Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your wife claims she was brutally sexually harassed & the first thing you do when you make your first public appearance together in a while is... orchestrate a joke about it?Fraudster psychopaths.

This is insane, binary thinking. Ryan did not claim harassment. His wife did. Tina and Amy asked Ryan how things are going, and he replied with faux concern about what they had heard. About him. They didn’t say “how is Blake?” They didn’t say “what’s up with SH?” They said, how’s it going. There are crazy texts out there that RR sent to JB, including the weird joke about his perenium. The comment was CLEARLY about RR and his own weird engagement in this goat rodeo. You all can be convinced it was ill advised (probably was) but to say “he is making a joke about his wife’s harassment” is insane.

Not to mention, she never said the harassment was her biggest issue. She felt she handled that, or she would have gone for different claims. She’s mad that JB later retaliated.

I don’t like either of them, and find them all cringey but man do you all struggle with flexible thinking.

I agree with you. I am not sure if it is a sock puppet on here that just posts most of the nonsense or if there are multiple people who lack any critical or flexible thinking or undersanding of nuance and just jumped on the Justin great, Blake evil bandwagon and have hung on ever since.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Based on a read of the EEOC pages on sexual harrassment, I don't think the bar is as high as many think it is. Sexual harrassment can include offensive comments about women in general and can be when verbal or physical harassment (in person or otherwise) of a sexual nature creates a hostile or offensive work environment for someone.

So yes, it can be multiple incidents that lead to someone feeling they are in an offensive work environment.

I have some experience sexual harassment cases and I agree. I think she could get a harassment finding based just on the way the birth scene was handled, if she can show they pressured her to do nudity not in the script, that her requests for a cover were ignored, that the monitors were turned back on while the scene was being shot, and that Heath showed her that video of his wife AFTER the birth scene had been filmed. That sequence of events is actually a pretty strong showing of sexual harassment under the law because it's persistent and unwanted, over two consecutive days. That would have been enough in a lot of the cases I was involved in.

Generally with sexual harassment cases, the issue is in showing harm. Perhaps you can show harassment occurred but if the company can put a stop to it and the victim's career is unimpeded (not fired, not denied promotions, etc.), the payout can be relatively small. This is why retaliation is so often a feature of sexual harassment cases because that's when you get into real harm that can result in meaningful restitution. Usually the retaliation takes the form of someone losing their job, being demoted or denied a promotion they were expected to get, or being "iced out" in a workplace in an effort to get them to quit. You also see retaliation in the form of refusing to give references or spreading rumors about the victim within the industry.

Without retaliation, it can often not be particularly useful to bring an SH claim, especially if there are internal ways of addressing the problem that are satisfactory to the victim. Often EEOC complaints don't go to the litigation phase because once the company is alerted to the seriousness of the matter via an EEOC complaint, they make efforts to remediate and avoid litigation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does it matter (I mean for purposes of Blake's lawsuit, not in general) if Justin SH other women on set? I'm not saying he did, but IF. That would be their claim to pursue or not; Blake can't pursue it on their behalf. She has to prove that SHE was SH, not "well other people felt this way too so I must be right."

If there are real complaints and not just actresses sympathizing with her texts, that's huge for her. It gives credibility to her harassment claims being real. It legitimizes her HR meeting and demands for return to production as necessary and not part of a takeover plot. It would demonstrate that 3 women felt harassed so this is more likely to meet a reasonable person standard for what is harassment than just Blake's subjective perception of being uncomfortable. It would be especially helpful if their claims were similar to hers regarding attempts to add nudity, etc. Hostile work environment SH has to do with a pervasive pattern of behavior on set so it would help a lot.

I don’t think she’ll be able to get there. Both Isabel and Brandon are on record praising baldoni as a great director and specifically mentioned how he created a safe space on set. If they flip now, it’ll 100% come off as coercive on Lively’s part and Freedman will bring that out in cross examination. The jury won’t see them as credible if they flip flop to that degree.

Those were filmed for movie promotion purposes. They said what they were asked / told to say to promote the movie. Jut like Justin apparently said all kinds of nice and amazing things about Blake that he didn't mean and was texting the opposite to others.

Now, now. Why are you being so reasonable, PP? We don’t do that here!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on a read of the EEOC pages on sexual harrassment, I don't think the bar is as high as many think it is. Sexual harrassment can include offensive comments about women in general and can be when verbal or physical harassment (in person or otherwise) of a sexual nature creates a hostile or offensive work environment for someone.

So yes, it can be multiple incidents that lead to someone feeling they are in an offensive work environment.

I have some experience sexual harassment cases and I agree. I think she could get a harassment finding based just on the way the birth scene was handled, if she can show they pressured her to do nudity not in the script, that her requests for a cover were ignored, that the monitors were turned back on while the scene was being shot, and that Heath showed her that video of his wife AFTER the birth scene had been filmed. That sequence of events is actually a pretty strong showing of sexual harassment under the law because it's persistent and unwanted, over two consecutive days. That would have been enough in a lot of the cases I was involved in.

Generally with sexual harassment cases, the issue is in showing harm. Perhaps you can show harassment occurred but if the company can put a stop to it and the victim's career is unimpeded (not fired, not denied promotions, etc.), the payout can be relatively small. This is why retaliation is so often a feature of sexual harassment cases because that's when you get into real harm that can result in meaningful restitution. Usually the retaliation takes the form of someone losing their job, being demoted or denied a promotion they were expected to get, or being "iced out" in a workplace in an effort to get them to quit. You also see retaliation in the form of refusing to give references or spreading rumors about the victim within the industry.

Without retaliation, it can often not be particularly useful to bring an SH claim, especially if there are internal ways of addressing the problem that are satisfactory to the victim. Often EEOC complaints don't go to the litigation phase because once the company is alerted to the seriousness of the matter via an EEOC complaint, they make efforts to remediate and avoid litigation.

Thank you for your informed perspective. This is helpful

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on a read of the EEOC pages on sexual harrassment, I don't think the bar is as high as many think it is. Sexual harrassment can include offensive comments about women in general and can be when verbal or physical harassment (in person or otherwise) of a sexual nature creates a hostile or offensive work environment for someone.

So yes, it can be multiple incidents that lead to someone feeling they are in an offensive work environment.

I have some experience sexual harassment cases and I agree. I think she could get a harassment finding based just on the way the birth scene was handled, if she can show they pressured her to do nudity not in the script, that her requests for a cover were ignored, that the monitors were turned back on while the scene was being shot, and that Heath showed her that video of his wife AFTER the birth scene had been filmed. That sequence of events is actually a pretty strong showing of sexual harassment under the law because it's persistent and unwanted, over two consecutive days. That would have been enough in a lot of the cases I was involved in.

Generally with sexual harassment cases, the issue is in showing harm. Perhaps you can show harassment occurred but if the company can put a stop to it and the victim's career is unimpeded (not fired, not denied promotions, etc.), the payout can be relatively small. This is why retaliation is so often a feature of sexual harassment cases because that's when you get into real harm that can result in meaningful restitution. Usually the retaliation takes the form of someone losing their job, being demoted or denied a promotion they were expected to get, or being "iced out" in a workplace in an effort to get them to quit. You also see retaliation in the form of refusing to give references or spreading rumors about the victim within the industry.

Without retaliation, it can often not be particularly useful to bring an SH claim, especially if there are internal ways of addressing the problem that are satisfactory to the victim. Often EEOC complaints don't go to the litigation phase because once the company is alerted to the seriousness of the matter via an EEOC complaint, they make efforts to remediate and avoid litigation.

It’s actually fairly hard to show sexual harassment - it has to be “severe or pervasive.” A handful of incidents don’t do it. It also cannot be totally subjective or unreasonable, and I think there’s a very strong case to show she was being unreasonable in finding offense doing what her actual job was (acting out romance and childbirth scenes). The whole IC thing is very muddled but it seems like her decision not to meet with the IC at one point also is a strike against her.

[Anonymous]

The texts between Abel and Nathan (I think) talk about their work to suppress "HR complaints" with the "four majors" -- who are the four majors in that context? Are those actors making the complaints or the publications they would have been revealed in?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does it matter (I mean for purposes of Blake's lawsuit, not in general) if Justin SH other women on set? I'm not saying he did, but IF. That would be their claim to pursue or not; Blake can't pursue it on their behalf. She has to prove that SHE was SH, not "well other people felt this way too so I must be right."

If there are real complaints and not just actresses sympathizing with her texts, that's huge for her. It gives credibility to her harassment claims being real. It legitimizes her HR meeting and demands for return to production as necessary and not part of a takeover plot. It would demonstrate that 3 women felt harassed so this is more likely to meet a reasonable person standard for what is harassment than just Blake's subjective perception of being uncomfortable. It would be especially helpful if their claims were similar to hers regarding attempts to add nudity, etc. Hostile work environment SH has to do with a pervasive pattern of behavior on set so it would help a lot.

I don’t think she’ll be able to get there. Both Isabel and Brandon are on record praising baldoni as a great director and specifically mentioned how he created a safe space on set. If they flip now, it’ll 100% come off as coercive on Lively’s part and Freedman will bring that out in cross examination. The jury won’t see them as credible if they flip flop to that degree.

It’s been confirmed that there were no complaints made during production. If formal complaints were made months after production wrapped in fall of 2024, noting production wrapped February 9, that’s going to be a huge red flag.

Also, there’s some speculation that one of the women could be Blake sister. I’m sorry, I would not put it past Blake given how dumb she is, but that would make me laugh.

I find it odd that no other women would publicly come forward at this point. Justin Baldoni is not Harvey Weinstein, he is not that powerful. Blake and Ryan are, and it would seem like they would have some clout and some protection behind them especially given Blake and Ryan have shown they are willing to trade favors and fly people to vacations and get people parts.

I don't think it's accurate to say it's been confirmed there were no complaints. Sony said there were no HR complaints filed, but Lively's complaint says she reached out to Sony to register a complaint and they told her that they were not the production studio so could not receive a complaint about production -- that has to go to Wayfarer. But it sounds like (unlike Sony) Wayfarer didn't have a formal HR process for this kind of complaint. It is obvious from both complaints that Baldoni and Heath and perhaps others at Wayfarer were aware that Lively had issues with certain behavior -- there were multiple texts, emails, and meetings about each incident, well before the January 4 meeting.

There is protocol for this, though, and protocol was not followed. If anyone has a complaint about what is happening on the set, they are to go to SAG. That way there is no conflict of interest. Why would you want to go to complain to HR to Justin‘s company about Justin? The SAG route is there to protect everyone.

There was no formal complaints made to sag by anyone it has been confirmed. If there were do you not think Blakely’s team would’ve pointed that out at this point? They said she tried to go to Sony and Sony said they couldn’t handle it but they did not lay out the protocol which is very well known. You don’t exactly have to be a Hollywood insider to know the protocol. The next step is that production is shut down and an investigation is launched. Again to make it to February 2025 and not hear that there was any kind of investigation conducted, means that there wasn’t one.

So nobody followed protocol here. But then all of a sudden in fall of 2024 or later, when the film wrapped on February 9, women came forward with HR complaints? It just doesn’t add up.

I agree formal protocols weren't followed.

I'm just saying it's not accurate to say that Wayfarer had no idea that there were problems on the set. Both Baldoni's complaint and timeline, as well as Lively's complaint, detail numerous times that Wayfarer was alerted to issues with Baldoni's or Heath's behavior, starting before filming began. They knew.

I don't know about the other actress's complaints -- I don't think we know when those were registered exactly. I'll confess I haven't read through the amended complaint fully so maybe that's answered there.

Yes, I think it would have been better for everyone involved if Lively and others had registered complaints with SAG. I wonder if people genuinely hoped to resolve these issues without a formal process. It does seem Wayfarer was receptive to addressing issues even if they grumbled about it amongst themselves. And it doesn't look like Lively intended to sue until she became aware of the retaliation campaign via the Jonesworks texts. The fact that Lively didn't register formal complaints with SAG or Sony actually indicates that this wasn't some long con for her to take over the movie, but that she genuinely didn't intend to sue until she saw the texts. If she'd been planning this all along, she would have used more formal methods for registering her issues with the behavior on set instead of these ad hoc complaints and meetings.

But sexual harassment was never mentioned. The document that Baldoni sign never mentioned sexual harassment. It was unprofessional behavior. He never agreed to admitting harassment and the meeting on January 4 was not about harassment.

So this was literally brand new and to why retaliation makes no sense. Because there was no sexual harassment claims made. What people do not understand is if someone makes a sexual harassment claim on a Hollywood set, SAG gets involved, protocol is followed, and an investigation is launched. None of that happened. So no the sexual harassment claims are in fact new. Claims that she was uncomfortable, not happy with the production, things weren’t going like she wanted, all that was laid out, but no one agreed that sexual harassment had happened.

This is a major issue, and why she’s not actually suing for sexual harassment. She is suing for retaliation. Now, of course, in order for there to be retaliation she is trying to make a case for harassment. But she’s made it very difficult because sexual harassment was not on the table when production wrapped. Claims of sexual harassment were only made after. She is now trying to take her claim that she made of inappropriate behavior and twist that into sexual harassment. And no, I think it is going to be very difficult to prove that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on a read of the EEOC pages on sexual harrassment, I don't think the bar is as high as many think it is. Sexual harrassment can include offensive comments about women in general and can be when verbal or physical harassment (in person or otherwise) of a sexual nature creates a hostile or offensive work environment for someone.

So yes, it can be multiple incidents that lead to someone feeling they are in an offensive work environment.

I have some experience sexual harassment cases and I agree. I think she could get a harassment finding based just on the way the birth scene was handled, if she can show they pressured her to do nudity not in the script, that her requests for a cover were ignored, that the monitors were turned back on while the scene was being shot, and that Heath showed her that video of his wife AFTER the birth scene had been filmed. That sequence of events is actually a pretty strong showing of sexual harassment under the law because it's persistent and unwanted, over two consecutive days. That would have been enough in a lot of the cases I was involved in.

Generally with sexual harassment cases, the issue is in showing harm. Perhaps you can show harassment occurred but if the company can put a stop to it and the victim's career is unimpeded (not fired, not denied promotions, etc.), the payout can be relatively small. This is why retaliation is so often a feature of sexual harassment cases because that's when you get into real harm that can result in meaningful restitution. Usually the retaliation takes the form of someone losing their job, being demoted or denied a promotion they were expected to get, or being "iced out" in a workplace in an effort to get them to quit. You also see retaliation in the form of refusing to give references or spreading rumors about the victim within the industry.

Without retaliation, it can often not be particularly useful to bring an SH claim, especially if there are internal ways of addressing the problem that are satisfactory to the victim. Often EEOC complaints don't go to the litigation phase because once the company is alerted to the seriousness of the matter via an EEOC complaint, they make efforts to remediate and avoid litigation.

Agree the case is about retaliation but I think it will be very hard to prove that he wasn’t just trying to protect his own image after Blake iced him out (to use your own words), put him in the basement, and had the entire cast unfollow him on social. The public noticed, which led to rumors, and Blake’s PR leaked to the press that “everyone on the cast hates Justin”. Even Bethenny Frankel posted a video saying she had attended the movie premiere and “the vibes were off”, so much so that she left early (and she’s a Blake fan). There was an unusually long period between the red carpet and movie that was inconvenient for guests and people were being ushered into two separate theaters. If you’re Justin and these rumors are swirling about you, you have the right to engage crisis PR to protect yourself. This case is so full of double standards. Blake’s improvised kissing and inappropriate language were ok. Blake’s icing out Justin was ok. Blake’s PR leaking negative stories about Justin was ok. Then colluding with the NYT to make what was typically a private CRD complaint public was ok. She can’t even say she filed the CRD complaint to gain standing in California b/c she ultimately filed her lawsuit in NYC. Make it make sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on a read of the EEOC pages on sexual harrassment, I don't think the bar is as high as many think it is. Sexual harrassment can include offensive comments about women in general and can be when verbal or physical harassment (in person or otherwise) of a sexual nature creates a hostile or offensive work environment for someone.

So yes, it can be multiple incidents that lead to someone feeling they are in an offensive work environment.

I have some experience sexual harassment cases and I agree. I think she could get a harassment finding based just on the way the birth scene was handled, if she can show they pressured her to do nudity not in the script, that her requests for a cover were ignored, that the monitors were turned back on while the scene was being shot, and that Heath showed her that video of his wife AFTER the birth scene had been filmed. That sequence of events is actually a pretty strong showing of sexual harassment under the law because it's persistent and unwanted, over two consecutive days. That would have been enough in a lot of the cases I was involved in.

Generally with sexual harassment cases, the issue is in showing harm. Perhaps you can show harassment occurred but if the company can put a stop to it and the victim's career is unimpeded (not fired, not denied promotions, etc.), the payout can be relatively small. This is why retaliation is so often a feature of sexual harassment cases because that's when you get into real harm that can result in meaningful restitution. Usually the retaliation takes the form of someone losing their job, being demoted or denied a promotion they were expected to get, or being "iced out" in a workplace in an effort to get them to quit. You also see retaliation in the form of refusing to give references or spreading rumors about the victim within the industry.

Without retaliation, it can often not be particularly useful to bring an SH claim, especially if there are internal ways of addressing the problem that are satisfactory to the victim. Often EEOC complaints don't go to the litigation phase because once the company is alerted to the seriousness of the matter via an EEOC complaint, they make efforts to remediate and avoid litigation.

It’s actually fairly hard to show sexual harassment - it has to be “severe or pervasive.” A handful of incidents don’t do it. It also cannot be totally subjective or unreasonable, and I think there’s a very strong case to show she was being unreasonable in finding offense doing what her actual job was (acting out romance and childbirth scenes). The whole IC thing is very muddled but it seems like her decision not to meet with the IC at one point also is a strike against her.

She is not going to win. So many bad facts going against her. This is acting and she was offered an intimacy coordinator and on and on. Also her conduct was not normal in any work relationship. No jury will side with her.
Amber Heard had a better case and she lost and has a bad reputation after all the millions. Juries tend to be reasonable people and see through her nonsense. It also does not help that she is personally not likable. This is another non helpful factor. Amber Heard had some
sympathy being a LBGTQ person and even that did not help her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on a read of the EEOC pages on sexual harrassment, I don't think the bar is as high as many think it is. Sexual harrassment can include offensive comments about women in general and can be when verbal or physical harassment (in person or otherwise) of a sexual nature creates a hostile or offensive work environment for someone.

So yes, it can be multiple incidents that lead to someone feeling they are in an offensive work environment.

I have some experience sexual harassment cases and I agree. I think she could get a harassment finding based just on the way the birth scene was handled, if she can show they pressured her to do nudity not in the script, that her requests for a cover were ignored, that the monitors were turned back on while the scene was being shot, and that Heath showed her that video of his wife AFTER the birth scene had been filmed. That sequence of events is actually a pretty strong showing of sexual harassment under the law because it's persistent and unwanted, over two consecutive days. That would have been enough in a lot of the cases I was involved in.

Generally with sexual harassment cases, the issue is in showing harm. Perhaps you can show harassment occurred but if the company can put a stop to it and the victim's career is unimpeded (not fired, not denied promotions, etc.), the payout can be relatively small. This is why retaliation is so often a feature of sexual harassment cases because that's when you get into real harm that can result in meaningful restitution. Usually the retaliation takes the form of someone losing their job, being demoted or denied a promotion they were expected to get, or being "iced out" in a workplace in an effort to get them to quit. You also see retaliation in the form of refusing to give references or spreading rumors about the victim within the industry.

Without retaliation, it can often not be particularly useful to bring an SH claim, especially if there are internal ways of addressing the problem that are satisfactory to the victim. Often EEOC complaints don't go to the litigation phase because once the company is alerted to the seriousness of the matter via an EEOC complaint, they make efforts to remediate and avoid litigation.

It’s actually fairly hard to show sexual harassment - it has to be “severe or pervasive.” A handful of incidents don’t do it. It also cannot be totally subjective or unreasonable, and I think there’s a very strong case to show she was being unreasonable in finding offense doing what her actual job was (acting out romance and childbirth scenes). The whole IC thing is very muddled but it seems like her decision not to meet with the IC at one point also is a strike against her.

Th whole reason nudity riders, closed sets, intimacy coordinators etc came into being was because when there are vulnerabilities like nudity, simulated sex, and physical intimacy in the workplace environment, there needs to be strict controls and oversight to ensure a safe and professional work environment. There are a multitude of stories online from women (and maybe men) who had very negative and even traumatic experiences on set related to the nudity, sex, and intimate scenes. It isn't a free for all. Just because acting in those scenes is part of your job, it doesn't mean boundaries can be crossed, consent doesn't matter, exploitation is fine, or that the director can do whatever they want. It isnt unreasonable to expect those aspects of your job to happen in a professional and safe manner. It should be a very controlled environment to protect people in the workplace from harm. So the fact that a birth scene was part of her acting role doesn't mean she has to be naked on set in front of everyone or else she is unreasonable. There are many stories you can read about how awful actors have felt after sex and romance scenes over the years. You might feel they are all unreasonable but the industry doesn't and has put more parameters in place to create safer work environments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on a read of the EEOC pages on sexual harrassment, I don't think the bar is as high as many think it is. Sexual harrassment can include offensive comments about women in general and can be when verbal or physical harassment (in person or otherwise) of a sexual nature creates a hostile or offensive work environment for someone.

So yes, it can be multiple incidents that lead to someone feeling they are in an offensive work environment.

I have some experience sexual harassment cases and I agree. I think she could get a harassment finding based just on the way the birth scene was handled, if she can show they pressured her to do nudity not in the script, that her requests for a cover were ignored, that the monitors were turned back on while the scene was being shot, and that Heath showed her that video of his wife AFTER the birth scene had been filmed. That sequence of events is actually a pretty strong showing of sexual harassment under the law because it's persistent and unwanted, over two consecutive days. That would have been enough in a lot of the cases I was involved in.

Generally with sexual harassment cases, the issue is in showing harm. Perhaps you can show harassment occurred but if the company can put a stop to it and the victim's career is unimpeded (not fired, not denied promotions, etc.), the payout can be relatively small. This is why retaliation is so often a feature of sexual harassment cases because that's when you get into real harm that can result in meaningful restitution. Usually the retaliation takes the form of someone losing their job, being demoted or denied a promotion they were expected to get, or being "iced out" in a workplace in an effort to get them to quit. You also see retaliation in the form of refusing to give references or spreading rumors about the victim within the industry.

Without retaliation, it can often not be particularly useful to bring an SH claim, especially if there are internal ways of addressing the problem that are satisfactory to the victim. Often EEOC complaints don't go to the litigation phase because once the company is alerted to the seriousness of the matter via an EEOC complaint, they make efforts to remediate and avoid litigation.

It’s actually fairly hard to show sexual harassment - it has to be “severe or pervasive.” A handful of incidents don’t do it. It also cannot be totally subjective or unreasonable, and I think there’s a very strong case to show she was being unreasonable in finding offense doing what her actual job was (acting out romance and childbirth scenes). The whole IC thing is very muddled but it seems like her decision not to meet with the IC at one point also is a strike against her.

Th whole reason nudity riders, closed sets, intimacy coordinators etc came into being was because when there are vulnerabilities like nudity, simulated sex, and physical intimacy in the workplace environment, there needs to be strict controls and oversight to ensure a safe and professional work environment. There are a multitude of stories online from women (and maybe men) who had very negative and even traumatic experiences on set related to the nudity, sex, and intimate scenes. It isn't a free for all. Just because acting in those scenes is part of your job, it doesn't mean boundaries can be crossed, consent doesn't matter, exploitation is fine, or that the director can do whatever they want. It isnt unreasonable to expect those aspects of your job to happen in a professional and safe manner. It should be a very controlled environment to protect people in the workplace from harm. So the fact that a birth scene was part of her acting role doesn't mean she has to be naked on set in front of everyone or else she is unreasonable. There are many stories you can read about how awful actors have felt after sex and romance scenes over the years. You might feel they are all unreasonable but the industry doesn't and has put more parameters in place to create safer work environments.

Isn't part of the issue that she herself didn't meet with the intimacy person?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on a read of the EEOC pages on sexual harrassment, I don't think the bar is as high as many think it is. Sexual harrassment can include offensive comments about women in general and can be when verbal or physical harassment (in person or otherwise) of a sexual nature creates a hostile or offensive work environment for someone.

So yes, it can be multiple incidents that lead to someone feeling they are in an offensive work environment.

I have some experience sexual harassment cases and I agree. I think she could get a harassment finding based just on the way the birth scene was handled, if she can show they pressured her to do nudity not in the script, that her requests for a cover were ignored, that the monitors were turned back on while the scene was being shot, and that Heath showed her that video of his wife AFTER the birth scene had been filmed. That sequence of events is actually a pretty strong showing of sexual harassment under the law because it's persistent and unwanted, over two consecutive days. That would have been enough in a lot of the cases I was involved in.

Generally with sexual harassment cases, the issue is in showing harm. Perhaps you can show harassment occurred but if the company can put a stop to it and the victim's career is unimpeded (not fired, not denied promotions, etc.), the payout can be relatively small. This is why retaliation is so often a feature of sexual harassment cases because that's when you get into real harm that can result in meaningful restitution. Usually the retaliation takes the form of someone losing their job, being demoted or denied a promotion they were expected to get, or being "iced out" in a workplace in an effort to get them to quit. You also see retaliation in the form of refusing to give references or spreading rumors about the victim within the industry.

Without retaliation, it can often not be particularly useful to bring an SH claim, especially if there are internal ways of addressing the problem that are satisfactory to the victim. Often EEOC complaints don't go to the litigation phase because once the company is alerted to the seriousness of the matter via an EEOC complaint, they make efforts to remediate and avoid litigation.

It’s actually fairly hard to show sexual harassment - it has to be “severe or pervasive.” A handful of incidents don’t do it. It also cannot be totally subjective or unreasonable, and I think there’s a very strong case to show she was being unreasonable in finding offense doing what her actual job was (acting out romance and childbirth scenes). The whole IC thing is very muddled but it seems like her decision not to meet with the IC at one point also is a strike against her.

This is a strange take not really grounded in the law. Actors have a lot of protections on set linked to filming nude and intimate scenes, and that are memorialized in union guidelines and reinforced by industry standards and commitments by studios. So it would actually be *easier* for an actor to show harassment linked to a nude or intimate scene because the industry has so many standards surrounding these scenes and there's an extensive history of this kind of scene being used as a mechanism for harassment.

The reason I cite the birth scene is because it was clearly not scripted as a nude scene. Industry standards are pretty explicit about the need for actors to have advance warning of nudity and for certain precautions to be taken on a set to protect their privacy and agency in those scenes. So if Lively can show she was pressured to do the scene nude or partially nude the day of the shoot, even though the script says nothing about nudity for this scene, this creates a strong presumption of malfeasance. Right off the bat, Baldoni and Wayfarer are deviating from industry standards on an issue that is known to pose a consent/harassment issue. This is a major problem for Wayfarer and goes to the "severity" of the problem -- springing unscripted nudity on an actress right before filming a scene is likely to be considered a severe problem, not a minor one, due to industry guidelines.

And bookending this issue is the fact that according to Baldoni's own timeline, Heath showed Lively the video of his wife the day AFTER the birth scene was filmed. Note Wayfarer does not contend that they planned to reshoot the birth scene. This choice to re-engage on the issue of nudity even after the scene has been filmed speaks to pervasiveness. Had they proposed nudity in the scene, had it rejected but agreed to simulating semi-nudity, and then moved on. Perhaps this would not be enough. But the fact that the scene was filmed and Lively believed the issue to be settled, and then Heath is approaching her (at Baldoni's insistence) to show her a personal video of a nude birth without her express consent? This is very, very problematic for them. She'd already not only registered her objection to nudity in the scene but also expressed her disagreement over nudity in birth generally. So why are Heath and Baldoni persisting in this debate? There is no justifiable work-related reason for showing her that video at that point. It points strongly to harassment.

And that is just the sequence of events around the birth scene. If she can also show other incidents, this strengthens her claim considerably. If on top of that, she can show that other actresses on set experienced boundary-violating behavior from Baldoni and/or Heath? This looks very bad for them, I'm sorry. This is kind of textbook hostile work environment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does it matter (I mean for purposes of Blake's lawsuit, not in general) if Justin SH other women on set? I'm not saying he did, but IF. That would be their claim to pursue or not; Blake can't pursue it on their behalf. She has to prove that SHE was SH, not "well other people felt this way too so I must be right."

If there are real complaints and not just actresses sympathizing with her texts, that's huge for her. It gives credibility to her harassment claims being real. It legitimizes her HR meeting and demands for return to production as necessary and not part of a takeover plot. It would demonstrate that 3 women felt harassed so this is more likely to meet a reasonable person standard for what is harassment than just Blake's subjective perception of being uncomfortable. It would be especially helpful if their claims were similar to hers regarding attempts to add nudity, etc. Hostile work environment SH has to do with a pervasive pattern of behavior on set so it would help a lot.

I don’t think she’ll be able to get there. Both Isabel and Brandon are on record praising baldoni as a great director and specifically mentioned how he created a safe space on set. If they flip now, it’ll 100% come off as coercive on Lively’s part and Freedman will bring that out in cross examination. The jury won’t see them as credible if they flip flop to that degree.

It’s been confirmed that there were no complaints made during production. If formal complaints were made months after production wrapped in fall of 2024, noting production wrapped February 9, that’s going to be a huge red flag.

Also, there’s some speculation that one of the women could be Blake sister. I’m sorry, I would not put it past Blake given how dumb she is, but that would make me laugh.

I find it odd that no other women would publicly come forward at this point. Justin Baldoni is not Harvey Weinstein, he is not that powerful. Blake and Ryan are, and it would seem like they would have some clout and some protection behind them especially given Blake and Ryan have shown they are willing to trade favors and fly people to vacations and get people parts.

I don't think it's accurate to say it's been confirmed there were no complaints. Sony said there were no HR complaints filed, but Lively's complaint says she reached out to Sony to register a complaint and they told her that they were not the production studio so could not receive a complaint about production -- that has to go to Wayfarer. But it sounds like (unlike Sony) Wayfarer didn't have a formal HR process for this kind of complaint. It is obvious from both complaints that Baldoni and Heath and perhaps others at Wayfarer were aware that Lively had issues with certain behavior -- there were multiple texts, emails, and meetings about each incident, well before the January 4 meeting.

There is protocol for this, though, and protocol was not followed. If anyone has a complaint about what is happening on the set, they are to go to SAG. That way there is no conflict of interest. Why would you want to go to complain to HR to Justin‘s company about Justin? The SAG route is there to protect everyone.

There was no formal complaints made to sag by anyone it has been confirmed. If there were do you not think Blakely’s team would’ve pointed that out at this point? They said she tried to go to Sony and Sony said they couldn’t handle it but they did not lay out the protocol which is very well known. You don’t exactly have to be a Hollywood insider to know the protocol. The next step is that production is shut down and an investigation is launched. Again to make it to February 2025 and not hear that there was any kind of investigation conducted, means that there wasn’t one.

So nobody followed protocol here. But then all of a sudden in fall of 2024 or later, when the film wrapped on February 9, women came forward with HR complaints? It just doesn’t add up.

I agree formal protocols weren't followed.

I'm just saying it's not accurate to say that Wayfarer had no idea that there were problems on the set. Both Baldoni's complaint and timeline, as well as Lively's complaint, detail numerous times that Wayfarer was alerted to issues with Baldoni's or Heath's behavior, starting before filming began. They knew.

I don't know about the other actress's complaints -- I don't think we know when those were registered exactly. I'll confess I haven't read through the amended complaint fully so maybe that's answered there.

Yes, I think it would have been better for everyone involved if Lively and others had registered complaints with SAG. I wonder if people genuinely hoped to resolve these issues without a formal process. It does seem Wayfarer was receptive to addressing issues even if they grumbled about it amongst themselves. And it doesn't look like Lively intended to sue until she became aware of the retaliation campaign via the Jonesworks texts. The fact that Lively didn't register formal complaints with SAG or Sony actually indicates that this wasn't some long con for her to take over the movie, but that she genuinely didn't intend to sue until she saw the texts. If she'd been planning this all along, she would have used more formal methods for registering her issues with the behavior on set instead of these ad hoc complaints and meetings.

But sexual harassment was never mentioned. The document that Baldoni sign never mentioned sexual harassment. It was unprofessional behavior. He never agreed to admitting harassment and the meeting on January 4 was not about harassment.

So this was literally brand new and to why retaliation makes no sense. Because there was no sexual harassment claims made. What people do not understand is if someone makes a sexual harassment claim on a Hollywood set, SAG gets involved, protocol is followed, and an investigation is launched. None of that happened. So no the sexual harassment claims are in fact new. Claims that she was uncomfortable, not happy with the production, things weren’t going like she wanted, all that was laid out, but no one agreed that sexual harassment had happened.

This is a major issue, and why she’s not actually suing for sexual harassment. She is suing for retaliation. Now, of course, in order for there to be retaliation she is trying to make a case for harassment. But she’s made it very difficult because sexual harassment was not on the table when production wrapped. Claims of sexual harassment were only made after. She is now trying to take her claim that she made of inappropriate behavior and twist that into sexual harassment. And no, I think it is going to be very difficult to prove that.

Sexual harrassment is inappropriate behaviour of a sexual nature - and many of these incidents were raised from the beginning. I don't know what you think sexual harrassment is but yes, she clearly put forward that she was experiencing inappropriate behaviour of a sexual nature / related to being a womn that was making her workplace an unsafe and offensive place to be. That is what sexual harrassment is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on a read of the EEOC pages on sexual harrassment, I don't think the bar is as high as many think it is. Sexual harrassment can include offensive comments about women in general and can be when verbal or physical harassment (in person or otherwise) of a sexual nature creates a hostile or offensive work environment for someone.

So yes, it can be multiple incidents that lead to someone feeling they are in an offensive work environment.

I have some experience sexual harassment cases and I agree. I think she could get a harassment finding based just on the way the birth scene was handled, if she can show they pressured her to do nudity not in the script, that her requests for a cover were ignored, that the monitors were turned back on while the scene was being shot, and that Heath showed her that video of his wife AFTER the birth scene had been filmed. That sequence of events is actually a pretty strong showing of sexual harassment under the law because it's persistent and unwanted, over two consecutive days. That would have been enough in a lot of the cases I was involved in.

Generally with sexual harassment cases, the issue is in showing harm. Perhaps you can show harassment occurred but if the company can put a stop to it and the victim's career is unimpeded (not fired, not denied promotions, etc.), the payout can be relatively small. This is why retaliation is so often a feature of sexual harassment cases because that's when you get into real harm that can result in meaningful restitution. Usually the retaliation takes the form of someone losing their job, being demoted or denied a promotion they were expected to get, or being "iced out" in a workplace in an effort to get them to quit. You also see retaliation in the form of refusing to give references or spreading rumors about the victim within the industry.

Without retaliation, it can often not be particularly useful to bring an SH claim, especially if there are internal ways of addressing the problem that are satisfactory to the victim. Often EEOC complaints don't go to the litigation phase because once the company is alerted to the seriousness of the matter via an EEOC complaint, they make efforts to remediate and avoid litigation.

It’s actually fairly hard to show sexual harassment - it has to be “severe or pervasive.” A handful of incidents don’t do it. It also cannot be totally subjective or unreasonable, and I think there’s a very strong case to show she was being unreasonable in finding offense doing what her actual job was (acting out romance and childbirth scenes). The whole IC thing is very muddled but it seems like her decision not to meet with the IC at one point also is a strike against her.

This is a strange take not really grounded in the law. Actors have a lot of protections on set linked to filming nude and intimate scenes, and that are memorialized in union guidelines and reinforced by industry standards and commitments by studios. So it would actually be *easier* for an actor to show harassment linked to a nude or intimate scene because the industry has so many standards surrounding these scenes and there's an extensive history of this kind of scene being used as a mechanism for harassment.

The reason I cite the birth scene is because it was clearly not scripted as a nude scene. Industry standards are pretty explicit about the need for actors to have advance warning of nudity and for certain precautions to be taken on a set to protect their privacy and agency in those scenes. So if Lively can show she was pressured to do the scene nude or partially nude the day of the shoot, even though the script says nothing about nudity for this scene, this creates a strong presumption of malfeasance. Right off the bat, Baldoni and Wayfarer are deviating from industry standards on an issue that is known to pose a consent/harassment issue. This is a major problem for Wayfarer and goes to the "severity" of the problem -- springing unscripted nudity on an actress right before filming a scene is likely to be considered a severe problem, not a minor one, due to industry guidelines.

And bookending this issue is the fact that according to Baldoni's own timeline, Heath showed Lively the video of his wife the day AFTER the birth scene was filmed. Note Wayfarer does not contend that they planned to reshoot the birth scene. This choice to re-engage on the issue of nudity even after the scene has been filmed speaks to pervasiveness. Had they proposed nudity in the scene, had it rejected but agreed to simulating semi-nudity, and then moved on. Perhaps this would not be enough. But the fact that the scene was filmed and Lively believed the issue to be settled, and then Heath is approaching her (at Baldoni's insistence) to show her a personal video of a nude birth without her express consent? This is very, very problematic for them. She'd already not only registered her objection to nudity in the scene but also expressed her disagreement over nudity in birth generally. So why are Heath and Baldoni persisting in this debate? There is no justifiable work-related reason for showing her that video at that point. It points strongly to harassment.

And that is just the sequence of events around the birth scene. If she can also show other incidents, this strengthens her claim considerably. If on top of that, she can show that other actresses on set experienced boundary-violating behavior from Baldoni and/or Heath? This looks very bad for them, I'm sorry. This is kind of textbook hostile work environment.

NP. I’m confused why you keep saying she was nude in the birth scene? Justin has already countered that. Like many things, Blake seems to be lying or manipulating the facts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on a read of the EEOC pages on sexual harrassment, I don't think the bar is as high as many think it is. Sexual harrassment can include offensive comments about women in general and can be when verbal or physical harassment (in person or otherwise) of a sexual nature creates a hostile or offensive work environment for someone.

So yes, it can be multiple incidents that lead to someone feeling they are in an offensive work environment.

I have some experience sexual harassment cases and I agree. I think she could get a harassment finding based just on the way the birth scene was handled, if she can show they pressured her to do nudity not in the script, that her requests for a cover were ignored, that the monitors were turned back on while the scene was being shot, and that Heath showed her that video of his wife AFTER the birth scene had been filmed. That sequence of events is actually a pretty strong showing of sexual harassment under the law because it's persistent and unwanted, over two consecutive days. That would have been enough in a lot of the cases I was involved in.

Generally with sexual harassment cases, the issue is in showing harm. Perhaps you can show harassment occurred but if the company can put a stop to it and the victim's career is unimpeded (not fired, not denied promotions, etc.), the payout can be relatively small. This is why retaliation is so often a feature of sexual harassment cases because that's when you get into real harm that can result in meaningful restitution. Usually the retaliation takes the form of someone losing their job, being demoted or denied a promotion they were expected to get, or being "iced out" in a workplace in an effort to get them to quit. You also see retaliation in the form of refusing to give references or spreading rumors about the victim within the industry.

Without retaliation, it can often not be particularly useful to bring an SH claim, especially if there are internal ways of addressing the problem that are satisfactory to the victim. Often EEOC complaints don't go to the litigation phase because once the company is alerted to the seriousness of the matter via an EEOC complaint, they make efforts to remediate and avoid litigation.

It’s actually fairly hard to show sexual harassment - it has to be “severe or pervasive.” A handful of incidents don’t do it. It also cannot be totally subjective or unreasonable, and I think there’s a very strong case to show she was being unreasonable in finding offense doing what her actual job was (acting out romance and childbirth scenes). The whole IC thing is very muddled but it seems like her decision not to meet with the IC at one point also is a strike against her.

Th whole reason nudity riders, closed sets, intimacy coordinators etc came into being was because when there are vulnerabilities like nudity, simulated sex, and physical intimacy in the workplace environment, there needs to be strict controls and oversight to ensure a safe and professional work environment. There are a multitude of stories online from women (and maybe men) who had very negative and even traumatic experiences on set related to the nudity, sex, and intimate scenes. It isn't a free for all. Just because acting in those scenes is part of your job, it doesn't mean boundaries can be crossed, consent doesn't matter, exploitation is fine, or that the director can do whatever they want. It isnt unreasonable to expect those aspects of your job to happen in a professional and safe manner. It should be a very controlled environment to protect people in the workplace from harm. So the fact that a birth scene was part of her acting role doesn't mean she has to be naked on set in front of everyone or else she is unreasonable. There are many stories you can read about how awful actors have felt after sex and romance scenes over the years. You might feel they are all unreasonable but the industry doesn't and has put more parameters in place to create safer work environments.

Isn't part of the issue that she herself didn't meet with the intimacy person?

No. She didn't meet with the IC in the pre production stage when Justin had a meeting with the IC to write some of the sex scenes to make them more sexual. There is nothing to say she didn't work with the IC throughout the filming.

And on another note - did the IC get a writing credit? Seems she and Justin worked on writing those scenes during their meeting which isn't usually what I think of an IC doing - I thought they were there more as a protection for the actors, not to rewrite scenes to add more steam and sexual content especially without the input of the woman who would be doing the acting.