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Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims
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Anonymous
At this point, most of the comments I’ve seen are people supporting him. |
Anonymous
| Read the complaint. Not much of a case against NYT for anything. That complaint was a PR stunt to get the Baldoni side out there as opposed to a real legal claim. Baldoni is f'd on all of his claims and he is unlikely to work again. |
Anonymous
His lawyer is bad. And will get crushed. If you call what he is doing guts then you do not want a lawyer with guts. NYT will not settle this case. They cannot. Sets a bad precedent. This will not make it past the motion to dismiss. There is no actual claim here against the NYT that is actionable. |
Anonymous
His lawyer is very good at the PR aspect of this and in being very aggressive in settlement negotiations -- he's got a good track record of basically bullying people into settling to avoid a long drawn out fight because he's happy to go on TV 12x a day to create bad press for their opponent. The complaints his team has drafted are pretty bad and the legal arguments are head scratchers. Maybe they'll work, I don't know? The NYT complaint definitely reads as a stunt and I don't thing the NYT is even a little worried about liability -- they just featured this story on their daily in-depth podcast this morning where they reiterated all the original allegations against Baldoni (including literally just reading many of the texts that were in the original piece). If they were worried at all that they might have a defamation liability or something, they wouldn't have done that. And I guarantee you they have the best first amendment lawyers in the business looking at this and advising them. I think Wayfarer really screwed up trying to go on the offensive against Lively last summer. I think they were angry about her edit being the one that got released and furious about the "divided premier." And wanted to punish her. Like I really think they wanted to punish her. I think it was personal and emotional and they made those choices out of anger. In other words... it was retaliatory. Because if they'd just hired PR to protect their own image, smiled at the premieres and celebrated the success of the movie, and then moved on, I think they could go keep making movies and no one would care and the negative press about Lively and the cast not speaking to him at the premier would have blown over. I really think it would have. They could have negotiated some kind of "let's not talk about the profession and creative conflicts on this movie" agreement with Lively, too. All of this was solvable with a cool head and a good lawyer. The decision to go nuclear last summer is going to ruin Baldoni's career and might shutter Wayfarer. The podcast is done, no one is ever buying a book from Justin Baldoni about "toxic masculinity" ever again, and no one in Hollywood will want to touch their projects with a ten foot poll. It's a full flameout. |
Anonymous
I’m pro-Baldoni and I tend to agree with you - he would have been better off just eating sh*t for a little while longer. But I think Lively’s stunts were so aggressive (unfollowing, insisting on final cut, refusing to appear with him) that together with her *express* threats about her “dragons,” he rightfully felt very threatened. |
Anonymous
We still really don't know what they did. What exactly was their "offensive" last summer? I know it sounds naive, but it really is reasonable to believe they had Melissa Nathan's crisis PR team as a just-in-case, and didn't need to do anything because of how much bad press Blake Lively self-inflicted on herself. She and other castmembers unfollowed Justin and it snowballed from there. We saw this with Don't Worry Darling when Florence Pugh refused to do press about DWD, which similarly generated a lot of speculation. A lot of people simply don't like Blake. |
Anonymous
Link to the complaint? Where was it filed? |
Anonymous
Yeah but notice how the DWD drama passed and now everyone involved is still working and fine. Regarding the PR offensive, I originally thought as you did, that most of Lively's problems last summer were self-inflicted (side note, I do not like Blake Lively). But then I sat down and actually read what her complaint details on this point and read the NYT coverage and I think there is a lot there. A significant question is this issue of "astroturfing" or "seeding" social media, all linked to this guy Jed Wallace who is talked about throughout the texts between the PR people and between the PR people and Baldoni. The clear implication is that Wallace was hired to plant negative comments and stories about Lively on Reddit and elsewhere. I think this would be very, very bad for Baldoni. Lively just filed a subpoena yesterday to depose Jed Wallace. They talk about this on the NYT podcast this morning, I really recommend listening to the part about Wallace and how he's discussed in the texts. I think this is very problematic and damning for Baldoni and Wayfarer. |
Anonymous
Summary of the podcast? |
Anonymous
I'm not going to summarize a 30 minute podcast. If you just google Jed Wallace and Baldoni/Lively it will take you to all the NYT stuff about him as well as reports in other outlets on her subpoenaing him and what people think is going on with it. |
Anonymous
+1 the number on DCUM seemed to be staggering. Interesting in light of his new leaked voicemail to her apologizing and insinuating he made her uncomfortable. |
Anonymous
But uncomfortable does not equal sexual harassment |
Anonymous
This makes sense. Megan Twohey must be mortified. |
Anonymous
DP. Perhaps not, but if you know a colleague is uncomfortable with some of your behavior and you keep doing it, that actually could be considered sexual harassment. Especially if the behavior would be considered by the average person to be uncomfortable. I think a big part of this case will be about when complaints were made about Baldoni's or Heath's behavior, how Wayfarer responded to those complaints, and then whether the behavior ceased. Especially with regards to things like entering her trailer when she was not fully clothed, comments about her appearance, the stuff about him saying he was communicating with her dead dad (not sexual but extremely weird and when combined with other things will absolutely make a jury go "ick"), and texting/communicating late at night. If Lively reported each of these incidents (and has documentation of it) and Wayfarer didn't do anything and the incidents continued, this is very bad for them on the harassment side. That's how something goes from "uncomfortable" to "harassment via hostile work environment." |
Anonymous
She appeared on their podcast this morning and clearly stands behind the reporting. I had misgivings about the NYT reporting but actually found the podcast quite persuasive. |