Justin Baldoni's Astroturfing, Slander, Sexual Harassment: It Ends With Blake Lively

Blake Lively isn't your everyday damsel in distress. For one, she is a Hollywood A-lister. She has the money and the might to fight a battle. It doesn't really matter that the person she is going head-on against is a director, actor, and blessed with the kind of looks that often lets men get away with a lot. Justin Baldoni. The man who wanted to "bury" Blake.

Lively dragged him to court.

The 80-page complaint by Blake Lively against Justin Baldoni, her co-star and director of this year's breakout success It Ends With Us, has sent all of Hollywood spiralling. Lively accuses Baldoni, his company Wayfarer Studios, and its CEO Jamey Heath of a string of misconduct ranging from an out-and-out smear campaign to sexual harassment, and astroturfing.

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

Here's a summary of the 80-page complaint:

• There are disturbing details of Baldoni "crying" in Blake's vanity van "over her weight".
• There's Baldoni lingering on Blake's lips long after the camera stopped rolling.
• There's accusation that Baldoni added sex scenes without Lively's consent, did not have an intimacy coordinator on set, and improvised kiss scenes.
• Baldoni made lewd, sexual comments, and showed Lively nude images of other women, including his wife.
• Baldoni walked into Blake's trailer while she was breastfeeding.
• Baldoni and Jamey Heath discussed pornography and Baldoni's previous addiction.
• Baldoni claimed he could communicate with Lively's recently dead father.

When Lively complained about the men on the set "repeatedly violating personal boundaries and made sexual and other inappropriate comments to her", the studio agreed to have on board an intimacy coordinator.

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

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

Over the course of promotions for the film, hawk-eyed Internet sleuths spotted something wrong. Baldoni was nowhere to be seen. Blake Lively was at the promotions without Baldoni.

At the New York premiere of It Ends With Us, Blake was accompanied by her husband Ryan Reynolds, and co-star Brandon Sklenar. Baldoni was missing again.

It did not take a Sherlock Holmes to sniff something was amiss. Rumours of a feud between the lead actors began driving conversations in Hollywood and on TikTok.

Brandon Sklenar, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds at the New York premiere of It Ends With Us. Image Courtesy: Getty

The press tour of It Ends With Us was also a little off for a film about domestic violence. There were florals, pink carpets, and a lot of focus on pep talk for 'survivors' of domestic violence. It was tone-deaf.

Lively was criticised for her choice of words: "Grab your friends, wear your florals and head out to see it." All around, there were questions of "why". Lively was slammed for promoting the movie like it were "a sequel to Barbie". The abundance of pink wasn't lost on anyone.

The only time Baldoni spoke about Lively during their weeks-long press tour was to Today, where 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 was playing out in public, behind closed doors on set, the story was a little different. Ironic, if you will. A movie about domestic violence; on the set of which, there was a different kind of violence playing out.

Justin Baldoni was trying 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 on how Blake was "weaponising 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 fast, very fast.

In the world of one-click decisions, split seconds cost famous people their reputations, after all.

Lively had to turn off comments on her personal Instagram page following the 'crisis management' by TAG, which drove hordes of burner accounts to attack her brands. 

TAG, the crisis management agency hired by Baldoni, sent out a "Scenario Planning Document" as 'recommendation' to get ahead of the narrative.

The document, which forms part of the exhibit in Blake Lively's complaint against Baldoni, included suggesting misleading messaging that:

1. “ [p]roduction members lost their jobs due to [Ms Lively's] takeover and insisted upon involvement”;

2. Ms. Lively "involved her husband to create an [i]mbalance of power between her and [Mr Baldoni]";

3. Ms. Lively has a "less than favourable reputation in the industry”;

4. Ms. Lively had “a clear, likely motive... to bully her way into buying the rights for It Starts With Us" - the sequel to It Ends With Us currently owned by Baldoni's production house, Wayfarer Productions.

The Scenario Planning Document was not up to the standards Baldoni was expecting. His texts after reading the document read, "not sure I'm feeling the protection I felt on the call."

TAG's replies were cautious but promised to take care of Baldoni: "You know we can bury anyone. We can't write it to him [Baldoni]. Imagine if a document saying all the things he wants ends up in the wrong hands."

When the astroturfing campaign against Lively had been set in motion, Nathan wrote in an email, "The 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 of feminism. His podcast, Man Enough, was along the same lines. His appearances in public were the same.

L'affaire It Ends With Us shows us it was all perhaps at best a sham. A sham that ends with Blake Lively.