Lively is naked below her boobs. There are multiple closeups of her belly and upper legs. Her legs are up in stirrups in a way that if she tried to pull that hospital gown over her lower half, it would ride up because her legs are up in the air.
It was a nude scene. If the actress filming that scene asked for a sheet between takes to cover up her lower body (even just for warmth, not modesty) it should have been provided. I'm sure there were points when she was able to take her legs out of the stirrups and cover up with the gown, but there were also definitely points where she had to lie there in the stirrups between takes because her legs are up for the full scene so I'm sure they were up for much of the shoot.
Those of you quibbling over "oh she could have pulled her hospital gown down" or "she wasn't really nude, she was wearing clothes" just sound dumb. She's obviously nude and the position of her body would have made it impossible to fully cover up with her gown unless she was lying there holding the gown in place the entire time with her hands (and she probably had to do other things with her hands between takes, like review notes about the scene, drink from a water bottle, etc.).
Why didn't they just give her a sheet? Like this is not explained. What possible reason would the production have for not giving her something to cover up during the scene? She shouldn't have to prove that she needs one, it should just be provided.
Do you understand Blake's not actually giving birth? Its called movie making. That's not her nude belly. It's a thick, warm prosthetic torso. Do while she looks like she's naked, she's actually not.
Still legs spread with a tiny piece of fabric covering her labia while mimicking pushing on an open set, visible camera screens posting the uncut scenesz and regardless of whether she could move to close her legs or move the gown during the shot, nobody could be bothered to give her a coverup when she asked for one.
I am one hundred percent sure that the camera was not focused on her labia — for one thing the friend of the director actor would be blocking it, for the other, she wasn’t actually pushing a baby out and aiming a camera there would make it obvious, and lastly, this was a PG 13 movie. Again, your fiction reads well though.
Of course it wasn't -- she was wearing a strip of fabric over her genitals anyway. No one has suggested they tried to film her genitals.
That does not mean it wasn't uncomfortable to film a scene with no pants on and an actor you just met sitting inches from your vag. It would also be weird to constantly be moving your legs between takes and pulling down the gown and she shouldn't have to do that.
There's also no excuse for springing the nudity on her the day of the shoot and failing to have the intimacy coordinator on set, and also for not closing the set when one of your actors is not only partially nude but has let you know she's not totally comfortable with it.
Baldoni hasn't explained any of this. Why wasn't she given a sheet? Why didn't he raise the issue of nudity earlier? If he planned for Lively to be nude, why didn't he enlist the intimacy coordinator to be there and why didn't he make it a closed set?
I think if this is true, it could be a result of him being green (inexperienced) and less about him being a predator.
I do think a lot of the bad behavior Lively alleges was due to Baldoni being an inexperienced director and the production company just not having a lot of experience and being unprofessional. But that doesn't absolve him of liability if his behavior or the productions actions led to a hostile work environment. Like he doesn't have to be a predator to engage in sexual harassment if his ineptitude led to consistently inappropriate, invasive, sexualized behavior on set.
I worked for a time in the fitness industry, and one of the companies I worked for had this issue -- just incredibly poorly run by people who didn't have leadership/management experience. They mostly had good (or at least okay) intentions but their employment practices were awful. The fitness industry, like acting, is an industry where people might interact in a way that would be considered totally inappropriate in other setting but is normal in that industry -- people touching each other to adjust form, people wearing very little clothing and changing/showering at work, etc. The result of having a green and unprofessional management in an industry like that is that it gets bad very quickly. It also makes it very easy for someone who *is* a predator to do bad things without getting in trouble. I was groped by a colleague at that job and there was just no recourse and it was written off by higher ups because they had no formal HR, no workplace policy governing that kind of behavior (and certainly no training on what is and is not permitted). It was an unequivocal groping, not something that could be misinterpreted on my end (his hands were literally on my boobs and crotch) but because it was a workplace where people did sometimes touch each other in a way that elsewhere might be considered sexual (putting hands on someone's waist or midsection to address form), management believed it had been an accident and that he "didn't mean anything." I don't think all of those people were "predators" but the guy who groped me was and they made it extremely easy for him to get away with it.
That's what I think happened here. When you have a workplace where people might be nude or semi-nude, where part of their job might be to portray childbirth or sex, then you need to maintaining very high standards of professionalism and following protocols for maintaining consent and respect for everyone in the workplace. They did not do that and I think it resulted in a hostile work environment like the one I wound up working in. The fact that it was caused as much by ineptitude as bad intentions doesn't really make it any better. I think they are still liable for creating an unsafe, hostile work environment.
And it seems like we wouldn't have heard about any of this but for Baldoni's misguided smear attempt to "bury her" after the fact. Seems like she was going to look the other way and let it go until and keep it private until that happened, and then she came out guns blazing. Who wouldn't in her case?
Hard to say -- I really don't know what her intentions were prior to the summer PR campaign. It certainly didn't make it *less* likely that she would sue him. It's probably possible that if that had not happened and the film had been a success without all the online chatter about Lively, it might have been resolved more quietly.
This will sound Pollyanna-ish, but I think situations like this could be resolved without litigation if people weren't so egotistical. Like there's a parallel universe where Baldoni was more responsive to Lively's concerns on set and sought to address them, and that results in Lively being more amenable to not only working with Baldoni but his vision for the movie, and Ryan Reynolds is never brought in to write scenes or do the final cut, and they promote the movie together without Baldoni trying to smear Lively online or Lively freezing him out and getting the rest of the cast to do so as well, and then there's no litigation.
But it all starts with people being willing to be self-critical, admit mistakes, apologize, and forgive. And I don't think the people involved in this situation have the ability. Baldoni strikes me as vain, oblivious, self-important, and obnoxious. Lively strikes me as the kind of person who, once she's decided she doesnt' like you, will just go nuclear until you are nothing. It's a terrible combination. I think Baldoni's more in the wrong here -- it really looks like he did some very skeevy, harassing stuff on set and he was the director and needed to take responsibility for the lack of professionalism -- but also Lively probably handled this in a way that maximized the conflict and now it's a death match. On the one hand, good for her for standing up for herself. On the other hand, I question whether anything good will come of this in the end because they are going scorched earth.
I disagree on how you view Baldoni. I don’t think he gives off this vibe at all. He seems pretty down to earth, sensitive and overall a good human which is why people are shocked at the allegations.
I guess he seems that way if you discount everything in Lively's complaint and the fact that the entire cast of the movie has come out in support of Lively. They were there.
I think I may not have written my response clear. What I was trying to articulate is that in the public overall Justin doesn’t have this reputation. I do think that most people would put those traits on Blake as she seems to have had the reputation of being self important and vain long before the allegations. I think people are genuinely shocked to hear these allegations simply due to the fact that Justin appeared to be one of the good guys. Now whether or not he is a good guy, I cannot answer. I was just shocked at how you saw him is all, but now I understand that you are viewing him through the lens of the lawsuit and not on anything outside of it.
Well, she is seeing him through the lens of the Blake’s lawsuit, but is willfully blind to his complaint against The NY Times, which raises serious issues about Blake’s credibility and motivation.
It really doesn't since he barely addressed most of her complaints. But keep harping on it.
He addressed her credibility or lack there of which goes to all her claims. If she is willing to edit texts to deliberately change their meaning and present them with no indication of such edits, why should we find her credible at all? And that’s a rhetorical question, because I know you will support her regardless of how much evidence piles up against her.
Lively didn't do that though. The NYT did that. And he's suing them for it! Good for him. But that argument doesn't have any impact on Lively's credibility -- she is not the one who decided how to present those texts.
And where did The NY Times get those texts? Lively and her publicist. You think it was The NY Times who sliced and diced them? Lively presented them that way, and The NY Times did not fully investigate her claims.
That sounds like a NYT problem.
Also NYT was able to independently verify the texts with Joneworks, the PR company that the Justin's team was working for at the time that the texts occurred. It is not clear to me they came from Lively's team -- they may have come directly from Jonesworks or come from both sources.
Interestingly, the NYT chose not to mention that the PR flaks were working for Jonesworks at the time, or mention Jonesworks at all. Or mention that the reason Jonesworks provided these texts (both to Lively's team AND to the NYT) is that they were discovered when Jonesworks launched a lawsuit against members of Baldoni PR team when they left Jonesworks to start their own company.
None of that has anything to do with Lively. I actually think Jonesworks fed the texts to the NYT specifically to discredit their former employees in a very public and embarrassing way right before Jonesworks sued them for breach of contract.
So no, I don't think Lively's team somehow stage managed all that. There are tons of competing interests at play. The NYT could had lots of opportunity to find and provide more context on the texts -- they didn't. They also could have given Baldoni's team time to respond -- they didn't. They also could have disclosed some of the broader context to how the texts came to be released so that readers would have a better sense of what was at play -- they didn't.
Lively's team, and certainly Lively herself, had nothing to do with any of that.
lol, she shared her draft complaint with the NYTimes.
So? Her team wanted them to report on it and wanted to get ahead of the story. That is their job. Also it's not like Lively showed up at the Times with a copy of her self-drafted complaint. Her PR team reached out to them.
Just because a PR firm contacts you with a scoop on their client's soon-to-be filed lawsuit does not mean that the newspaper doesn't have an obligation to research the claims. And they also didn't have to present her claims as fact. They failed to give Baldoni sufficient time to respond and they did a poor job of framing the story. That's the paper's fault.
Ironically, while I'm sure in the moment Lively's team was happy with the way it was covered, I think in the end it hurt them and they would have been better off if the Times had been more restrained and even in their coverage. But none of that was Lively's decision and she didn't draft those articles. It's not her fault that the Times did their jobs poorly.
No it isn’t. But her retailiation case relies on the same manipulated texts. And by her own admission, she has access to the full texts, just as the New York Times did.
Lively is naked below her boobs. There are multiple closeups of her belly and upper legs. Her legs are up in stirrups in a way that if she tried to pull that hospital gown over her lower half, it would ride up because her legs are up in the air.
It was a nude scene. If the actress filming that scene asked for a sheet between takes to cover up her lower body (even just for warmth, not modesty) it should have been provided. I'm sure there were points when she was able to take her legs out of the stirrups and cover up with the gown, but there were also definitely points where she had to lie there in the stirrups between takes because her legs are up for the full scene so I'm sure they were up for much of the shoot.
Those of you quibbling over "oh she could have pulled her hospital gown down" or "she wasn't really nude, she was wearing clothes" just sound dumb. She's obviously nude and the position of her body would have made it impossible to fully cover up with her gown unless she was lying there holding the gown in place the entire time with her hands (and she probably had to do other things with her hands between takes, like review notes about the scene, drink from a water bottle, etc.).
Why didn't they just give her a sheet? Like this is not explained. What possible reason would the production have for not giving her something to cover up during the scene? She shouldn't have to prove that she needs one, it should just be provided.
Do you understand Blake's not actually giving birth? Its called movie making. That's not her nude belly. It's a thick, warm prosthetic torso. Do while she looks like she's naked, she's actually not.
Still legs spread with a tiny piece of fabric covering her labia while mimicking pushing on an open set, visible camera screens posting the uncut scenesz and regardless of whether she could move to close her legs or move the gown during the shot, nobody could be bothered to give her a coverup when she asked for one.
I am one hundred percent sure that the camera was not focused on her labia — for one thing the friend of the director actor would be blocking it, for the other, she wasn’t actually pushing a baby out and aiming a camera there would make it obvious, and lastly, this was a PG 13 movie. Again, your fiction reads well though.
Of course it wasn't -- she was wearing a strip of fabric over her genitals anyway. No one has suggested they tried to film her genitals.
That does not mean it wasn't uncomfortable to film a scene with no pants on and an actor you just met sitting inches from your vag. It would also be weird to constantly be moving your legs between takes and pulling down the gown and she shouldn't have to do that.
There's also no excuse for springing the nudity on her the day of the shoot and failing to have the intimacy coordinator on set, and also for not closing the set when one of your actors is not only partially nude but has let you know she's not totally comfortable with it.
Baldoni hasn't explained any of this. Why wasn't she given a sheet? Why didn't he raise the issue of nudity earlier? If he planned for Lively to be nude, why didn't he enlist the intimacy coordinator to be there and why didn't he make it a closed set?
I think if this is true, it could be a result of him being green (inexperienced) and less about him being a predator.
I do think a lot of the bad behavior Lively alleges was due to Baldoni being an inexperienced director and the production company just not having a lot of experience and being unprofessional. But that doesn't absolve him of liability if his behavior or the productions actions led to a hostile work environment. Like he doesn't have to be a predator to engage in sexual harassment if his ineptitude led to consistently inappropriate, invasive, sexualized behavior on set.
I worked for a time in the fitness industry, and one of the companies I worked for had this issue -- just incredibly poorly run by people who didn't have leadership/management experience. They mostly had good (or at least okay) intentions but their employment practices were awful. The fitness industry, like acting, is an industry where people might interact in a way that would be considered totally inappropriate in other setting but is normal in that industry -- people touching each other to adjust form, people wearing very little clothing and changing/showering at work, etc. The result of having a green and unprofessional management in an industry like that is that it gets bad very quickly. It also makes it very easy for someone who *is* a predator to do bad things without getting in trouble. I was groped by a colleague at that job and there was just no recourse and it was written off by higher ups because they had no formal HR, no workplace policy governing that kind of behavior (and certainly no training on what is and is not permitted). It was an unequivocal groping, not something that could be misinterpreted on my end (his hands were literally on my boobs and crotch) but because it was a workplace where people did sometimes touch each other in a way that elsewhere might be considered sexual (putting hands on someone's waist or midsection to address form), management believed it had been an accident and that he "didn't mean anything." I don't think all of those people were "predators" but the guy who groped me was and they made it extremely easy for him to get away with it.
That's what I think happened here. When you have a workplace where people might be nude or semi-nude, where part of their job might be to portray childbirth or sex, then you need to maintaining very high standards of professionalism and following protocols for maintaining consent and respect for everyone in the workplace. They did not do that and I think it resulted in a hostile work environment like the one I wound up working in. The fact that it was caused as much by ineptitude as bad intentions doesn't really make it any better. I think they are still liable for creating an unsafe, hostile work environment.
And it seems like we wouldn't have heard about any of this but for Baldoni's misguided smear attempt to "bury her" after the fact. Seems like she was going to look the other way and let it go until and keep it private until that happened, and then she came out guns blazing. Who wouldn't in her case?
Hard to say -- I really don't know what her intentions were prior to the summer PR campaign. It certainly didn't make it *less* likely that she would sue him. It's probably possible that if that had not happened and the film had been a success without all the online chatter about Lively, it might have been resolved more quietly.
This will sound Pollyanna-ish, but I think situations like this could be resolved without litigation if people weren't so egotistical. Like there's a parallel universe where Baldoni was more responsive to Lively's concerns on set and sought to address them, and that results in Lively being more amenable to not only working with Baldoni but his vision for the movie, and Ryan Reynolds is never brought in to write scenes or do the final cut, and they promote the movie together without Baldoni trying to smear Lively online or Lively freezing him out and getting the rest of the cast to do so as well, and then there's no litigation.
But it all starts with people being willing to be self-critical, admit mistakes, apologize, and forgive. And I don't think the people involved in this situation have the ability. Baldoni strikes me as vain, oblivious, self-important, and obnoxious. Lively strikes me as the kind of person who, once she's decided she doesnt' like you, will just go nuclear until you are nothing. It's a terrible combination. I think Baldoni's more in the wrong here -- it really looks like he did some very skeevy, harassing stuff on set and he was the director and needed to take responsibility for the lack of professionalism -- but also Lively probably handled this in a way that maximized the conflict and now it's a death match. On the one hand, good for her for standing up for herself. On the other hand, I question whether anything good will come of this in the end because they are going scorched earth.
I disagree on how you view Baldoni. I don’t think he gives off this vibe at all. He seems pretty down to earth, sensitive and overall a good human which is why people are shocked at the allegations.
I guess he seems that way if you discount everything in Lively's complaint and the fact that the entire cast of the movie has come out in support of Lively. They were there.
I think I may not have written my response clear. What I was trying to articulate is that in the public overall Justin doesn’t have this reputation. I do think that most people would put those traits on Blake as she seems to have had the reputation of being self important and vain long before the allegations. I think people are genuinely shocked to hear these allegations simply due to the fact that Justin appeared to be one of the good guys. Now whether or not he is a good guy, I cannot answer. I was just shocked at how you saw him is all, but now I understand that you are viewing him through the lens of the lawsuit and not on anything outside of it.
Well, she is seeing him through the lens of the Blake’s lawsuit, but is willfully blind to his complaint against The NY Times, which raises serious issues about Blake’s credibility and motivation.
It really doesn't since he barely addressed most of her complaints. But keep harping on it.
He addressed her credibility or lack there of which goes to all her claims. If she is willing to edit texts to deliberately change their meaning and present them with no indication of such edits, why should we find her credible at all? And that’s a rhetorical question, because I know you will support her regardless of how much evidence piles up against her.
Lively didn't do that though. The NYT did that. And he's suing them for it! Good for him. But that argument doesn't have any impact on Lively's credibility -- she is not the one who decided how to present those texts.
And where did The NY Times get those texts? Lively and her publicist. You think it was The NY Times who sliced and diced them? Lively presented them that way, and The NY Times did not fully investigate her claims.
That sounds like a NYT problem.
Also NYT was able to independently verify the texts with Joneworks, the PR company that the Justin's team was working for at the time that the texts occurred. It is not clear to me they came from Lively's team -- they may have come directly from Jonesworks or come from both sources.
Interestingly, the NYT chose not to mention that the PR flaks were working for Jonesworks at the time, or mention Jonesworks at all. Or mention that the reason Jonesworks provided these texts (both to Lively's team AND to the NYT) is that they were discovered when Jonesworks launched a lawsuit against members of Baldoni PR team when they left Jonesworks to start their own company.
None of that has anything to do with Lively. I actually think Jonesworks fed the texts to the NYT specifically to discredit their former employees in a very public and embarrassing way right before Jonesworks sued them for breach of contract.
So no, I don't think Lively's team somehow stage managed all that. There are tons of competing interests at play. The NYT could had lots of opportunity to find and provide more context on the texts -- they didn't. They also could have given Baldoni's team time to respond -- they didn't. They also could have disclosed some of the broader context to how the texts came to be released so that readers would have a better sense of what was at play -- they didn't.
Lively's team, and certainly Lively herself, had nothing to do with any of that.
And you know this exactly how?
Bumping. Nothing like this is any of the NY Time’s articles. So who told you?
Hollywood/media coverage on Puck is good on these issues. Listen to the podcasts The Town and The Powers That Be. Good reporters who know the industry who can speak knowledgeably about it. The Powers That Be has an episode out today about the whole thing I haven't listened to yet but older episodes of The Town also talk about it. They also have reporting on their site but they are annoyingly subscription only so I can't share those. But the podcasts are free to the public.
I got turned onto them because I listened to their politics coverage during the election and really came to respect, appreciate their reporting. It's a rare news outlet that has dogged reporting and seems to call it like it is.
Anonymous wrote:I think one reason that Blake and Justin have credibility issues is that they very publicly lied about their relationship not starting while he was still married on the set of Green Lantern. I can understand not wanting to publicize that, but affirmatively lying about it is a choice.
Who thinks they have credibility issues? Sounds like a personal opinion.
I’m more leaning on Blakes side in this case, but come on, the reason there was so much organic bad press about her is that for a few years now this couple has been overexposed and absolutely there is starting to be public backlash. Listen to any pop culture podcast - tons of them going through blind items on them, the daily NYC pap walks, the whole Preserve era, their fake dating origin story about how they were on a double date with other people.
Just before this whole thing broke in December 20, Ryan was getting heat for coming out in an interview and saying that he and Blake were working class growing up. He actually probably was but Blake clearly wasn’t. She came from a Hollywood family.
Which really has nothing to do with the legal elements of this case, but a lot to do with the public perception.
Anonymous wrote:I think one reason that Blake and Justin have credibility issues is that they very publicly lied about their relationship not starting while he was still married on the set of Green Lantern. I can understand not wanting to publicize that, but affirmatively lying about it is a choice.
Who thinks they have credibility issues? Sounds like a personal opinion.
I’m more leaning on Blakes side in this case, but come on, the reason there was so much organic bad press about her is that for a few years now this couple has been overexposed and absolutely there is starting to be public backlash. Listen to any pop culture podcast - tons of them going through blind items on them, the daily NYC pap walks, the whole Preserve era, their fake dating origin story about how they were on a double date with other people.
Just before this whole thing broke in December 20, Ryan was getting heat for coming out in an interview and saying that he and Blake were working class growing up. He actually probably was but Blake clearly wasn’t. She came from a Hollywood family.
Which really has nothing to do with the legal elements of this case, but a lot to do with the public perception.
The vast majority of people are just finding out about a lot of this. They don't follow Blake or Ryan and Baldoni had almost zero name recognition. The credibility piece has nothing to do with anything and is just an opinion of vocal fans.
Anonymous wrote:I think one reason that Blake and Justin have credibility issues is that they very publicly lied about their relationship not starting while he was still married on the set of Green Lantern. I can understand not wanting to publicize that, but affirmatively lying about it is a choice.
Who thinks they have credibility issues? Sounds like a personal opinion.
I’m more leaning on Blakes side in this case, but come on, the reason there was so much organic bad press about her is that for a few years now this couple has been overexposed and absolutely there is starting to be public backlash. Listen to any pop culture podcast - tons of them going through blind items on them, the daily NYC pap walks, the whole Preserve era, their fake dating origin story about how they were on a double date with other people.
Just before this whole thing broke in December 20, Ryan was getting heat for coming out in an interview and saying that he and Blake were working class growing up. He actually probably was but Blake clearly wasn’t. She came from a Hollywood family.
Which really has nothing to do with the legal elements of this case, but a lot to do with the public perception.
The vast majority of people are just finding out about a lot of this. They don't follow Blake or Ryan and Baldoni had almost zero name recognition. The credibility piece has nothing to do with anything and is just an opinion of vocal fans.
Hmmm. I think the whole reason she’s doing the suit is to get back credibility. They need to be a beloved Hollywood couple or a lot of their revenue streams dry up.
Anonymous wrote:I think one reason that Blake and Justin have credibility issues is that they very publicly lied about their relationship not starting while he was still married on the set of Green Lantern. I can understand not wanting to publicize that, but affirmatively lying about it is a choice.
Who thinks they have credibility issues? Sounds like a personal opinion.
I’m more leaning on Blakes side in this case, but come on, the reason there was so much organic bad press about her is that for a few years now this couple has been overexposed and absolutely there is starting to be public backlash. Listen to any pop culture podcast - tons of them going through blind items on them, the daily NYC pap walks, the whole Preserve era, their fake dating origin story about how they were on a double date with other people.
Just before this whole thing broke in December 20, Ryan was getting heat for coming out in an interview and saying that he and Blake were working class growing up. He actually probably was but Blake clearly wasn’t. She came from a Hollywood family.
Which really has nothing to do with the legal elements of this case, but a lot to do with the public perception.
The vast majority of people are just finding out about a lot of this. They don't follow Blake or Ryan and Baldoni had almost zero name recognition. The credibility piece has nothing to do with anything and is just an opinion of vocal fans.
Hmmm. I think the whole reason she’s doing the suit is to get back credibility. They need to be a beloved Hollywood couple or a lot of their revenue streams dry up.
Perhaps it was necessary when a virtual unknown with a huge ego decided to attack her lest word get out that he was a sexual harasser. Why take a smear lying down and not fight back? It didn't have to be this way but it looks like they were backed into a corner.
Anonymous wrote:I think one reason that Blake and Justin have credibility issues is that they very publicly lied about their relationship not starting while he was still married on the set of Green Lantern. I can understand not wanting to publicize that, but affirmatively lying about it is a choice.
Who thinks they have credibility issues? Sounds like a personal opinion.
I’m more leaning on Blakes side in this case, but come on, the reason there was so much organic bad press about her is that for a few years now this couple has been overexposed and absolutely there is starting to be public backlash. Listen to any pop culture podcast - tons of them going through blind items on them, the daily NYC pap walks, the whole Preserve era, their fake dating origin story about how they were on a double date with other people.
Just before this whole thing broke in December 20, Ryan was getting heat for coming out in an interview and saying that he and Blake were working class growing up. He actually probably was but Blake clearly wasn’t. She came from a Hollywood family.
Which really has nothing to do with the legal elements of this case, but a lot to do with the public perception.
The vast majority of people are just finding out about a lot of this. They don't follow Blake or Ryan and Baldoni had almost zero name recognition. The credibility piece has nothing to do with anything and is just an opinion of vocal fans.
Hmmm. I think the whole reason she’s doing the suit is to get back credibility. They need to be a beloved Hollywood couple or a lot of their revenue streams dry up.
Exactly, it’s all about opportunity lost because of her unpopularity. She blames that on Baldoni. One of his defenses, which I agree with, is much of it is her own fault. She has a lot of really unfortunate interviews. Blake came from a very privileged family and then made it big at a young age. Failure of any sort hasn’t really been something she has experienced. Or even normal people life.
Lively is naked below her boobs. There are multiple closeups of her belly and upper legs. Her legs are up in stirrups in a way that if she tried to pull that hospital gown over her lower half, it would ride up because her legs are up in the air.
It was a nude scene. If the actress filming that scene asked for a sheet between takes to cover up her lower body (even just for warmth, not modesty) it should have been provided. I'm sure there were points when she was able to take her legs out of the stirrups and cover up with the gown, but there were also definitely points where she had to lie there in the stirrups between takes because her legs are up for the full scene so I'm sure they were up for much of the shoot.
Those of you quibbling over "oh she could have pulled her hospital gown down" or "she wasn't really nude, she was wearing clothes" just sound dumb. She's obviously nude and the position of her body would have made it impossible to fully cover up with her gown unless she was lying there holding the gown in place the entire time with her hands (and she probably had to do other things with her hands between takes, like review notes about the scene, drink from a water bottle, etc.).
Why didn't they just give her a sheet? Like this is not explained. What possible reason would the production have for not giving her something to cover up during the scene? She shouldn't have to prove that she needs one, it should just be provided.
Do you understand Blake's not actually giving birth? Its called movie making. That's not her nude belly. It's a thick, warm prosthetic torso. Do while she looks like she's naked, she's actually not.
Still legs spread with a tiny piece of fabric covering her labia while mimicking pushing on an open set, visible camera screens posting the uncut scenesz and regardless of whether she could move to close her legs or move the gown during the shot, nobody could be bothered to give her a coverup when she asked for one.
I am one hundred percent sure that the camera was not focused on her labia — for one thing the friend of the director actor would be blocking it, for the other, she wasn’t actually pushing a baby out and aiming a camera there would make it obvious, and lastly, this was a PG 13 movie. Again, your fiction reads well though.
Of course it wasn't -- she was wearing a strip of fabric over her genitals anyway. No one has suggested they tried to film her genitals.
That does not mean it wasn't uncomfortable to film a scene with no pants on and an actor you just met sitting inches from your vag. It would also be weird to constantly be moving your legs between takes and pulling down the gown and she shouldn't have to do that.
There's also no excuse for springing the nudity on her the day of the shoot and failing to have the intimacy coordinator on set, and also for not closing the set when one of your actors is not only partially nude but has let you know she's not totally comfortable with it.
Baldoni hasn't explained any of this. Why wasn't she given a sheet? Why didn't he raise the issue of nudity earlier? If he planned for Lively to be nude, why didn't he enlist the intimacy coordinator to be there and why didn't he make it a closed set?
I think if this is true, it could be a result of him being green (inexperienced) and less about him being a predator.
I do think a lot of the bad behavior Lively alleges was due to Baldoni being an inexperienced director and the production company just not having a lot of experience and being unprofessional. But that doesn't absolve him of liability if his behavior or the productions actions led to a hostile work environment. Like he doesn't have to be a predator to engage in sexual harassment if his ineptitude led to consistently inappropriate, invasive, sexualized behavior on set.
I worked for a time in the fitness industry, and one of the companies I worked for had this issue -- just incredibly poorly run by people who didn't have leadership/management experience. They mostly had good (or at least okay) intentions but their employment practices were awful. The fitness industry, like acting, is an industry where people might interact in a way that would be considered totally inappropriate in other setting but is normal in that industry -- people touching each other to adjust form, people wearing very little clothing and changing/showering at work, etc. The result of having a green and unprofessional management in an industry like that is that it gets bad very quickly. It also makes it very easy for someone who *is* a predator to do bad things without getting in trouble. I was groped by a colleague at that job and there was just no recourse and it was written off by higher ups because they had no formal HR, no workplace policy governing that kind of behavior (and certainly no training on what is and is not permitted). It was an unequivocal groping, not something that could be misinterpreted on my end (his hands were literally on my boobs and crotch) but because it was a workplace where people did sometimes touch each other in a way that elsewhere might be considered sexual (putting hands on someone's waist or midsection to address form), management believed it had been an accident and that he "didn't mean anything." I don't think all of those people were "predators" but the guy who groped me was and they made it extremely easy for him to get away with it.
That's what I think happened here. When you have a workplace where people might be nude or semi-nude, where part of their job might be to portray childbirth or sex, then you need to maintaining very high standards of professionalism and following protocols for maintaining consent and respect for everyone in the workplace. They did not do that and I think it resulted in a hostile work environment like the one I wound up working in. The fact that it was caused as much by ineptitude as bad intentions doesn't really make it any better. I think they are still liable for creating an unsafe, hostile work environment.
And it seems like we wouldn't have heard about any of this but for Baldoni's misguided smear attempt to "bury her" after the fact. Seems like she was going to look the other way and let it go until and keep it private until that happened, and then she came out guns blazing. Who wouldn't in her case?
Hard to say -- I really don't know what her intentions were prior to the summer PR campaign. It certainly didn't make it *less* likely that she would sue him. It's probably possible that if that had not happened and the film had been a success without all the online chatter about Lively, it might have been resolved more quietly.
This will sound Pollyanna-ish, but I think situations like this could be resolved without litigation if people weren't so egotistical. Like there's a parallel universe where Baldoni was more responsive to Lively's concerns on set and sought to address them, and that results in Lively being more amenable to not only working with Baldoni but his vision for the movie, and Ryan Reynolds is never brought in to write scenes or do the final cut, and they promote the movie together without Baldoni trying to smear Lively online or Lively freezing him out and getting the rest of the cast to do so as well, and then there's no litigation.
But it all starts with people being willing to be self-critical, admit mistakes, apologize, and forgive. And I don't think the people involved in this situation have the ability. Baldoni strikes me as vain, oblivious, self-important, and obnoxious. Lively strikes me as the kind of person who, once she's decided she doesnt' like you, will just go nuclear until you are nothing. It's a terrible combination. I think Baldoni's more in the wrong here -- it really looks like he did some very skeevy, harassing stuff on set and he was the director and needed to take responsibility for the lack of professionalism -- but also Lively probably handled this in a way that maximized the conflict and now it's a death match. On the one hand, good for her for standing up for herself. On the other hand, I question whether anything good will come of this in the end because they are going scorched earth.
I disagree on how you view Baldoni. I don’t think he gives off this vibe at all. He seems pretty down to earth, sensitive and overall a good human which is why people are shocked at the allegations.
I guess he seems that way if you discount everything in Lively's complaint and the fact that the entire cast of the movie has come out in support of Lively. They were there.
I think I may not have written my response clear. What I was trying to articulate is that in the public overall Justin doesn’t have this reputation. I do think that most people would put those traits on Blake as she seems to have had the reputation of being self important and vain long before the allegations. I think people are genuinely shocked to hear these allegations simply due to the fact that Justin appeared to be one of the good guys. Now whether or not he is a good guy, I cannot answer. I was just shocked at how you saw him is all, but now I understand that you are viewing him through the lens of the lawsuit and not on anything outside of it.
Well, she is seeing him through the lens of the Blake’s lawsuit, but is willfully blind to his complaint against The NY Times, which raises serious issues about Blake’s credibility and motivation.
It really doesn't since he barely addressed most of her complaints. But keep harping on it.
He addressed her credibility or lack there of which goes to all her claims. If she is willing to edit texts to deliberately change their meaning and present them with no indication of such edits, why should we find her credible at all? And that’s a rhetorical question, because I know you will support her regardless of how much evidence piles up against her.
Lively didn't do that though. The NYT did that. And he's suing them for it! Good for him. But that argument doesn't have any impact on Lively's credibility -- she is not the one who decided how to present those texts.
And where did The NY Times get those texts? Lively and her publicist. You think it was The NY Times who sliced and diced them? Lively presented them that way, and The NY Times did not fully investigate her claims.
That sounds like a NYT problem.
Also NYT was able to independently verify the texts with Joneworks, the PR company that the Justin's team was working for at the time that the texts occurred. It is not clear to me they came from Lively's team -- they may have come directly from Jonesworks or come from both sources.
Interestingly, the NYT chose not to mention that the PR flaks were working for Jonesworks at the time, or mention Jonesworks at all. Or mention that the reason Jonesworks provided these texts (both to Lively's team AND to the NYT) is that they were discovered when Jonesworks launched a lawsuit against members of Baldoni PR team when they left Jonesworks to start their own company.
None of that has anything to do with Lively. I actually think Jonesworks fed the texts to the NYT specifically to discredit their former employees in a very public and embarrassing way right before Jonesworks sued them for breach of contract.
So no, I don't think Lively's team somehow stage managed all that. There are tons of competing interests at play. The NYT could had lots of opportunity to find and provide more context on the texts -- they didn't. They also could have given Baldoni's team time to respond -- they didn't. They also could have disclosed some of the broader context to how the texts came to be released so that readers would have a better sense of what was at play -- they didn't.
Lively's team, and certainly Lively herself, had nothing to do with any of that.
lol, she shared her draft complaint with the NYTimes.
So? Her team wanted them to report on it and wanted to get ahead of the story. That is their job. Also it's not like Lively showed up at the Times with a copy of her self-drafted complaint. Her PR team reached out to them.
Just because a PR firm contacts you with a scoop on their client's soon-to-be filed lawsuit does not mean that the newspaper doesn't have an obligation to research the claims. And they also didn't have to present her claims as fact. They failed to give Baldoni sufficient time to respond and they did a poor job of framing the story. That's the paper's fault.
Ironically, while I'm sure in the moment Lively's team was happy with the way it was covered, I think in the end it hurt them and they would have been better off if the Times had been more restrained and even in their coverage. But none of that was Lively's decision and she didn't draft those articles. It's not her fault that the Times did their jobs poorly.
No it isn’t. But her retailiation case relies on the same manipulated texts. And by her own admission, she has access to the full texts, just as the New York Times did.
The discussion of the texts in the complaint is MUCH more thorough than what is in the NYT article. Like way, way more context including some of the context that Baldoni is suing the NYT for omitting. It is definitely framed in a way to interpret the texts as negatively as possible -- it's a legal filing on behalf of Lively, not an unbiased accounting. Also the complaint is focused on the texts that back up their claim of retaliation, including texts that aren't that sensational -- many of the texts included in the complaint are included in order to just show timeline, that Nathan an Abel were working on Baldoni's behalf at certain points in time when the online campaign was happening. The NYT was much more focused on the more sensational texts which aren't necessarily centrally important to Lively's complaint, like the one where one of the PR flaks is talking about how much bad coverage Lively is getting and says something like "it's kind of sad because it shows you how much people hate women." That's a personally damning text but not important to Lively's case -- the NYT really highlights it be the complaint doesn't. So they are approaching it very differently.
Anyway, that doesn't mean Lively's complaint includes every single bit of context, but it's not "manipulative" except in the way that any legal filing is manipulative -- the goal is to prove your client's case. You don't frame it in an even-handed way. Baldoni has a lawyer, his lawyer will provide the context and frame it in a way that benefits Baldoni, and I guarantee his filing will be just as slanted as Lively's. That's how this works.
Anonymous wrote:I think one reason that Blake and Justin have credibility issues is that they very publicly lied about their relationship not starting while he was still married on the set of Green Lantern. I can understand not wanting to publicize that, but affirmatively lying about it is a choice.
Who thinks they have credibility issues? Sounds like a personal opinion.
I’m more leaning on Blakes side in this case, but come on, the reason there was so much organic bad press about her is that for a few years now this couple has been overexposed and absolutely there is starting to be public backlash. Listen to any pop culture podcast - tons of them going through blind items on them, the daily NYC pap walks, the whole Preserve era, their fake dating origin story about how they were on a double date with other people.
Just before this whole thing broke in December 20, Ryan was getting heat for coming out in an interview and saying that he and Blake were working class growing up. He actually probably was but Blake clearly wasn’t. She came from a Hollywood family.
Which really has nothing to do with the legal elements of this case, but a lot to do with the public perception.
The vast majority of people are just finding out about a lot of this. They don't follow Blake or Ryan and Baldoni had almost zero name recognition. The credibility piece has nothing to do with anything and is just an opinion of vocal fans.
Hmmm. I think the whole reason she’s doing the suit is to get back credibility. They need to be a beloved Hollywood couple or a lot of their revenue streams dry up.
I actually agree with both this post and the one immediately above. I'm in the category of people who don't follow Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds. Like I'm not even sure I knew they were married. If I read about it when it happened, I'd forgotten, and definitely did not know or care that they may have been adulterous when they met. I only knew of her from Gossip Girl and Baldoni from Jane the Virgin.
What got her on my radar was that big story about the baby bump interview. I saw lots of discussion about it and it was so weird to me because it didn't seem like that big of a deal especially since it wasn't even recent or in connection with her latest film. It seemed totally random. So for me, when I read about her lawsuit and the retaliation/smear campaign, that rang true and puts me on her side (and I'm not otherwise a follower or a fan). I think that she perceived last summer's bad press as a major hit to her credibility and her lawsuit is absolutely about gaining credibility and frankly, I think she's doing a good of it. Her PR campaign is a hell of a lot more professional than his.
Anonymous wrote:I think one reason that Blake and Justin have credibility issues is that they very publicly lied about their relationship not starting while he was still married on the set of Green Lantern. I can understand not wanting to publicize that, but affirmatively lying about it is a choice.
Who thinks they have credibility issues? Sounds like a personal opinion.
I’m more leaning on Blakes side in this case, but come on, the reason there was so much organic bad press about her is that for a few years now this couple has been overexposed and absolutely there is starting to be public backlash. Listen to any pop culture podcast - tons of them going through blind items on them, the daily NYC pap walks, the whole Preserve era, their fake dating origin story about how they were on a double date with other people.
Just before this whole thing broke in December 20, Ryan was getting heat for coming out in an interview and saying that he and Blake were working class growing up. He actually probably was but Blake clearly wasn’t. She came from a Hollywood family.
Which really has nothing to do with the legal elements of this case, but a lot to do with the public perception.
The vast majority of people are just finding out about a lot of this. They don't follow Blake or Ryan and Baldoni had almost zero name recognition. The credibility piece has nothing to do with anything and is just an opinion of vocal fans.
Hmmm. I think the whole reason she’s doing the suit is to get back credibility. They need to be a beloved Hollywood couple or a lot of their revenue streams dry up.
I actually agree with both this post and the one immediately above. I'm in the category of people who don't follow Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds. Like I'm not even sure I knew they were married. If I read about it when it happened, I'd forgotten, and definitely did not know or care that they may have been adulterous when they met. I only knew of her from Gossip Girl and Baldoni from Jane the Virgin.
What got her on my radar was that big story about the baby bump interview. I saw lots of discussion about it and it was so weird to me because it didn't seem like that big of a deal especially since it wasn't even recent or in connection with her latest film. It seemed totally random. So for me, when I read about her lawsuit and the retaliation/smear campaign, that rang true and puts me on her side (and I'm not otherwise a follower or a fan). I think that she perceived last summer's bad press as a major hit to her credibility and her lawsuit is absolutely about gaining credibility and frankly, I think she's doing a good of it. Her PR campaign is a hell of a lot more professional than his.
Blake has the added advantage of her billionaire husband throwing his weight around. I disagree that it is going well, the fact that swipes were taken at her at Golden Globes and the fact they didn’t attend despite Ryan being nominated suggest it isn’t going well.
Anonymous wrote:I think one reason that Blake and Justin have credibility issues is that they very publicly lied about their relationship not starting while he was still married on the set of Green Lantern. I can understand not wanting to publicize that, but affirmatively lying about it is a choice.
Who thinks they have credibility issues? Sounds like a personal opinion.
I’m more leaning on Blakes side in this case, but come on, the reason there was so much organic bad press about her is that for a few years now this couple has been overexposed and absolutely there is starting to be public backlash. Listen to any pop culture podcast - tons of them going through blind items on them, the daily NYC pap walks, the whole Preserve era, their fake dating origin story about how they were on a double date with other people.
Just before this whole thing broke in December 20, Ryan was getting heat for coming out in an interview and saying that he and Blake were working class growing up. He actually probably was but Blake clearly wasn’t. She came from a Hollywood family.
Which really has nothing to do with the legal elements of this case, but a lot to do with the public perception.
The vast majority of people are just finding out about a lot of this. They don't follow Blake or Ryan and Baldoni had almost zero name recognition. The credibility piece has nothing to do with anything and is just an opinion of vocal fans.
Hmmm. I think the whole reason she’s doing the suit is to get back credibility. They need to be a beloved Hollywood couple or a lot of their revenue streams dry up.
I actually agree with both this post and the one immediately above. I'm in the category of people who don't follow Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds. Like I'm not even sure I knew they were married. If I read about it when it happened, I'd forgotten, and definitely did not know or care that they may have been adulterous when they met. I only knew of her from Gossip Girl and Baldoni from Jane the Virgin.
What got her on my radar was that big story about the baby bump interview. I saw lots of discussion about it and it was so weird to me because it didn't seem like that big of a deal especially since it wasn't even recent or in connection with her latest film. It seemed totally random. So for me, when I read about her lawsuit and the retaliation/smear campaign, that rang true and puts me on her side (and I'm not otherwise a follower or a fan). I think that she perceived last summer's bad press as a major hit to her credibility and her lawsuit is absolutely about gaining credibility and frankly, I think she's doing a good of it. Her PR campaign is a hell of a lot more professional than his.
Blake has the added advantage of her billionaire husband throwing his weight around. I disagree that it is going well, the fact that swipes were taken at her at Golden Globes and the fact they didn’t attend despite Ryan being nominated suggest it isn’t going well.
Weird that so many have a different perception. Blake and Ryan will be fine. There are much bigger stories going on right now. People will move on and lose interest in this very soon.
Lively is naked below her boobs. There are multiple closeups of her belly and upper legs. Her legs are up in stirrups in a way that if she tried to pull that hospital gown over her lower half, it would ride up because her legs are up in the air.
It was a nude scene. If the actress filming that scene asked for a sheet between takes to cover up her lower body (even just for warmth, not modesty) it should have been provided. I'm sure there were points when she was able to take her legs out of the stirrups and cover up with the gown, but there were also definitely points where she had to lie there in the stirrups between takes because her legs are up for the full scene so I'm sure they were up for much of the shoot.
Those of you quibbling over "oh she could have pulled her hospital gown down" or "she wasn't really nude, she was wearing clothes" just sound dumb. She's obviously nude and the position of her body would have made it impossible to fully cover up with her gown unless she was lying there holding the gown in place the entire time with her hands (and she probably had to do other things with her hands between takes, like review notes about the scene, drink from a water bottle, etc.).
Why didn't they just give her a sheet? Like this is not explained. What possible reason would the production have for not giving her something to cover up during the scene? She shouldn't have to prove that she needs one, it should just be provided.
Do you understand Blake's not actually giving birth? Its called movie making. That's not her nude belly. It's a thick, warm prosthetic torso. Do while she looks like she's naked, she's actually not.
Still legs spread with a tiny piece of fabric covering her labia while mimicking pushing on an open set, visible camera screens posting the uncut scenesz and regardless of whether she could move to close her legs or move the gown during the shot, nobody could be bothered to give her a coverup when she asked for one.
I am one hundred percent sure that the camera was not focused on her labia — for one thing the friend of the director actor would be blocking it, for the other, she wasn’t actually pushing a baby out and aiming a camera there would make it obvious, and lastly, this was a PG 13 movie. Again, your fiction reads well though.
Of course it wasn't -- she was wearing a strip of fabric over her genitals anyway. No one has suggested they tried to film her genitals.
That does not mean it wasn't uncomfortable to film a scene with no pants on and an actor you just met sitting inches from your vag. It would also be weird to constantly be moving your legs between takes and pulling down the gown and she shouldn't have to do that.
There's also no excuse for springing the nudity on her the day of the shoot and failing to have the intimacy coordinator on set, and also for not closing the set when one of your actors is not only partially nude but has let you know she's not totally comfortable with it.
Baldoni hasn't explained any of this. Why wasn't she given a sheet? Why didn't he raise the issue of nudity earlier? If he planned for Lively to be nude, why didn't he enlist the intimacy coordinator to be there and why didn't he make it a closed set?
I think if this is true, it could be a result of him being green (inexperienced) and less about him being a predator.
I do think a lot of the bad behavior Lively alleges was due to Baldoni being an inexperienced director and the production company just not having a lot of experience and being unprofessional. But that doesn't absolve him of liability if his behavior or the productions actions led to a hostile work environment. Like he doesn't have to be a predator to engage in sexual harassment if his ineptitude led to consistently inappropriate, invasive, sexualized behavior on set.
I worked for a time in the fitness industry, and one of the companies I worked for had this issue -- just incredibly poorly run by people who didn't have leadership/management experience. They mostly had good (or at least okay) intentions but their employment practices were awful. The fitness industry, like acting, is an industry where people might interact in a way that would be considered totally inappropriate in other setting but is normal in that industry -- people touching each other to adjust form, people wearing very little clothing and changing/showering at work, etc. The result of having a green and unprofessional management in an industry like that is that it gets bad very quickly. It also makes it very easy for someone who *is* a predator to do bad things without getting in trouble. I was groped by a colleague at that job and there was just no recourse and it was written off by higher ups because they had no formal HR, no workplace policy governing that kind of behavior (and certainly no training on what is and is not permitted). It was an unequivocal groping, not something that could be misinterpreted on my end (his hands were literally on my boobs and crotch) but because it was a workplace where people did sometimes touch each other in a way that elsewhere might be considered sexual (putting hands on someone's waist or midsection to address form), management believed it had been an accident and that he "didn't mean anything." I don't think all of those people were "predators" but the guy who groped me was and they made it extremely easy for him to get away with it.
That's what I think happened here. When you have a workplace where people might be nude or semi-nude, where part of their job might be to portray childbirth or sex, then you need to maintaining very high standards of professionalism and following protocols for maintaining consent and respect for everyone in the workplace. They did not do that and I think it resulted in a hostile work environment like the one I wound up working in. The fact that it was caused as much by ineptitude as bad intentions doesn't really make it any better. I think they are still liable for creating an unsafe, hostile work environment.
And it seems like we wouldn't have heard about any of this but for Baldoni's misguided smear attempt to "bury her" after the fact. Seems like she was going to look the other way and let it go until and keep it private until that happened, and then she came out guns blazing. Who wouldn't in her case?
Hard to say -- I really don't know what her intentions were prior to the summer PR campaign. It certainly didn't make it *less* likely that she would sue him. It's probably possible that if that had not happened and the film had been a success without all the online chatter about Lively, it might have been resolved more quietly.
This will sound Pollyanna-ish, but I think situations like this could be resolved without litigation if people weren't so egotistical. Like there's a parallel universe where Baldoni was more responsive to Lively's concerns on set and sought to address them, and that results in Lively being more amenable to not only working with Baldoni but his vision for the movie, and Ryan Reynolds is never brought in to write scenes or do the final cut, and they promote the movie together without Baldoni trying to smear Lively online or Lively freezing him out and getting the rest of the cast to do so as well, and then there's no litigation.
But it all starts with people being willing to be self-critical, admit mistakes, apologize, and forgive. And I don't think the people involved in this situation have the ability. Baldoni strikes me as vain, oblivious, self-important, and obnoxious. Lively strikes me as the kind of person who, once she's decided she doesnt' like you, will just go nuclear until you are nothing. It's a terrible combination. I think Baldoni's more in the wrong here -- it really looks like he did some very skeevy, harassing stuff on set and he was the director and needed to take responsibility for the lack of professionalism -- but also Lively probably handled this in a way that maximized the conflict and now it's a death match. On the one hand, good for her for standing up for herself. On the other hand, I question whether anything good will come of this in the end because they are going scorched earth.
I disagree on how you view Baldoni. I don’t think he gives off this vibe at all. He seems pretty down to earth, sensitive and overall a good human which is why people are shocked at the allegations.
I guess he seems that way if you discount everything in Lively's complaint and the fact that the entire cast of the movie has come out in support of Lively. They were there.
I think I may not have written my response clear. What I was trying to articulate is that in the public overall Justin doesn’t have this reputation. I do think that most people would put those traits on Blake as she seems to have had the reputation of being self important and vain long before the allegations. I think people are genuinely shocked to hear these allegations simply due to the fact that Justin appeared to be one of the good guys. Now whether or not he is a good guy, I cannot answer. I was just shocked at how you saw him is all, but now I understand that you are viewing him through the lens of the lawsuit and not on anything outside of it.
Well, she is seeing him through the lens of the Blake’s lawsuit, but is willfully blind to his complaint against The NY Times, which raises serious issues about Blake’s credibility and motivation.
It really doesn't since he barely addressed most of her complaints. But keep harping on it.
He addressed her credibility or lack there of which goes to all her claims. If she is willing to edit texts to deliberately change their meaning and present them with no indication of such edits, why should we find her credible at all? And that’s a rhetorical question, because I know you will support her regardless of how much evidence piles up against her.
Lively didn't do that though. The NYT did that. And he's suing them for it! Good for him. But that argument doesn't have any impact on Lively's credibility -- she is not the one who decided how to present those texts.
And where did The NY Times get those texts? Lively and her publicist. You think it was The NY Times who sliced and diced them? Lively presented them that way, and The NY Times did not fully investigate her claims.
That sounds like a NYT problem.
Also NYT was able to independently verify the texts with Joneworks, the PR company that the Justin's team was working for at the time that the texts occurred. It is not clear to me they came from Lively's team -- they may have come directly from Jonesworks or come from both sources.
Interestingly, the NYT chose not to mention that the PR flaks were working for Jonesworks at the time, or mention Jonesworks at all. Or mention that the reason Jonesworks provided these texts (both to Lively's team AND to the NYT) is that they were discovered when Jonesworks launched a lawsuit against members of Baldoni PR team when they left Jonesworks to start their own company.
None of that has anything to do with Lively. I actually think Jonesworks fed the texts to the NYT specifically to discredit their former employees in a very public and embarrassing way right before Jonesworks sued them for breach of contract.
So no, I don't think Lively's team somehow stage managed all that. There are tons of competing interests at play. The NYT could had lots of opportunity to find and provide more context on the texts -- they didn't. They also could have given Baldoni's team time to respond -- they didn't. They also could have disclosed some of the broader context to how the texts came to be released so that readers would have a better sense of what was at play -- they didn't.
Lively's team, and certainly Lively herself, had nothing to do with any of that.
lol, she shared her draft complaint with the NYTimes.
So? Her team wanted them to report on it and wanted to get ahead of the story. That is their job. Also it's not like Lively showed up at the Times with a copy of her self-drafted complaint. Her PR team reached out to them.
Just because a PR firm contacts you with a scoop on their client's soon-to-be filed lawsuit does not mean that the newspaper doesn't have an obligation to research the claims. And they also didn't have to present her claims as fact. They failed to give Baldoni sufficient time to respond and they did a poor job of framing the story. That's the paper's fault.
Ironically, while I'm sure in the moment Lively's team was happy with the way it was covered, I think in the end it hurt them and they would have been better off if the Times had been more restrained and even in their coverage. But none of that was Lively's decision and she didn't draft those articles. It's not her fault that the Times did their jobs poorly.
No it isn’t. But her retailiation case relies on the same manipulated texts. And by her own admission, she has access to the full texts, just as the New York Times did.
The discussion of the texts in the complaint is MUCH more thorough than what is in the NYT article. Like way, way more context including some of the context that Baldoni is suing the NYT for omitting. It is definitely framed in a way to interpret the texts as negatively as possible -- it's a legal filing on behalf of Lively, not an unbiased accounting. Also the complaint is focused on the texts that back up their claim of retaliation, including texts that aren't that sensational -- many of the texts included in the complaint are included in order to just show timeline, that Nathan an Abel were working on Baldoni's behalf at certain points in time when the online campaign was happening. The NYT was much more focused on the more sensational texts which aren't necessarily centrally important to Lively's complaint, like the one where one of the PR flaks is talking about how much bad coverage Lively is getting and says something like "it's kind of sad because it shows you how much people hate women." That's a personally damning text but not important to Lively's case -- the NYT really highlights it be the complaint doesn't. So they are approaching it very differently.
Anyway, that doesn't mean Lively's complaint includes every single bit of context, but it's not "manipulative" except in the way that any legal filing is manipulative -- the goal is to prove your client's case. You don't frame it in an even-handed way. Baldoni has a lawyer, his lawyer will provide the context and frame it in a way that benefits Baldoni, and I guarantee his filing will be just as slanted as Lively's. That's how this works.
You are very skilled at creating separation where none actually exists.
Anonymous wrote:I think one reason that Blake and Justin have credibility issues is that they very publicly lied about their relationship not starting while he was still married on the set of Green Lantern. I can understand not wanting to publicize that, but affirmatively lying about it is a choice.
Who thinks they have credibility issues? Sounds like a personal opinion.
I’m more leaning on Blakes side in this case, but come on, the reason there was so much organic bad press about her is that for a few years now this couple has been overexposed and absolutely there is starting to be public backlash. Listen to any pop culture podcast - tons of them going through blind items on them, the daily NYC pap walks, the whole Preserve era, their fake dating origin story about how they were on a double date with other people.
Just before this whole thing broke in December 20, Ryan was getting heat for coming out in an interview and saying that he and Blake were working class growing up. He actually probably was but Blake clearly wasn’t. She came from a Hollywood family.
Which really has nothing to do with the legal elements of this case, but a lot to do with the public perception.
The vast majority of people are just finding out about a lot of this. They don't follow Blake or Ryan and Baldoni had almost zero name recognition. The credibility piece has nothing to do with anything and is just an opinion of vocal fans.
Hmmm. I think the whole reason she’s doing the suit is to get back credibility. They need to be a beloved Hollywood couple or a lot of their revenue streams dry up.
I actually agree with both this post and the one immediately above. I'm in the category of people who don't follow Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds. Like I'm not even sure I knew they were married. If I read about it when it happened, I'd forgotten, and definitely did not know or care that they may have been adulterous when they met. I only knew of her from Gossip Girl and Baldoni from Jane the Virgin.
What got her on my radar was that big story about the baby bump interview. I saw lots of discussion about it and it was so weird to me because it didn't seem like that big of a deal especially since it wasn't even recent or in connection with her latest film. It seemed totally random. So for me, when I read about her lawsuit and the retaliation/smear campaign, that rang true and puts me on her side (and I'm not otherwise a follower or a fan). I think that she perceived last summer's bad press as a major hit to her credibility and her lawsuit is absolutely about gaining credibility and frankly, I think she's doing a good of it. Her PR campaign is a hell of a lot more professional than his.
Blake has the added advantage of her billionaire husband throwing his weight around. I disagree that it is going well, the fact that swipes were taken at her at Golden Globes and the fact they didn’t attend despite Ryan being nominated suggest it isn’t going well.
There's two audiences here: the one that would follow in enough detail to know those two things and the broader audience. Her team feels the smear campaign hurt her with the broader audience than folks who already follow celebrities and dislike her from before. Those people exist but it's not necessarily the audience she's going for.
Lively is naked below her boobs. There are multiple closeups of her belly and upper legs. Her legs are up in stirrups in a way that if she tried to pull that hospital gown over her lower half, it would ride up because her legs are up in the air.
It was a nude scene. If the actress filming that scene asked for a sheet between takes to cover up her lower body (even just for warmth, not modesty) it should have been provided. I'm sure there were points when she was able to take her legs out of the stirrups and cover up with the gown, but there were also definitely points where she had to lie there in the stirrups between takes because her legs are up for the full scene so I'm sure they were up for much of the shoot.
Those of you quibbling over "oh she could have pulled her hospital gown down" or "she wasn't really nude, she was wearing clothes" just sound dumb. She's obviously nude and the position of her body would have made it impossible to fully cover up with her gown unless she was lying there holding the gown in place the entire time with her hands (and she probably had to do other things with her hands between takes, like review notes about the scene, drink from a water bottle, etc.).
Why didn't they just give her a sheet? Like this is not explained. What possible reason would the production have for not giving her something to cover up during the scene? She shouldn't have to prove that she needs one, it should just be provided.
Do you understand Blake's not actually giving birth? Its called movie making. That's not her nude belly. It's a thick, warm prosthetic torso. Do while she looks like she's naked, she's actually not.
Still legs spread with a tiny piece of fabric covering her labia while mimicking pushing on an open set, visible camera screens posting the uncut scenesz and regardless of whether she could move to close her legs or move the gown during the shot, nobody could be bothered to give her a coverup when she asked for one.
I am one hundred percent sure that the camera was not focused on her labia — for one thing the friend of the director actor would be blocking it, for the other, she wasn’t actually pushing a baby out and aiming a camera there would make it obvious, and lastly, this was a PG 13 movie. Again, your fiction reads well though.
Of course it wasn't -- she was wearing a strip of fabric over her genitals anyway. No one has suggested they tried to film her genitals.
That does not mean it wasn't uncomfortable to film a scene with no pants on and an actor you just met sitting inches from your vag. It would also be weird to constantly be moving your legs between takes and pulling down the gown and she shouldn't have to do that.
There's also no excuse for springing the nudity on her the day of the shoot and failing to have the intimacy coordinator on set, and also for not closing the set when one of your actors is not only partially nude but has let you know she's not totally comfortable with it.
Baldoni hasn't explained any of this. Why wasn't she given a sheet? Why didn't he raise the issue of nudity earlier? If he planned for Lively to be nude, why didn't he enlist the intimacy coordinator to be there and why didn't he make it a closed set?
I think if this is true, it could be a result of him being green (inexperienced) and less about him being a predator.
I do think a lot of the bad behavior Lively alleges was due to Baldoni being an inexperienced director and the production company just not having a lot of experience and being unprofessional. But that doesn't absolve him of liability if his behavior or the productions actions led to a hostile work environment. Like he doesn't have to be a predator to engage in sexual harassment if his ineptitude led to consistently inappropriate, invasive, sexualized behavior on set.
I worked for a time in the fitness industry, and one of the companies I worked for had this issue -- just incredibly poorly run by people who didn't have leadership/management experience. They mostly had good (or at least okay) intentions but their employment practices were awful. The fitness industry, like acting, is an industry where people might interact in a way that would be considered totally inappropriate in other setting but is normal in that industry -- people touching each other to adjust form, people wearing very little clothing and changing/showering at work, etc. The result of having a green and unprofessional management in an industry like that is that it gets bad very quickly. It also makes it very easy for someone who *is* a predator to do bad things without getting in trouble. I was groped by a colleague at that job and there was just no recourse and it was written off by higher ups because they had no formal HR, no workplace policy governing that kind of behavior (and certainly no training on what is and is not permitted). It was an unequivocal groping, not something that could be misinterpreted on my end (his hands were literally on my boobs and crotch) but because it was a workplace where people did sometimes touch each other in a way that elsewhere might be considered sexual (putting hands on someone's waist or midsection to address form), management believed it had been an accident and that he "didn't mean anything." I don't think all of those people were "predators" but the guy who groped me was and they made it extremely easy for him to get away with it.
That's what I think happened here. When you have a workplace where people might be nude or semi-nude, where part of their job might be to portray childbirth or sex, then you need to maintaining very high standards of professionalism and following protocols for maintaining consent and respect for everyone in the workplace. They did not do that and I think it resulted in a hostile work environment like the one I wound up working in. The fact that it was caused as much by ineptitude as bad intentions doesn't really make it any better. I think they are still liable for creating an unsafe, hostile work environment.
And it seems like we wouldn't have heard about any of this but for Baldoni's misguided smear attempt to "bury her" after the fact. Seems like she was going to look the other way and let it go until and keep it private until that happened, and then she came out guns blazing. Who wouldn't in her case?
Hard to say -- I really don't know what her intentions were prior to the summer PR campaign. It certainly didn't make it *less* likely that she would sue him. It's probably possible that if that had not happened and the film had been a success without all the online chatter about Lively, it might have been resolved more quietly.
This will sound Pollyanna-ish, but I think situations like this could be resolved without litigation if people weren't so egotistical. Like there's a parallel universe where Baldoni was more responsive to Lively's concerns on set and sought to address them, and that results in Lively being more amenable to not only working with Baldoni but his vision for the movie, and Ryan Reynolds is never brought in to write scenes or do the final cut, and they promote the movie together without Baldoni trying to smear Lively online or Lively freezing him out and getting the rest of the cast to do so as well, and then there's no litigation.
But it all starts with people being willing to be self-critical, admit mistakes, apologize, and forgive. And I don't think the people involved in this situation have the ability. Baldoni strikes me as vain, oblivious, self-important, and obnoxious. Lively strikes me as the kind of person who, once she's decided she doesnt' like you, will just go nuclear until you are nothing. It's a terrible combination. I think Baldoni's more in the wrong here -- it really looks like he did some very skeevy, harassing stuff on set and he was the director and needed to take responsibility for the lack of professionalism -- but also Lively probably handled this in a way that maximized the conflict and now it's a death match. On the one hand, good for her for standing up for herself. On the other hand, I question whether anything good will come of this in the end because they are going scorched earth.
I disagree on how you view Baldoni. I don’t think he gives off this vibe at all. He seems pretty down to earth, sensitive and overall a good human which is why people are shocked at the allegations.
I guess he seems that way if you discount everything in Lively's complaint and the fact that the entire cast of the movie has come out in support of Lively. They were there.
I think I may not have written my response clear. What I was trying to articulate is that in the public overall Justin doesn’t have this reputation. I do think that most people would put those traits on Blake as she seems to have had the reputation of being self important and vain long before the allegations. I think people are genuinely shocked to hear these allegations simply due to the fact that Justin appeared to be one of the good guys. Now whether or not he is a good guy, I cannot answer. I was just shocked at how you saw him is all, but now I understand that you are viewing him through the lens of the lawsuit and not on anything outside of it.
Well, she is seeing him through the lens of the Blake’s lawsuit, but is willfully blind to his complaint against The NY Times, which raises serious issues about Blake’s credibility and motivation.
It really doesn't since he barely addressed most of her complaints. But keep harping on it.
He addressed her credibility or lack there of which goes to all her claims. If she is willing to edit texts to deliberately change their meaning and present them with no indication of such edits, why should we find her credible at all? And that’s a rhetorical question, because I know you will support her regardless of how much evidence piles up against her.
Lively didn't do that though. The NYT did that. And he's suing them for it! Good for him. But that argument doesn't have any impact on Lively's credibility -- she is not the one who decided how to present those texts.
And where did The NY Times get those texts? Lively and her publicist. You think it was The NY Times who sliced and diced them? Lively presented them that way, and The NY Times did not fully investigate her claims.
That sounds like a NYT problem.
Also NYT was able to independently verify the texts with Joneworks, the PR company that the Justin's team was working for at the time that the texts occurred. It is not clear to me they came from Lively's team -- they may have come directly from Jonesworks or come from both sources.
Interestingly, the NYT chose not to mention that the PR flaks were working for Jonesworks at the time, or mention Jonesworks at all. Or mention that the reason Jonesworks provided these texts (both to Lively's team AND to the NYT) is that they were discovered when Jonesworks launched a lawsuit against members of Baldoni PR team when they left Jonesworks to start their own company.
None of that has anything to do with Lively. I actually think Jonesworks fed the texts to the NYT specifically to discredit their former employees in a very public and embarrassing way right before Jonesworks sued them for breach of contract.
So no, I don't think Lively's team somehow stage managed all that. There are tons of competing interests at play. The NYT could had lots of opportunity to find and provide more context on the texts -- they didn't. They also could have given Baldoni's team time to respond -- they didn't. They also could have disclosed some of the broader context to how the texts came to be released so that readers would have a better sense of what was at play -- they didn't.
Lively's team, and certainly Lively herself, had nothing to do with any of that.
And you know this exactly how?
Bumping. Nothing like this is any of the NY Time’s articles. So who told you?
Hollywood/media coverage on Puck is good on these issues. Listen to the podcasts The Town and The Powers That Be. Good reporters who know the industry who can speak knowledgeably about it. The Powers That Be has an episode out today about the whole thing I haven't listened to yet but older episodes of The Town also talk about it. They also have reporting on their site but they are annoyingly subscription only so I can't share those. But the podcasts are free to the public.
I got turned onto them because I listened to their politics coverage during the election and really came to respect, appreciate their reporting. It's a rare news outlet that has dogged reporting and seems to call it like it is.
Anonymous wrote:I think one reason that Blake and Justin have credibility issues is that they very publicly lied about their relationship not starting while he was still married on the set of Green Lantern. I can understand not wanting to publicize that, but affirmatively lying about it is a choice.
Who thinks they have credibility issues? Sounds like a personal opinion.
I’m more leaning on Blakes side in this case, but come on, the reason there was so much organic bad press about her is that for a few years now this couple has been overexposed and absolutely there is starting to be public backlash. Listen to any pop culture podcast - tons of them going through blind items on them, the daily NYC pap walks, the whole Preserve era, their fake dating origin story about how they were on a double date with other people.
Just before this whole thing broke in December 20, Ryan was getting heat for coming out in an interview and saying that he and Blake were working class growing up. He actually probably was but Blake clearly wasn’t. She came from a Hollywood family.
Which really has nothing to do with the legal elements of this case, but a lot to do with the public perception.
The vast majority of people are just finding out about a lot of this. They don't follow Blake or Ryan and Baldoni had almost zero name recognition. The credibility piece has nothing to do with anything and is just an opinion of vocal fans.
Hmmm. I think the whole reason she’s doing the suit is to get back credibility. They need to be a beloved Hollywood couple or a lot of their revenue streams dry up.
Perhaps it was necessary when a virtual unknown with a huge ego decided to attack her lest word get out that he was a sexual harasser. Why take a smear lying down and not fight back? It didn't have to be this way but it looks like they were backed into a corner.
Maybe, but it’s really blown up now, and the idea that a ton more texts and things are going to come out to the public is just weird. I don’t have any bad emails or texts but the thought of the public seeing a bunch of my texts and emails even if there’s nothing bad in them makes me kind of cringe. It just feels violating or something.
I really think it would’ve probably died down if they had just left it alone.
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