surrounding tensions between the stars with “a positive press strategy.”

Instead, Jones claims Abel and Nathan conducted “an aggressive media smear campaign” against her and Lively at the same time on behalf of Baldoni and Wayfarer, amid their own plans to set up a competing PR business.

Jones’ “lawsuit seeks to finally put an end to their continued wrongdoing and to compensate Jones and Jonesworks for the harm caused by defendants’ conduct and scheme,” it said. She requests a jury trial.

In the days since Lively’s complaint was filed, many in Hollywood — including the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA and Sony Pictures Entertainment, the studio behind “It Ends With Us” — have thrown their support behind Lively.

Baldoni was dropped by his talent agency WME. He has not publicly addressed Lively’s complaint or Jones’ lawsuit.