Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Ultimately I don’t think it was ever in Blake’s head to accuse Justin of SH or at least take it to court. If it was I think they would have documented things better and followed protocols to create better paper trail.

I think she wanted to take advantage of his feminist brand to back him into a corner and gain leverage that way.

Let’s say she was working on some film with director don’t Michael Bay. I don’t know much about Michael, but I don’t think he’s ever tried to call himself a feminist and he does pretty hard charging movies aimed at men...with violence and action and hot girls etc. Pretty sure he doesn’t do podcasts, Ted talks, and books on toxic masculinity.

I really don’t think she would’ve come at someone like a Michael Bay or any to of the run of the mill male directors with a fat shaming complaint even if they asked about or criticized her weight. because those directors would’ve probably said FU - they wouldn’t care because that’s not their brand. Maybe it would get out that they behaved inappropriately, but I’m pretty sure Megan Fox already let that cat out of the bag on the first transformers movie decades ago and that didn’t stop him. And how many other actresses have complained about inappropriate or blatantly insane situations on site and we’ve all just moved on.

I don’t mean to imply all male directors can get away with anything now, but I think some of the things we are discussing would not rattle them. They would probably say fine, I won’t do it again and move on. They probably wouldn’t fear a court case or leaks to the press.

I just think Justin was ripe for any kind of minor transgression ruining his brand and I really don’t think they ever wanted a court case. I mean, does anyone want a court case? To avoid exactly this. I feel like they were just pushing and pushing and pushing, and he reached a breaking point.

That's an interesting perspective. You've made me think about it in a new light. I don't think he's a saint. I do think she probably has worked with much worse directors than him, but they were bigger deals and she had more respect for them or at least knew better than to mess with them.

DP, but I also think it's possible that some of Baldoni's statements and actions hit Lively and/or other female cast members harder because of their hypocrisy given his self-positioning as a male feminist. If someone seemed like they supported me especially as a woman and then turned around and said that the way I had given birth 4x was "not normal," it would hit harder. Maybe that doesn't make it a stronger legal claim, but I can understand why someone giving off that kind of image while at the same time saying and doing things that were in opposition to that would make it harder to get past, mentally, in working with the guy. From my perspective.

So again in terms of lessons we are learning, I guess men should take away that it’s better to just be a jerk and not try to be a feminist because if people expect a low bar from the start, they’re going be less likely to pick up on minor transgressions and be weirded out and see you as any easy target.

If say, you were a feminist and rub anybody the wrong way you’re probably going to get an HR complaint that I’m more alpha male wouldn’t get.

So many great lessons here.

Fair point tbh. I mean, I think you’d overlook some weirdness and give the benefit of the doubt to a point. However, Baldoni made male feminism his brand to the extent that he had podcasts and a book — yet he was still pulling the birth scene stuff (I know, I know, but I really take that as Lively’s last straw after which she didn’t do much more work before requiring agreement on the 17 points). I do think he would have some good will points to start, but if you keep saying one thing but doing another, folks will just reach a breaking point after a time. IMHO it is just very hard to work with hypocritical people.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I feel like the whole idea of an actress making an HR complaint is new. How many times have actresses been invited to "private meetings" in the producer's hotel room? How many times were they asked to take off their clothes or be sexier in an audition? How many times did actors insist on extra rehearsal time for kissing scenes, in their trailers? How many times did directors tell actresses how sexy they were, out of character? How many times has last minute nudity been spring on an actress?

And that's tame stuff. Obviously way worse has happened.

It doesn't surprise me that there aren't clear cut concepts of an actress in a romantic film "going to HR" and how she files a complaint and what HR does with her complaint. In fact, many of the mentions of HR in the Lively filing are references to males sarcastically mentioning "HR reports" when an actress pushes back on something. And I think that's probably endemic in Hollywood.

I can see where she didn't know exactly how and where to bring the issues and I can see how Baldoni et al thought they were actually being progressive and feminist and the HR-type complaints were diva behavior.

I'm glad this conversation is happening.

But what conversation is happening? How is this advancing anything? Whether or not you think Blake is in the right or not, her career is likely over or if not, if she bounces back later, she’s at least in for a rough year and on a downward spiral. She’s lost hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers, any future movies are on hold, Taylor Swift wont be not seen with her in public anymore and she and anyone close to her has had to hide their social comments. She’s watched her costars and others who had supported her now go silent or retract their support.

I mean, maybe we’re learning something, but I think when I’m learning is you really need to have an airtight case and you really need to follow proper protocols or else it’s really, really hard to make a claim like this and go about your life. And you probably shouldn’t benefit from the bad behavior by appearing as if you’ve gotten things because at one point you used it as leverage to get things like a producer credit, things like having a final copy of the movie, things like having editing power over the director.

I don’t know if Blake was sexually harassed but I do knew she was at least part of crating a really messy chaotic situation that at least at some point she greatly benefited from.

By conversation, I mean upthread people were talking about how intimacy coordinators weren't a thing even ten years ago. And someone gave an example where an actress was given the opportunity to view her sex scene and veto it (or at least have input) if it made her uncomfortable. That's absolutely unheard of and asking for something like that would generally be considered diva behavior. That actress didn't ask, but maybe with this precedent having been set, future actresses will and it will be normalized. I am pretty sure nudity riders are a recent development, and I bet actually enforcing them is another story. We can see that in Lively's case. She doesn't have clean hands, because she didn't sign it expeditiously. But once it was signed and the intimacy coordinator was fully on board, both parties agree it went well. Lively's standards for return to production are pretty solid (she may have misrepresented them insofar as she phrased things as "stop doing X").

Maybe next time a woman at Wayfarer has a complaint, HR will actually hire the investigators they were supposed to hire (that Wayfarer only tried to engage now, in 2025). Maybe Wayfarer will have some form of training or HR manual that tells people how to make complaints and what to do with them if they get them. Maybe Sony creates a process for formally forwarding things to production rather than saying "oh, that's not us, we're just the distributor."

I don't think Lively is a perfect victim and she might not even be a victim at all, but even if she's thought of as a histrionic drama queen, I bet some studios we'll be saying "we don't another Blake Lively situation" and deal with things a little more professionally, which is both better for the actress and better for the studio (because it doesn't create leverage for a actress to takeover a film based on frivolous complaints, if that's what she did).

Maybe there will be some good learnings from this case, but it is just so odd because she is such a powerful person in Hollywood. Not because of her acting chops but because of her husband’s power. I just don’t know what the average Hollywood actress who isn’t married to one of the most powerful men in Hollywood will take from this.

Is Ryan Reynolds really one of the most powerful men in Hollywood? Ryan Reynolds? Ok, was not aware of that.

Yeah, I don’t get it myself but he kind of is in terms of financial and business success. Deadpool was a very successful franchise, and he is at the helm of it. He also has a very successful marketing firm called maximum effort. In addition to acting he has a successful reality show about his ownership of a football league in England. He also has made some good business decisions with things like mint mobile and aviation gin.

Power is always fleeting and the next big thing is always around the corner, but he has had a good run for sure.

It’s truly amazing, he seems like a dope.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the lesson I learned has been how you can never truly read people in a work environment, do you just need to play most situations safe—don’t be alone with opposite sex, make sure you are always collecting receipts just in case. Also to set firm boundaries—do your job and don’t overreach or allow others to do so. Assume they will backstab or try to overtake your space to improve their gain. Finally to set up a plan b to walk away from toxic work situations.

I’m sure there are more lessons…

Always grey rock a narcissist.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Not a lawyer:

It seems she wanted all the employee protections of making a formal HR complaint, but at the same time expected the employer (Wayfarer) to forgo all the protections the formal HR process would afford them.

Having her cake and eating it too, so to speak.

This just seems like more evidence that they never ever intended it for to go this far. She was never thinking about a legal case, she just wanted to hold things over his head and threaten him. From the very first few weeks they interacted she started swing the fat shaming thing, she tested it out and it worked. He fell in line and gave in to a demand. Then later, she was adding more things, and he continued to fall in line. So then I think when she got pushed to the brink with all of the bad press in August, she just figured he would continue to fall in line to stop the bleeding as he had before. Throw in the complaint so we have an excuse for a NYT me too article and let’s put the mail in the coffin.

Now that he hasn’t, and he has a bulldog in Freedman and a backer willing to pay the bills, it just seems like they are scrambling to piece together this case, but formal documentation and formal processes really would’ve helped.

The way that you all continue to gloss over the fact that your boy hired a PR firm for the express purpose of burying Lively in the public opinion, and that there is (unusually, even at this stage of the process) actual text message etc evidence to prove this, which also shows he was aware of the process (and whose main response was "not sure they are going hard enough for me" and "but wait not the bots they're too obvious!") and that despite this you still continue posting that she has no case continues to be bananas to me. Why would she settle, when at the end of the day, she has that? Good luck.

Your boy? WTH is wrong with you?

Wait, after all the invective hurled at Lively across these 350 pages (fat, big boned, speculation over various mental illness, beard for her husband, stupid yet power hungry -- all sorts of crazy and preposterous stuff!), the place where you draw the line is a familiar reference to "your boy." Oh noes I'm throwing up in my mouth a little again.

There are many of us who have a lot of doubts about the merit of the case that have not been bashing Blake’s looks or sexual history or questioning Ryan’s sexuality though.

Justin is not my boy. I think everyone I’ve read about on all sides of this case are hard to take and I’m so thankful I never had the acting or performing bug because working around these people sounds like a terrible life. But I don’t believe Justin should be labeled a sexual predator for life and never work on another film.

You are completely defending Baldoni's side above and either hallucinating Lively manufacturing fat shaming drama or making a rather snide cake eating joke, so calling Justin "your boy" seems fair and actually mild in comparison to what's been hurled at my posts.

*pretending to be a grey rock*

[Anonymous]

Are we ready to close this thread yet?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are we ready to close this thread yet?

Omg if you don’t like it don’t look.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are we ready to close this thread yet?

No. We love it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are we ready to close this thread yet?

Just a little humor on a slow news day. There’s been some really good recent discussion on HR complaints; the evolution of intimacy coordinators; and what it means to be a male feminist in 2025. I’ve also learned a lot about the law, believe it or not!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are we ready to close this thread yet?

Just a little humor on a slow news day. There’s been some really good recent discussion on HR complaints; the evolution of intimacy coordinators; and what it means to be a male feminist in 2025. I’ve also learned a lot about the law, believe it or not!

See? I'm a nerdy lawyer, but in this thread I'm the Cool Girl!

[Anonymous]

You all are really naive thinking intimacy coordinators and standards and protocols are going to solve these kind of issues. Maybe they will minimize them but the industry is full of people who purposely didn’t go to the law firms and corporate or federal government jobs with functioning HR departments that we work in.

This is a bunch of people who think they are artists. For every actor who wants an IC on set there’s an actor who thinks is they kill their artistic freedom. Jennifer Aniston refused to work with one on the morning show and said she didn’t understand them. She got a lot of pushback for that because she’s in a very privileged position likely not to be a victim. But Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh did an an interview that their intimate scene got totally out of hand and they totally missed the director saying cut and took it way too far. Obviously they were not interested in having a scripted choreographed scene with an IC.

Of course you should have standards and some attempt to make people feel comfortable obviously, but it’s just so much hard harder than in a normal workplace because of the nature of the job and the people. Sets are so different than our jobs. It’s incredibly high-pressure, big egos being paid ridiculous sums of money, ultra focused on looks and chemistry, and people are together for weeks at a time in locations far from their homes and families and routines.

Justin is getting a lot of criticism for running a chaotic set, but I don’t think it’s totally his fault and I think his job is probably very hard. I think it’s also why Blake is being picked on for not setting clear boundaries. I’m very confused as to why, after the fat shaming and some of the problematic behaviors like the dancing scene and maybe the birth scene that happened in pre production and in May, it was June 2 when she invited him to run lines in her trailer while she was pumping. Pumping or not why would she want to be alone in a trailer with him?

Thats another difference, in all the places I’ve worked there’s not a lot of privacy, it’s a lot of glass meeting rooms and open floor plans. Just weird that she picked such a private space to be alone with him and it is telling that he didn’t end up meeting with her and said he’d catch up with her later, maybe he was trying to put up a boundary to protect himself there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
So again in terms of lessons we are learning, I guess men should take away that it’s better to just be a jerk and not try to be a feminist because if people expect a low bar from the start, they’re going be less likely to pick up on minor transgressions and be weirded out and see you as any easy target.

If say, you were a feminist and rub anybody the wrong way you’re probably going to get an HR complaint that I’m more alpha male wouldn’t get.

So many great lessons here.

I have no problem with this. 'Male feminists' are creepy and cringe.

[Anonymous]

I found this really interesting. Was BL trying to recreate the Green Lantern RR slow dance scene in IEWU?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-14430221/Fans-new-conspiracy-Ends-dance-scene-Blake-Lively-Ryan-Reynolds.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I found this really interesting. Was BL trying to recreate the Green Lantern RR slow dance scene in IEWU?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-14430221/Fans-new-conspiracy-Ends-dance-scene-Blake-Lively-Ryan-Reynolds.html

So Blake is uncreative. Baldoni must have nothing if this is all he's planting today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
So again in terms of lessons we are learning, I guess men should take away that it’s better to just be a jerk and not try to be a feminist because if people expect a low bar from the start, they’re going be less likely to pick up on minor transgressions and be weirded out and see you as any easy target.

If say, you were a feminist and rub anybody the wrong way you’re probably going to get an HR complaint that I’m more alpha male wouldn’t get.

So many great lessons here.

I have no problem with this. 'Male feminists' are creepy and cringe.

I don’t mind male feminists! But it you’d made it your brand, be one for real.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I found this really interesting. Was BL trying to recreate the Green Lantern RR slow dance scene in IEWU?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-14430221/Fans-new-conspiracy-Ends-dance-scene-Blake-Lively-Ryan-Reynolds.html

So Blake is uncreative. Baldoni must have nothing if this is all he's planting today.

I doubt Baldoni planted this and it’s silly any way. Green lantern bombed are box office big time.