Was Blake Lively the victim of a smear campaign?
Or has she got a new PR strategy?
Back in August I published a post headlined: What Blake Lively doesn't understand about the internet.
It was one of the most successful in highly flammable’s short history, and readers largely agreed that Lively had made some serious miscalculations in her approach to promoting the movie It Ends With Us.
One of the points I made back in August was that in the face of relentless online dragging Team Lively did not try to course correct and the bad press was allowed to spiral into a full-blown PR crisis. Well, Lively is now making moves and has filed an explosive lawsuit claiming that her co-star, and the movie’s director, Justin Baldoni, sexually harassed her and was responsible for an online smear campaign that set out to “destroy” her reputation.
In the filing, Lively details multiple incidents where Baldoni behaved unprofessionally. The New York Times and Variety report that the complaint includes claims that he:
Talked about his sex life, including an encounter where he may not have received consent
Tried to add sex scenes to the script that Lively felt were gratuitous
Watched Lively having body make-up removed in her trailer while she was topless despite asking him to not look
Claimed he could communicate with the dead, including her father who had recently passed away
Discussed Lively’s weight with her trainer
Pressed her to disclose her religious beliefs
Lively also alleges that one of the producers of the film, Jamey Heath:
Showed Lively a video of his wife naked and giving birth
Additionally, Lively says that both Baldoni and Heath:
Entered her trailer without getting permission, including a time when she was breastfeeding
Described their past sexual relationships to her and spoke about their previous addiction to pornography
Lively also contends that Wayfarer, the studio behind the film, hired public relations experts to ruin her reputation. The filing includes bombshell messages between the publicists, with one stating, “you know we can bury anyone”. Other messages claim that allegations about Baldoni were kept out of the press and that “he (Baldoni) doesn’t realise how lucky he is right now”.
The New York Times also revealed that there is a connection between one of the publicists and the journalist Kjersti Flaa, who resurfaced an interview with Lively from 2016 at the height of her PR nightmare. Flaa described the encounter with the actress as the interview “that made me want to quit my job”, and it led to Lively being branded a mean girl.
Reporting now shows that it wasn’t the first time Flaa had reposted a video aligned with one the publicist’s clients, after she also posted a supportive video about Johnny Depp when he was embroiled in a legal battle with Amber Heard.
Lively’s lawsuit follows a self-commissioned investigation into the negative coverage. It concluded that it was likely that she had been the victim of a “targeted, multichannel online attack”.
The publicist messages Lively obtained are certainly damning and support her theory that the backlash wad coordinated, but a lawyer for Baldoni and Wayfarer hit back at the filing. “These claims are completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media,” said the attorney Bryan Freedman.
Whether Lively’s claims are true or not is for the courts to decide but it is correct that the lawsuit is a chance for her to reset the narrative. My take is that while she may be seeking legal remedy for the “severe emotional harm” that she claims she suffered, the filing serves more as a tool to rehabilitate her reputation than anything else. Win, lose or settle, claiming she was smeared helps her to muddy the waters enough to absolve her of blame for the missteps she made back in August, even the ones that couldn’t possibly be attributed to Baldoni or Wayfarer.
While it’s entirely possible that criticism of Lively was manufactured and amplified by bad actors, it’s also possible she made some poor decisions that upset people too.
Lively’s call to launch her hair care range and promote her drinks brand in the middle of a press tour for a film about domestic violence sits with her. Equally the playful and positive vibe of the promotional frenzy was a choice. And when she was slated by domestic violence survivors, she didn’t change tack. It’s only now that the strategy is shifting, and the big question is whether it will work.
highly flammable is produced and written by me, Rachel Richardson
I’m a content creator, commentator and consultant at Beginning, Middle and End
Want more? Check out Threads, Twitter/X and Instagram. I’m also dabbling in some Bluesky thinking.
Email rr@bmend.com
I’m someone who found Highly Flammable bc of what you wrote about Blake. And while I 100% believe her that what she describes is harassment and she deserves justice for that the rest of her blunders land on her!! Including- and especially- the “congrats on YOUR little bump” comment from the video.
Interviewer to a male - (knowing his partner is pregnant)"I understand you and your partner are expecting, congratulations! Care to comment?
Interviewer to a female - (knowing she is pregnant) "Blah blah, how nice ...comment on her body."
I think that Lively's body-comment back was an appropriate tit-for-tat. (a perfectly normal human response)
Was the fallout handled properly? No. Was Lively set up? Yes, to play the quintessential high/low status female in a patriarchal culture. She didn't play along. I don't blame her.
Patriarchy is ingrained in all of us. It's not "pretty" when it's called out.
American courts and juries can be dodgy in she-said, he-said civil cases. Lively's attorneys could be 100% accurate in the complaint and it still might not end well.