Why is Blake Lively so overrated?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get that people are skeezed out by the male feminist thing, but I’m not sure it makes him a terrible person.

Anyway, at the end of the day, I think this shows what happens in any business when there isn’t a clear delineation of power. When people’s values line up, everything can go well. But when they don’t, it’s a total mess. Who even can tell what BL was supposed to be doing or not doing. Seems like she wanted to be doing it all, but the studio wanted to limit her role because it was slowing things down. And JB was just stuck in the middle, going back and forth asking what he was supposed to do at every turn.

I just wrote about this in a longer post but wanted to reiterate it here: the stuff about Lively being demanding strikes me as dumb because that's just what happens when you hire a big name actor. The tradeoff is she brings a lot more commercial viability to the project. They hired her because she's very well known and recognizable, which will result in more people going to the movie (news flash: it worked). Well with her fame comes power and that is going to mean she might want to have more creative input into the movie, might make demands a lesser known actor wouldn't dare to make, etc. They know this going in. The vast majority of actors at Lively's fame level will be a PITA in similar ways.

I also think a huge part of the problem was Baldoni's approach to directing and collaborating. You can see it in the texts he includes in his complaint. He doesn't know how to stand up to anyone (not Lively, not his producing partners, not the studio). He's "collaborative" but how this really comes off is wishy-washy and indirect. Everyone is talking about how Lively was hard to work with (which I'm sure she is) but he also sounds like a bad director. It sounds like he basically let her take over a bunch of stuff in the production and then when his studio/partners got mad and told him to rein her in, he couldn't do it. I suspect this dynamic is where a lot of the problems arose. Maybe in trying to rein her in, he crossed lines that felt harassing to Lively. And maybe they were harassing if he did it in an unprofessional way, which seems likely because he really does come off as inexperienced. He might have tried to soft pedal studio demands to Lively because he was afraid of being direct, but his soft pedaling came off to her like him trying to exploit their friendliness in inappropriate ways.

I really think they are both responsible for the toxicity here and that the studio effed up in casting and didn't think about what it would be like for a star at Lively's level to work with a director at Baldoni's level with his specific personality.

I disagree. The problem was that she didn’t make these demands during contract negotiations, she kept adding them as the movie went through production, which really hurt both the film’s budget and timeline. Had she made them during negotiations, they could have easily decided to go with another actress. Because she waited to make her demands until they were in production, they were hamstrung.

[Anonymous]

It’s kind of cute that people are reading his complaint and not recognizing that if the allegations are true, Blake has a full fledged personality disorder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s kind of cute that people are reading his complaint and not recognizing that if the allegations are true, Blake has a full fledged personality disorder.

of course she does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The timeline isn't completely clear but she signed onto the project at the end of December 2022, and had her baby mid February. The complaint alleges that almost immediately the conflict over the wardrobe started and that is when they went to her house. So it seems the going to her house might have been shortly after she had given birth and was more of an accommodation for her family status than her wielding power. She may have had provisos in her contract related to her work commitments post birth / while breastfeeding for the first few months.

Just to be clear, she had the baby at the end of January. They publicly announced on Super Bowl Sunday, which was I think February 4, but she had given birth earlier. You can tell she didn’t have much of a baby bump at that point. They deliberately kept the birthdate vague, and her announcement was, “been busy” with a picture of her clearly not pregnant any more.

I just want to note as a woman who has given birth that even if they kept the birthdate vague, asking to do fittings at home in the spring of 2023 after having a baby in the winter of 2023 is reasonable in my book. I don't care if it was 1 month or three. Pregnancy is hard on your body. Also you might have looked at me in clothes within a couple weeks of childbirth and thought "she doesn't have much of a baby bump," but the reality was very different if I was changing in front of you.

There are other things Lively is alleged to have done that sound bad to me, but this isn't one. It honestly sounds trumped up -- stuff gets delivered in Manhattan every day, but Baldoni is alleging that delivering wardrobe to her apartment caused cost overruns? I don't buy it.

But the set was in Hoboken, New Jersey. So yeah, I could see why it might cause overruns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Personally I haven’t seen anything that shows JB is “insufferable.” People seem to hate him simply for having money and being involved in this case, which they’re bored of. But if BL really did make his life as difficult as it seems, and he capitulated at every turn as it seems, and she still then went and made false allegations as it seems, do we really have to hate him for defending himself in the ways his lawyer is recommending? If he didn’t file this lawsuit, everyone would still be firmly with Blake. I’m not sure what he is supposed to do to continue on in this career as a director, which is presumably what he wants to do. It just seems like a lose lose lose situation.

Or, what am I missing? Because I keep seeing people say, well I guess they both suck. Why. Why does he have to be a terrible person if she’s really falsified accusations?

I agree. I don’t think any of the details that Justin has brought forth are pretty. The issue with this is that she came out with a list of concerning interactions, but it’s only concerning in certain context. He is adding more context that make it seem a lot less inappropriate.

What is he supposed to do, just let the New York Times article stand without defending himself? He literally has been let go by his agency, his co-host on the podcast quit. He had to come forth and provide these details. Sure they seem kind of maddening, but it paints a very different picture. I just don’t see how he has a choice.

The details in Justin's complaint that sound petty to me, especially the way they are presented:

- Lively not reading the book. Who cares? She read the script. A lot of actors specifically choose not to read source material when preparing for a role because they don't want to confuse their character development. I don't see why it matters either way -- there's no special prize for "most faithful representation of the book." Movies that hew too closely to the books they are based on are often bad because they are such different mediums.

- Lively having wardrobe sent to her house. Perhaps I've read too much celeb gossip over the years but this just doesn't register for me as over the top for a big name actor. Why is this a big deal? What does it have to do with Baldoni's claims?

- A lot of the contract negotiation stuff comes off as petty to me. Like so they haggled over Lively getting a "p.g.a." credit on the movie. Okay. I have no idea whether she "deserved" that or not but it seems like a normal thing to argue about. She did wind up having a lot of creative input on the movie, even if she muscled her way into it. I can see how that would be annoying to Baldoni/Wayfarer but I look at it like this: getting Lively to do the movie in the first place probably helped them secure wide distribution and made it significantly more likely the movie was commercially successful (which it was). Well the flip side is that you've got a more famous actor involved who is going to be kind of a pain and want more power and control on set. That's business. It comes off as whining to me. They could have cast a lesser known actor who was cheaper, would have read the book if the director told her to, would come to wardrobe instead of the other way around, wore what she wanted them to, and maybe even would have been better in the role (I think Lively is a mediocre actress, personally). But they hired Lively because they wanted her name attached to the movie. Of *course* she's going to leverage that to her benefit, who wouldn't.

I also just think a lot of the language in Baldoni's complaint is melodramatic. Lively's complaint had a more professional vibe IMO, which made it sound less whiny. Though I do think some of her complaints sound petty too.

I think the lawsuits ultimately come down to how the intimate scenes were actually handled (it's very she said/he said at this point -- let's hear from others like the IC and see footage), whether Baldoni/Heath were inappropriate or harassing on and off set (again we have competing narratives and need to hear from others and get more evidence), and whether Baldoni actually tried to torpedo Lively in the press (I think the evidence here is fairly weak and Baldoni will likely prevail here). Everything else just seems like noise to me.

What you deem extraneous is actually relevant to their claims. This case may likely to be decided by the judge, the lawyers can’t wait for a jury at trial to weave a narrative that makes sense. Her not reading the book supports his assertions that she viewed the project differently from him (romcom v. message movie) and also makes the idea of her wrong scenes ridiculous. How can you adapt a book to script having not read the book?

Those are just creative differences though. Not actionable. Did her contract stipulate that she had to read the book? If not, who cares.

Also I don't follow what you mean by the case being decided by a judge because the lawyers can't wait for a jury?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The timeline isn't completely clear but she signed onto the project at the end of December 2022, and had her baby mid February. The complaint alleges that almost immediately the conflict over the wardrobe started and that is when they went to her house. So it seems the going to her house might have been shortly after she had given birth and was more of an accommodation for her family status than her wielding power. She may have had provisos in her contract related to her work commitments post birth / while breastfeeding for the first few months.

Just to be clear, she had the baby at the end of January. They publicly announced on Super Bowl Sunday, which was I think February 4, but she had given birth earlier. You can tell she didn’t have much of a baby bump at that point. They deliberately kept the birthdate vague, and her announcement was, “been busy” with a picture of her clearly not pregnant any more.

I just want to note as a woman who has given birth that even if they kept the birthdate vague, asking to do fittings at home in the spring of 2023 after having a baby in the winter of 2023 is reasonable in my book. I don't care if it was 1 month or three. Pregnancy is hard on your body. Also you might have looked at me in clothes within a couple weeks of childbirth and thought "she doesn't have much of a baby bump," but the reality was very different if I was changing in front of you.

There are other things Lively is alleged to have done that sound bad to me, but this isn't one. It honestly sounds trumped up -- stuff gets delivered in Manhattan every day, but Baldoni is alleging that delivering wardrobe to her apartment caused cost overruns? I don't buy it.

But the set was in Hoboken, New Jersey. So yeah, I could see why it might cause overruns.

Except in the claim it should have been no big deal for Blake to come to the set for each wardrobe discussion / fitting as it was only 15 minutes away from her house. So hence it should also be no big deal to travel the other direction given she had recently given birth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s kind of cute that people are reading his complaint and not recognizing that if the allegations are true, Blake has a full fledged personality disorder.

But isn't that also true of Baldoni if Lively's accusations are true? He claimed to be communing with Lively's dead father during the production of the movie. He told a woman with four kids what is "normal" for women during childbirth. And so on.

One option is neither of them is as bad as portrayed and both complaints are exaggerated and cherry picking incidents to make the other look totally insane. Another option is that they are both fairly awful. I actually think at this point is is incredibly unlikely that one of them is a great person and the other has a "full fledged personality" disorder -- I don't think anyone comes out smelling like a rose here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get that people are skeezed out by the male feminist thing, but I’m not sure it makes him a terrible person.

Anyway, at the end of the day, I think this shows what happens in any business when there isn’t a clear delineation of power. When people’s values line up, everything can go well. But when they don’t, it’s a total mess. Who even can tell what BL was supposed to be doing or not doing. Seems like she wanted to be doing it all, but the studio wanted to limit her role because it was slowing things down. And JB was just stuck in the middle, going back and forth asking what he was supposed to do at every turn.

I just wrote about this in a longer post but wanted to reiterate it here: the stuff about Lively being demanding strikes me as dumb because that's just what happens when you hire a big name actor. The tradeoff is she brings a lot more commercial viability to the project. They hired her because she's very well known and recognizable, which will result in more people going to the movie (news flash: it worked). Well with her fame comes power and that is going to mean she might want to have more creative input into the movie, might make demands a lesser known actor wouldn't dare to make, etc. They know this going in. The vast majority of actors at Lively's fame level will be a PITA in similar ways.

I also think a huge part of the problem was Baldoni's approach to directing and collaborating. You can see it in the texts he includes in his complaint. He doesn't know how to stand up to anyone (not Lively, not his producing partners, not the studio). He's "collaborative" but how this really comes off is wishy-washy and indirect. Everyone is talking about how Lively was hard to work with (which I'm sure she is) but he also sounds like a bad director. It sounds like he basically let her take over a bunch of stuff in the production and then when his studio/partners got mad and told him to rein her in, he couldn't do it. I suspect this dynamic is where a lot of the problems arose. Maybe in trying to rein her in, he crossed lines that felt harassing to Lively. And maybe they were harassing if he did it in an unprofessional way, which seems likely because he really does come off as inexperienced. He might have tried to soft pedal studio demands to Lively because he was afraid of being direct, but his soft pedaling came off to her like him trying to exploit their friendliness in inappropriate ways.

I really think they are both responsible for the toxicity here and that the studio effed up in casting and didn't think about what it would be like for a star at Lively's level to work with a director at Baldoni's level with his specific personality.

I disagree. Him being an inexperienced director and maybe not being the best director in the world doesn’t mean his livelihood gets to be taken away from him because Blake got pissed. The stakes are really high here. Yes I’m sure he could’ve handled things better, but should he be sued and never work again because Blake and Ryan say so?

Also, before the movie started, he was clear that Colleen Hoover really pushed for him to direct and costar, and he actually didn’t want both roles. It sounds like he was sort of pressured into that. Now, yes, he could have stood up for himself, but again, I think him being inexperienced and maybe a pushover shouldn’t mean that he should be slapped as a sexual harasser. It seems insane to make that leap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The timeline isn't completely clear but she signed onto the project at the end of December 2022, and had her baby mid February. The complaint alleges that almost immediately the conflict over the wardrobe started and that is when they went to her house. So it seems the going to her house might have been shortly after she had given birth and was more of an accommodation for her family status than her wielding power. She may have had provisos in her contract related to her work commitments post birth / while breastfeeding for the first few months.

Just to be clear, she had the baby at the end of January. They publicly announced on Super Bowl Sunday, which was I think February 4, but she had given birth earlier. You can tell she didn’t have much of a baby bump at that point. They deliberately kept the birthdate vague, and her announcement was, “been busy” with a picture of her clearly not pregnant any more.

I just want to note as a woman who has given birth that even if they kept the birthdate vague, asking to do fittings at home in the spring of 2023 after having a baby in the winter of 2023 is reasonable in my book. I don't care if it was 1 month or three. Pregnancy is hard on your body. Also you might have looked at me in clothes within a couple weeks of childbirth and thought "she doesn't have much of a baby bump," but the reality was very different if I was changing in front of you.

There are other things Lively is alleged to have done that sound bad to me, but this isn't one. It honestly sounds trumped up -- stuff gets delivered in Manhattan every day, but Baldoni is alleging that delivering wardrobe to her apartment caused cost overruns? I don't buy it.

But the set was in Hoboken, New Jersey. So yeah, I could see why it might cause overruns.

Sure. But also the movie made $350 million on a $25 million budget, and Lively could make a very strong argument that it makes nowhere near that if she's not in it -- she's the biggest name in the movie and I almost guarantee you that Sony's agreement to distribute the film hinged on having an actor with Lively's star power attached in the movie because I'm sorry you don't get wide distribution and a big marketing campaign for a movie starring Justin Baldoni.

Baldoni made a TON of money off this movie and Lively's involvement was central to him making that money. Complaining that it cost extra money to ship the wardrobe to her house instead of her coming out to Hoboken strikes me as incredibly petty in that context, especially when Lively had a valid personal reason for not wanting to truck out to Hoboken for fittings -- she had a new baby at home and was breastfeeding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The timeline isn't completely clear but she signed onto the project at the end of December 2022, and had her baby mid February. The complaint alleges that almost immediately the conflict over the wardrobe started and that is when they went to her house. So it seems the going to her house might have been shortly after she had given birth and was more of an accommodation for her family status than her wielding power. She may have had provisos in her contract related to her work commitments post birth / while breastfeeding for the first few months.

Just to be clear, she had the baby at the end of January. They publicly announced on Super Bowl Sunday, which was I think February 4, but she had given birth earlier. You can tell she didn’t have much of a baby bump at that point. They deliberately kept the birthdate vague, and her announcement was, “been busy” with a picture of her clearly not pregnant any more.

I just want to note as a woman who has given birth that even if they kept the birthdate vague, asking to do fittings at home in the spring of 2023 after having a baby in the winter of 2023 is reasonable in my book. I don't care if it was 1 month or three. Pregnancy is hard on your body. Also you might have looked at me in clothes within a couple weeks of childbirth and thought "she doesn't have much of a baby bump," but the reality was very different if I was changing in front of you.

There are other things Lively is alleged to have done that sound bad to me, but this isn't one. It honestly sounds trumped up -- stuff gets delivered in Manhattan every day, but Baldoni is alleging that delivering wardrobe to her apartment caused cost overruns? I don't buy it.

But the set was in Hoboken, New Jersey. So yeah, I could see why it might cause overruns.

Except in the claim it should have been no big deal for Blake to come to the set for each wardrobe discussion / fitting as it was only 15 minutes away from her house. So hence it should also be no big deal to travel the other direction given she had recently given birth.

You don’t understand why it’s a less big deal for one person to travel to where the entire costume department is, vs the costume department coming to her?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s kind of cute that people are reading his complaint and not recognizing that if the allegations are true, Blake has a full fledged personality disorder.

But isn't that also true of Baldoni if Lively's accusations are true? He claimed to be communing with Lively's dead father during the production of the movie. He told a woman with four kids what is "normal" for women during childbirth. And so on.

One option is neither of them is as bad as portrayed and both complaints are exaggerated and cherry picking incidents to make the other look totally insane. Another option is that they are both fairly awful. I actually think at this point is is incredibly unlikely that one of them is a great person and the other has a "full fledged personality" disorder -- I don't think anyone comes out smelling like a rose here.

Baldoni comes off as a bit “extra” and kooky, but professional and sane, and pushed to defend himself. Lively comes off as vengeful and trying to destroy careers.

Anyone who has ever had to deal with a BPD person sees it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get that people are skeezed out by the male feminist thing, but I’m not sure it makes him a terrible person.

Anyway, at the end of the day, I think this shows what happens in any business when there isn’t a clear delineation of power. When people’s values line up, everything can go well. But when they don’t, it’s a total mess. Who even can tell what BL was supposed to be doing or not doing. Seems like she wanted to be doing it all, but the studio wanted to limit her role because it was slowing things down. And JB was just stuck in the middle, going back and forth asking what he was supposed to do at every turn.

I just wrote about this in a longer post but wanted to reiterate it here: the stuff about Lively being demanding strikes me as dumb because that's just what happens when you hire a big name actor. The tradeoff is she brings a lot more commercial viability to the project. They hired her because she's very well known and recognizable, which will result in more people going to the movie (news flash: it worked). Well with her fame comes power and that is going to mean she might want to have more creative input into the movie, might make demands a lesser known actor wouldn't dare to make, etc. They know this going in. The vast majority of actors at Lively's fame level will be a PITA in similar ways.

I also think a huge part of the problem was Baldoni's approach to directing and collaborating. You can see it in the texts he includes in his complaint. He doesn't know how to stand up to anyone (not Lively, not his producing partners, not the studio). He's "collaborative" but how this really comes off is wishy-washy and indirect. Everyone is talking about how Lively was hard to work with (which I'm sure she is) but he also sounds like a bad director. It sounds like he basically let her take over a bunch of stuff in the production and then when his studio/partners got mad and told him to rein her in, he couldn't do it. I suspect this dynamic is where a lot of the problems arose. Maybe in trying to rein her in, he crossed lines that felt harassing to Lively. And maybe they were harassing if he did it in an unprofessional way, which seems likely because he really does come off as inexperienced. He might have tried to soft pedal studio demands to Lively because he was afraid of being direct, but his soft pedaling came off to her like him trying to exploit their friendliness in inappropriate ways.

I really think they are both responsible for the toxicity here and that the studio effed up in casting and didn't think about what it would be like for a star at Lively's level to work with a director at Baldoni's level with his specific personality.

I disagree. Him being an inexperienced director and maybe not being the best director in the world doesn’t mean his livelihood gets to be taken away from him because Blake got pissed. The stakes are really high here. Yes I’m sure he could’ve handled things better, but should he be sued and never work again because Blake and Ryan say so?

Also, before the movie started, he was clear that Colleen Hoover really pushed for him to direct and costar, and he actually didn’t want both roles. It sounds like he was sort of pressured into that. Now, yes, he could have stood up for himself, but again, I think him being inexperienced and maybe a pushover shouldn’t mean that he should be slapped as a sexual harasser. It seems insane to make that leap.

PP here and you misunderstand my post. I'm saying it's possible he crossed lines and did in fact harass Lively because he didn't know how to handle an actor with her star power and personality, so he might have tried to use indirect methods to persuade her to do stuff. Like trying to get her to nudity in the birth scene by talking about his own wife's childbirth experience or asking to show her a video of Heath's wife giving birth naked despite Lively's clear discomfort. Or trying to connect with her on set by saying he was communing with Lively's dead dad and failing to realize this was majorly crossing a line. I think Baldoni's inexperience and "nice guy" personality might have actually led to him being inappropriate on set in a way that become harassing because he lacked the skill set for dealing with a big star, panicked, and fell back on indirect methods of trying to persuade her to do things, or trying to convince her he's a "Nice Guy (TM)" so that she'll do what he wants.

I say this because I have worked with people who have poor management and communication skills and often the way they solve that problem is by just being really unprofessional, leaning on stuff like "we're a family here" or trying to befriend everyone and then exploit those friendships to get people to do things instead of establishing actual respect and authority. I can see how this could become a harassing situation in certain situations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The timeline isn't completely clear but she signed onto the project at the end of December 2022, and had her baby mid February. The complaint alleges that almost immediately the conflict over the wardrobe started and that is when they went to her house. So it seems the going to her house might have been shortly after she had given birth and was more of an accommodation for her family status than her wielding power. She may have had provisos in her contract related to her work commitments post birth / while breastfeeding for the first few months.

Just to be clear, she had the baby at the end of January. They publicly announced on Super Bowl Sunday, which was I think February 4, but she had given birth earlier. You can tell she didn’t have much of a baby bump at that point. They deliberately kept the birthdate vague, and her announcement was, “been busy” with a picture of her clearly not pregnant any more.

I just want to note as a woman who has given birth that even if they kept the birthdate vague, asking to do fittings at home in the spring of 2023 after having a baby in the winter of 2023 is reasonable in my book. I don't care if it was 1 month or three. Pregnancy is hard on your body. Also you might have looked at me in clothes within a couple weeks of childbirth and thought "she doesn't have much of a baby bump," but the reality was very different if I was changing in front of you.

There are other things Lively is alleged to have done that sound bad to me, but this isn't one. It honestly sounds trumped up -- stuff gets delivered in Manhattan every day, but Baldoni is alleging that delivering wardrobe to her apartment caused cost overruns? I don't buy it.

But the set was in Hoboken, New Jersey. So yeah, I could see why it might cause overruns.

Sure. But also the movie made $350 million on a $25 million budget, and Lively could make a very strong argument that it makes nowhere near that if she's not in it -- she's the biggest name in the movie and I almost guarantee you that Sony's agreement to distribute the film hinged on having an actor with Lively's star power attached in the movie because I'm sorry you don't get wide distribution and a big marketing campaign for a movie starring Justin Baldoni.

Baldoni made a TON of money off this movie and Lively's involvement was central to him making that money. Complaining that it cost extra money to ship the wardrobe to her house instead of her coming out to Hoboken strikes me as incredibly petty in that context, especially when Lively had a valid personal reason for not wanting to truck out to Hoboken for fittings -- she had a new baby at home and was breastfeeding.

They didn’t know the movie would earn that much. And they weren’t putting a few dresses in the mail. They were sending the wardrobe and costumers to her house - indeed a very big expense. If she has the ability to negotiate that good for her, that’s a perk like any other that can be negotiated. But it sounds like it was a request made without planning that inconvenienced and cost the entire production.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The timeline isn't completely clear but she signed onto the project at the end of December 2022, and had her baby mid February. The complaint alleges that almost immediately the conflict over the wardrobe started and that is when they went to her house. So it seems the going to her house might have been shortly after she had given birth and was more of an accommodation for her family status than her wielding power. She may have had provisos in her contract related to her work commitments post birth / while breastfeeding for the first few months.

Just to be clear, she had the baby at the end of January. They publicly announced on Super Bowl Sunday, which was I think February 4, but she had given birth earlier. You can tell she didn’t have much of a baby bump at that point. They deliberately kept the birthdate vague, and her announcement was, “been busy” with a picture of her clearly not pregnant any more.

I just want to note as a woman who has given birth that even if they kept the birthdate vague, asking to do fittings at home in the spring of 2023 after having a baby in the winter of 2023 is reasonable in my book. I don't care if it was 1 month or three. Pregnancy is hard on your body. Also you might have looked at me in clothes within a couple weeks of childbirth and thought "she doesn't have much of a baby bump," but the reality was very different if I was changing in front of you.

There are other things Lively is alleged to have done that sound bad to me, but this isn't one. It honestly sounds trumped up -- stuff gets delivered in Manhattan every day, but Baldoni is alleging that delivering wardrobe to her apartment caused cost overruns? I don't buy it.

But the set was in Hoboken, New Jersey. So yeah, I could see why it might cause overruns.

Sure. But also the movie made $350 million on a $25 million budget, and Lively could make a very strong argument that it makes nowhere near that if she's not in it -- she's the biggest name in the movie and I almost guarantee you that Sony's agreement to distribute the film hinged on having an actor with Lively's star power attached in the movie because I'm sorry you don't get wide distribution and a big marketing campaign for a movie starring Justin Baldoni.

Baldoni made a TON of money off this movie and Lively's involvement was central to him making that money. Complaining that it cost extra money to ship the wardrobe to her house instead of her coming out to Hoboken strikes me as incredibly petty in that context, especially when Lively had a valid personal reason for not wanting to truck out to Hoboken for fittings -- she had a new baby at home and was breastfeeding.

She was paid 3 million for the movie. It's not charity. Both of them are generally being petty in their complaints, but I don't think showing up to work when paid millions is too much to ask. All of us here show up to work for so much less and with no accommodations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s kind of cute that people are reading his complaint and not recognizing that if the allegations are true, Blake has a full fledged personality disorder.

But isn't that also true of Baldoni if Lively's accusations are true? He claimed to be communing with Lively's dead father during the production of the movie. He told a woman with four kids what is "normal" for women during childbirth. And so on.

One option is neither of them is as bad as portrayed and both complaints are exaggerated and cherry picking incidents to make the other look totally insane. Another option is that they are both fairly awful. I actually think at this point is is incredibly unlikely that one of them is a great person and the other has a "full fledged personality" disorder -- I don't think anyone comes out smelling like a rose here.

Baldoni comes off as a bit “extra” and kooky, but professional and sane, and pushed to defend himself. Lively comes off as vengeful and trying to destroy careers.

Anyone who has ever had to deal with a BPD person sees it.

They both sound really obnoxious to me. I wouldn't want to work with either of them.

Also, people, can you PLEASE stop armchair diagnosing people you don't know with personality disorders? It's enough to just say "wow this behavior sounds bad/manipulative/exploitative/etc." You are not a psychiatrist and you don't know these people. The random diagnosing of strangers with BDP, NPD, etc., is irresponsible and doesn't actually further these conversations.