You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Mamma Mere acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on Hello out louders. It's Monday, the twenty third of December, and I'm Holly Wainwright, I'm me of Friedman, and.
I'm Jesse Stevens. And we were not meant to be here right now, but alas.
We are here because we can bury anyone inside a Hollywood smear machine. That is the New York Times headline. That meant we definitely had to be here right now, Jesse Stevens, because you might remember, you definitely remember bits of it. It was one of the stories of the year that one of the most watched movies of twenty twenty four, It Ends with Us, came alongside the mass
cancelation of its star, Blake Lively. The prestore that accompanied that movie was notable for the fact that the star and producer Lively and its other star and director, Justin Baldoni, went to great and unusual lengths not to be seen together, to be interviewed together, to show any of the usual camaraderie required of co creators of a big film. Lively the rumors went wanted to promote the movie as if
it were a flowery rom com. Baldoni supposedly loudly insisted that he wanted its serious subject matter coercive control and domestic violence, to be front and center. Lively was criticized for trivializing a serious topic, for being a tone death self promoter, for launching a haircare brand. The backlash was huge, and then yesterday The New York Times reported that Lively is taking legal action against Baldoni, accusing him of sexual
harassment and an effort to destroy her reputation. It's a story that has massive implications for I'd say almost every celebrity story you see on the internet. Mia, what did the story the one with the we can bury anyone headline allege?
I think Jesse's going to take us through some of the allegations in more detail, but overall, it alleged serious misconduct on the set. Now, what's important to understand is that Justin was not only the director and the producer and the co star. He also was a co owner
of the studio that was making the film. So even though Blake Lively was more famous, he had huge power in the context of making this film, so it alleged sexual harassment, and then also it detailed that when Blake Lively complained about it and insisted on a meeting with all the stakeholders before she returned to filming in January this year, after the writers' strike, Justin Baldoni hired a crisis pr to smear her, which we're also going to get into in a moment, but let's just rewind to
August to remind ourselves what this movie was about and why there was so much controversy when it was released, because it was only released a few months ago, and it's about to come on streaming, or I think it's just come on to streaming. The movie is based on the Colleen Hoover book that was also called It Ends with Us, and it tells the story of a florist called Lily Bloom played by Lively, who navigates the romance with a neurosurgeon called Ryle Kincaid that becomes abusive.
That's the essence of the film.
The three of us went to see it, it was already completely swamped in controversy. I really liked the film. I thought Blake Lively was fantastic. Yeah, I thought it was not the best film in the world, but I thought it was really good. And I was surprised at the controversy that had completely engulfed this film. It seemed
really out of whack. So what was the controversy. Well, there's a few different elements to it, but it was basically all about Blake Lively being inappropriate during the promotional part of the tour, So it wasn't about the actual movie itself, it was about how it was promoted. There was an interview where she encouraged fans to grab your friends, wear your florals, and head out to see it, which kind of suggested that it was a lighthearted viewing experience.
There was no trigger warning at the beginning of it, so there was a whole big debate about trigger warnings, and the whole marketing campaign was criticized as tone deaf given how serious the themes were in the movie about domestic abuse, and that all landed on Blake Lively. Now, there were some things she did during the tour that particularly made her a target of criticism, like she was
launching a hair care line at the time. She also promoted her beverage brand, which was called Betty booze, and many people said that alcohol is often connected with domestic violence, so that's insensitive, and so it was seen that she was just not taking it seriously, which led to this big backlash against her. And you'd have to say one of the worst cancelations that we've seen in a long time for reasons that it seemed really spurious.
Yes, I agree, because back at the time we talked about it, and it felt as though the facts we had in front of us were not proportionate to the avalanche of hate that Blake Lively was getting, particularly on TikTok. Maybe that's because that's where I leave most of the time,
and we were getting these leaks. So the leaks that we were getting were that there was something that said justin Baldoni lingered too long on a kiss, He asked how much she weighed because he had a former back injury and was worried about picking her up like weird, weird stuff.
None of those took hold, so there were a few rumors of was it uncomfortable on set. The other thing that really came out was Blake had taken over and she'd insisted on doing her own edit that somehow Ryan Reynolds got involved and was rewriting a few scenes.
So the image that came across through the press tour was that she was.
Not taking it seriously, was dominating an a diva on set, and that he was a victim of all this. Because, in case you're not familiar with Justin Baldoni, his most famous role as an actor was in Jane the Virgin, and he's really fushioned himself over the last few years as a feminist and as he has a podcast called Man Enough where he questions toxic masculinity.
He had a viral ted talk about it like he's very much he's that.
Guy, a champion of women. That was his vibe.
And among all these rumors, what was very clear the whole like smoke fire thing, is that they had definitely fallen out, Like there was no question about that. You know, the other cast members had stopped following him on Instagram and seemed to very much be siding with her. As I said at the beginning, they weren't photographed together, they didn't do any promo. It was kind of like jeweling press tours, which is very unusual.
And Baldoni at the time he spoke to Today and of addressing some of the creative differences, and he said, I'm a best idea wins person and I always have been to a fault, sometimes to a point where at times I think I've had people wonder if I know what I'm doing or if I have a point of view, because I'm so willing to have my vision changed. I don't believe that inspiration or creativity comes through one person.
On the night of the premiere, he was saying, this isn't about me, It's a night for Blake, It's for Colleen. I'm so grateful we're here, and again it was clear that neither of those women were speaking to him.
What happened on the weekend is that Blake Lively has filed a legal complaint that presents her side of the story to all of the things that we were just discussing, and Jesse's going to tell us about them in a minute, but first short break.
So the allegations of misconduct on set are pretty damning in terms of physical boundaries and relations. There are allegations that he improvised unwanted kissing scenes. He would enter this is Baldoni would enter her makeup trailer uninvited, while she was undressed, including while she was breastfeeding. In terms of sexual harassment, Baldoni and Jamie Heath, he was a producer and co owner. There are allegations that they would describe
their genitalia on set. Baldoni would frequently refer to his past porn addiction and describe previous sexual encounters where he said he may or may not have received consent. Now we know that Lively made a series of requests. Part way through filming. They actually had this all hands meeting which included her husband, Ryan Reynolds, and it was held to address Baldoni and Jamie Heath's alleged inappropriate conduct.
So, yeah, this was interesting because this was like she had Ryan there as her support person, and it was after the Writer's strike, so they'd only been filming for six weeks. Then that was the writer's strike and she had this meeting and she said, I'm not coming back
unless we have this meeting. She included Sony who's the distributor, and all these different people, So there are a lot of people at that meeting, which means that there will be a lot of you know, and none of this was disputed at the time.
So there was a list of thirty things. They're quite revealing some of Lively's requests, and these were, as you say, they were confirmed because it's a document. Her requests were that Baldoni would stop asking her about religious beliefs, stop asking her trainer about her weight she was four months postpartum with her fourth baby, and stop claiming to be able to speak to her dead father. There are allegations that Baldoni improvised while on set, so in one scene,
they weren't miked up. It was just to be filmed. It was just a visual scene, and Lively claims that as himself, Baldoni leaned in and slowly dragged his lips from her ear to her neck and said, it smells so good. It says that when Lively objected to his actions,
Baldoni retorted, I'm not even attracted to you. Baldoni added, this is an allegation improvised sexual content and nude scenes, and he fought to have a scene where the characters climaxed at the same time on their wedding night, and told Lively that he and his partner always did, and allegedly pressed her on whether that was the case with her husband. And she says she was very uncomfortable by that conversation. There's an allegation about the childbirth scene, which
is particularly unsettling. It wasn't agreed that she would be naked for it, but then when she got on set, she says that he insisted she be naked. They compromised that she would be naked from the waist down, but the set wasn't closed and in the end his friend came in to play the role of the obgyn.
I think this is possibly the most chilling thing because what's so illuminating about reading will link to it if anybody wants to look at it, which I think you should. But you learn a lot about Hollywood and how sex scenes work right, and there are things like nudity writers where everybody agrees what the parameters before.
You go into a scene.
Things like closed sets when there's nudity, so only essential people are there, Monitors are turned off so other people can't look from other rooms and even film you.
So she was in stirrups.
She had a little bit of fabric just literally covering her and the role of the gynecologist. They were like between her legs and also another owner of his studio Wayfair had just flown in to visit the set on that day for the first time, like it is so gross and creepy.
It also is clearly from this very long list of requests clear that this set was a shit show, right because one of them is also stop having hours long meetings where Baldoni cries and no more pressing from Baldly to sage any of Blake Live's employees, like this is batshit what's going on on that set, And it seems that she's very much trying to say, let's get back to a professional set.
And they're at claims as well that when you know there were certain moments where Lively was made to feel uncomfortable, other women from the set came up and said, I've also had that experience. So the allegations are that it was not just her, she was trying to protect the whole set. The last thing I'll say, and I.
Could go on and on about what's in this.
Complaint, but the last thing is she alleges that there was a clear marketing plan that was distributed to the cast and everyone involved in marketing it about how to promote the film. This was from Sony and they said they wanted to focus on hope and resilience and not position this as a domestic violence film. They say that Baldoni went against this, and that's massive because at the time everyone was going, why is she not acknowledged that
this is a film about domestic violence. Baldoni was over here with a link in his Instagram bio to help victims. Everything he said in his messaging was acknowledging victims, and this made Lively look really bad.
Well, as it turns out, or at least what's alleged here is that that pivot Jesse was a very deliberate one to smear Blake Lively because Baldoni and his team knew what was coming. So to the smear campaign and why I say that this is a story that's not just about Blake Lively and just In Baldoni, but gives an insight into what is really behind a lot of
what we believe right on social media. So all those tiktoks and stories that we talked about at the beginning that were being shared and reshared as facts that Lively was a mean girl, that Lively tried to hijack the movie,
that Lively just wanted to promote a haircare brand. What's alleged in this document is there was nothing organic about those stories, and that the PR firm hired by when he realized that Reynolds had blocked him on Instagram, Baldonian, his producing partner, hired this firm who were expert in the dark arts of smearing, starting rumors and fanning the
flames of negativity. Some of the tactics that are alleged to have happened are that the PR team would boost negative stories about Lively, branding her as difficult and tone deaf. That contractors were allegedly hired to dominate social media with untraceable tactics like social manipulation and proactive fan posting. A hired gun helped amplify negative narratives online, including on platforms like TikTok and Reddit, and basically all these threads of
theories started being sown and then amplified. Now it's actually impossible even by the investigative journalists at the New York Times and actually by the legal team, to be able to absolutely identify exactly what the amplification did. As we know, the Internet is sprawling and enormous. But the negative stories that were planted, were planted very deliberately and then encouraged. So this tells you everything about how we the public were manipulated in this story.
In August, there were two things we talked about. The first was something that we've referred to as the dig, which is what happens when someone is in the process of cancelation, and we were saying that it's again back to it being disproportionate. Is that people started yelling about her plantation wedding, about how Reynolds cheated on Scarlet your Hansen with Lively, how she's always been rude. Everyone on
Gossip Girl hated her. There were weird videos of people gifting her a bracelet on a red carpet and she would not accept it, or something like.
The one that got the most traction was and I remember thinking at the time, this is weird. Without wanting to, we definitely had our doubts and we spoke about this on the show, as did others. That interview with a Swedish journal last entertainment journalist called Christie Flaher which came out where it showed her interviewing Blake Lively for a
different movie. I think back in twenty fifteen, and it showed Blake being a little bit rude, and for some reason she posted that with the headline the interview that made me want to quit my job. That was in twenty sixteen. That interview happened, and yet it came out. Now why did it come out? Well, you could say that organically that journalist was just trying to ride the
wave of hate against Blake Lively. But what was revealed in this was that this journalist had worked with the PR company before, because they'd also represented Johnny Depp in his trial against Amber Heard. And we know that some really dodgy things happened then, in terms of how Amber Heard was trolled and the volume of internet hate towards her, so much of which was seen to be manufactured. So again,
it wasn't organic. And there's a word called ASTROI which I learned, which is basically means you think something is organic it looks like natural grass, but when you look.
Closer you see that it's artificial.
And what that means is that these things are planted and then amplified.
Either by bots or by these agencies. That's what they do.
Yeah, So in terms of being planted, I think That's an important point because in the investigation it sort of said this isn't bots. I always imagined it was bots. But at the time, I was posting on TikTok about the Blake Lively thing, and I was noticing that every time I posted something that was defensive, it got no reach. So I remember talking about this on the show, only a few hundred views, and then I posted one thing that was cheeky that had like a something about Blake
Lively's cancelation. It actually went against it, but all the metadata would have suggested that I was about to go her blew up, and it seemed that if you were being critical of Blake Lively, your content was on steroids. As someone who consumes a lot of social media content, it is not often that you get a unanimous view on anything, but you went onto these media platforms and all of a sudden, it was like wall to wall.
Everyone hated her. And let's be clear, if you saw someone pop up and have a go at Blake Lively, that was probably legitimate. But where they were getting the information, how their brain had been marinating in content kind of contributed to that.
Well. It creates a lens, and I should say, Christy Flower has come out and said she has nothing to do with the alleged smear campaign, But she was exactly what you were talking about, Jesse. She was being opportunistic. Yes, so we live in the attention economy and if you wanted to go viral, everybody looks at the numbers who makes content and in the media, so you knew that if you did something that was against Lively, it would
go off. So it's important to understand how something can be both organic and manipulated because.
People will say, but hang on Blake Lively.
They didn't make her try and promote her hair care line, they didn't make her reference alcohol, they didn't make her wear florals.
But the thing is that it's the volume, so you can.
Start to believe, oh, everybody hates Blake Lively, and when you hear enough of that, it does impact on how you view someone.
And there was also I remember looking at interviews where she seemed really insensitive about the subject matter of the film, but it was so purposefully cut and if you watch the whole interview, that's not how it seemed. And then you were getting Justin Baldoni with these incredible cuts of him saying something really eloquent about domestic violence. So it did seem that, yeah, I suppose that that is allegedly part of the smearing.
This is where the we can bury anyone headline comes because in the New York Times investigation, there are literal screenshots of text messages between Baldoni's people and the PR people saying exactly that that they can bury anybody with enough ammunition, and that they needed to do it to get Baldoni's story across. We're going to be back in a minute, but first a little break.
I want to talk about the effect of how cancelation works and how it can be manipulated, because, having experienced it a number of times organically, certainly not to my knowledge, with a calculated or paid smear campaign by a publicist, things gain traction, and then everybody wants to be part of a pylon, right, That's why it's called a dog pile or a pylon, and there becomes status in reinforcing the accepted narrative, which in this case was that Justin
Baldoni was a hero and cared about domestic violence victims, and Blake Lively was an entitled diva who cared about nothing other than her hair and looking pretty.
And because of that that sort of narrative about who Blake Lively was, she's a prime candidate for this, right, because the thing that's very depressing about this story is that we're all being manipulated all the time right on social media, and we think we're having our own thoughts about things and going, yes, I see, But what this shows very clearly is that we're being As Lively said in her statement about it, she said she wanted to
show behind the curtain of how these things start. But one of the things that we've got to ask ourselves is why are we so invested in thinking awful things about women? And women like Lively? You know she in particular, I guess she is blonde and beautiful, married to a rich man. She is a striver we've talked about on this show lots of times, is the worst thing you
can be. She has her own businesses, She tries really heart like, she promoted the shit out of that movie, and it's almost like the world was dying to believe this about her, which is one of the things I find deeply depressing about it.
And that's what the crisis pr person behind all of this actually said in one of them. And the reason we have these texts, I should say, is because they were subpoened. So it's the genius of Blake Lively, and all of this is to go, I'm going to get all the evidence I need to show what really happened, which is that you have Melissa Nathan saying basically, I can't believe how quickly people just want to hate a woman. I'm seeing all this positive justin Baldoni stuff, and I
don't even agree with half of it. So it was like they lit the fire and then when it blew up, they didn't need to do a thing, because people want to hate a woman. And the irony of this entire story is that it's an allegory for domestic violence in the context of a film about domestic violence, which is that people were so ready to jump on a woman who maybe didn't use the right words, or was profiting
or something. And except that this man was a feminist ally, it's almost Shakespearean in that in order to defend his image as a feminist ally he had to bury a female co star, and we were so happy to follow him there, and to go not only follow him there, like we didn't look at all the facts, which is that none of the cast were on speaking terms with him anymore. Colleen who all on her side, yes, and
we were so happy to follow him there. And I think that there's a difference between doing something and expressing the doing of something. This speaks to something that feels very very true, which is that there are people who use the right word to have the right link in their Instagram bio. But that is not the same as being the thing you're purporting to being, which is that he's saying he supports women and that this story was
really important to him. It's just an incredible, like look at potential if it's true hypocrisy.
I think this story has many places to go. And today one of the PR wizards involved in this, Jennifer Abel, has some messages that are allegedly from her, who's saying that those messages that we were just talking about, Jesse were cherry picked and that you didn't see others. And I'm sure that's true. So there's are many more places to go. But your point, Jesse is so spot on, because I remember at the time a lot of people have a lot of love for Baldoni and he was
seen to be doing all the right things. But I'll just listened to the interview with him that he did on how to Fail with Elizabeth Day and the guy Worry. I'm just going to say it is insufferable, like he is insufferable. He doesn't obviously go to Lively in that interview, and it happened before the legal letter, but he described the filming as devastatingly difficult for a number of reasons. He made very clear on the record that he thought there should have been a trigger warning, like it was
very clear. But the whole feeling about it, Elizabeth Day barely gets a word in, is that he was lecturing about victimhood. And we are always saying that we want men to talk about domestic violence, and we do, but we want men to talk to men about domestic violence. We don't want them to lecture women about it. And I know people have problems with the movie, and people have problems with the source material of the book, But this movie was aimed at women. The book was aimed
at women, right. It's the way that they chose to promote it. That Baldoni then flipped in order to virtue signal because he knew basically that he was going to
be taken down. What's also interested in all this is that Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively and the power that they wield in Hollywood is probably always going to come for him, right, So he knew that was coming, so he wanted to position himself as the perfect allocate ally and advocate, and he's there lecturing women about victimhood and violence. That's not what we want from the guys. I mean, I can't speak for all women.
But can we talk about timing for a second, because it's pretty sobering to go online and look at some of the reactions to this where people are just they want to twist it and still make it about Blake and they're not interested in facts or perspectives. Why now, Why now it's pre Christmas? Some people have said, well, it's just come out on Netflix. It's a calculated move. She wants to just try and salvage the damage to
her reputation. But she didn't say anything back then like this is everyone had gotten about it.
Essentially, she'd come back.
Why now it would have been totally lost. If she said something back then, she would have sounded And this is also such a great example of gas lighting. She would have been told she was crazy. If she said at the time that there is a manufactured effort to bury me, people would have gone, you are grasping, how embarrassing, blah.
Blah blah, and that she was making it all about her instead of centering the centering victims.
It's about to come out on Netflix. I'm not sure if that's just in the US or if that's here too. And just in the last week I started seeing stories about Blake Lively pop up again. I saw a story about something Ryan Reynolds had said about how he and Blake grew up working class, and then people were going into Blake Lively's childhood and going, that's not working class, how embarrassing.
Ah.
Yeah, were they anticipating another wave? That's a question. And the other reason why I think it's is because of how long this takes. In order to do this properly, in order to get lawyers do the research subpoena, those text messages prove it they needed to buide their time. And it's important to remember Blake Lively is worth about
thirty million dollars. She's rich, but she's not like the richest person in Hollywood Ryan Reynolds is worth more than three hundred million because he hasn't had these business ventures.
Right and also intensely well connected.
Yes, so I think it took because you can look at this case and go, what does Blake Lively want? This isn't going to be about damages. This isn't about sending Justin Baldoni to jail, like, nothing about that.
Not criminal.
She wants to correct the record. And in order you need to have power, and you need to have the financial means, and she does. And I think that's why she's doing it because imagine how many actresses have been buried and have never been able to tell their story.
Well, that's the.
Rule of cancelation, isn't it. You can't defend yourself. Well it's happening, otherwise it makes it worse. But the other thing to note is that there's a civil complaint. But then there's also the New York Times investigation. The lead journalist on this was the same journalists that exposed Harvey Weinstein, Megan Towey. And they don't just publish what someone else wants them to publish. They go and corroborate everything. They do their own extensive reporting out making sure that all
the sources can be confirmed. So in many ways, the timing was more about what The New York Times was going to do. But the other thing to remember, when we're talking about power and money, the guy who is the financial backer of Wayfarer, which is the studio that Jamie Heath and Justin Baldonia partners in, is like a billionaire. So he's also got unlimited funds. He has a lot more money than Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively put together. So it's not a case of Blake Lively punching down.
The complexity of power dynamics on both the set and in Hollywood aren't just about who's the most famous in the Daily Mail.
You know what though, and this is a more pragmatic reason too, is they let the movie do its thing. That movie was really successful, Yeah, you know, so she would have been contractually obliged to promote that movie. Also, she clearly wanted to, and she didn't want to promote it with him, which is again very unusual. But she promoted the shit out of that movie while all this
was going on. It was very successful. It's had its period of box office time and now you can sit there and reflect on that that was all happening in real time to her. It does seem extraordinary to me, though I know that Baldoni has very powerful backer their me of course, but that he ever thought that they weren't going to do this Because Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively Reynolds is one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Deadpool was the second biggest movie of the year. He
makes a lot of people a lot of money. They are intensely powerful. He would be furious. Imagine sitting in that meeting that he sat in with his wife and all those people and literally listening to that list being read out about them walking in on her when she's half naked and breastfeeding in her trailer. Revenge is a dish best served cold, right. Those guys have gone and got their ducks in a row in a very professional,
very organized manner, and now they're coming for them. And fair enough, if indeed everything that's in that legal letter is true, absolutely fair enough.
So what are our takeaways before we wrap up and actually go on holidays.
I think the reason why people are so fascinated by this is because it's an exercise in perspective, but also we were used as audiences and consumers of media. We were played. And the other thing is that I am now looking at other examples of cancelation. I'm sorry, but well, actually there are some examples of men. But what's confusing about them are I don't know who benefited. So it's really important when you look at a cancelation like this to see who the winners are. But it makes me
think very differently about Megan Markle. I just wonder when you see Walter all and wheneverone walks around and they go I just have a sense of something. I have a sense that they're not very nice or something.
It's a great point.
It just makes me go, how much of this is all manufactured? And how difficult is it to prove when these social media wizards are so much smarter than us.
So out loud as we will be returning to our scheduled programming of hot Pods summer, where we are going to be giving you all sorts of delicious things to listen to over summer.
If only you could see us. Now it's early in the morning, we are all at home.
But we really wanted to bring this to you because we just thought that it was an important story to cover.
It was one of those stories that in terms of the group chat, it was just going off. Look, chances are in two days there'll be another story that blows up our group chat and we're like, let's jump on. But this time of year, I think we all tend to fall into some rabbit holes, and it appears that we were.
Victims of that.
If this conversation has brought anything up for you, help is available. We're going to put links to resources that can help in the show notes.
Take care, I'm going outside to touch some grass. We love you out louders. We will be in your ears shortly.
Bye bye bye