Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s an LA Times article out today on Baldoni. There’s a paywall so some may not be able to read it. What’s fascinating is it’s pretty clear a lot of Lively’s allegations seem to be from his book. To me this makes her look particularly hysterical, which we already knew. I’m guessing a lot of these “uncomfortable conversations” was JB telling BL stories from his book (e.g. being bullied in high school and turning to porn and that his first girlfriend initiated sex without consent—his Bahai faith preaches abstinence). Obviously these were not uncomfortable conversations for JB as he published them for millions of readers and probably also raised them on his podcast. I don’t think he’d see these things as harassment. Blake sounds really delicate. In her complaint she takes these conversations out of context and makes them sound like harassment. She obviously never read his book or iewu for that matter.

Uh, I'm reading the article now and you literally buried the lede. The piece opens by detailing a legal battle with a screenwriter named Travis Flores who wrote a script titled "Three Feet Distance" about his own experiences with cystic fibrosis. Baldoni's directorial debut was a featured called "Five Feet Apart" about cystic fibrosis patients, which Baldoni claims was based on the experiences of a different person.

Also, painting a VERY different portrait of Baldoni than what he puts forth in his complaint:

Yet some former colleagues, in more than a dozen interviews with The Times and a previously unreported 2020 lawsuit against Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios, paint a more complicated picture. Several described a pattern of performative virtue and power plays that, in their view, conflicted with the ideals Baldoni professes to uphold. “They keep talking about [the Baldoni-Lively battle] as David and Goliath but that’s just not my experience,” said one former collaborator, who like numerous others interviewed by the Times declined to be named out of fear of being drawn into litigation. “Justin has a lot of power and a lot of money, and he is not afraid to use them to get his way. We need allies, but we need allies whose personal and business dealings align with who they say they are.” Through a spokesperson, Baldoni declined to be interviewed for this story, as did Wayfarer Studios’ senior leadership. The spokesperson said the company “has always proudly publicized [its] founding mission of harnessing storytelling to champion inspirational stories that act as true agents for social change, and actively strives to maintain a positive workplace environment that is rooted in this mission.”

Also, in talking about his porn addition, this jumped out at me as potentially very creepy and problematic:

Years later, in Hollywood, he found himself working alongside actresses he had once fantasized about. “Some of the weirdest moments of my life have happened in the past few years as my teenage fantasies have merged with my midthirties professional life, and some of these women have become friends,” he wrote in “Man Enough.”

This is disturbing, frankly.

Didn’t bury the lead. We covered that case on this thread probably 100 pages ago lol and didn’t want to return to it. The connection between BL’s allegations and the book were new to me.

Huh. We hadn’t covered the fact that Bryan Freedman represented Travis Flores, convinced him to drop his suit against billionaire-funded Baldini because the fight would take too long, and the. Only months after Flores died, Freedman conveniently took Baldoni and Wayfarer as his own clients. Good thing for Freedman that Flores dropped the case and died, or Freedman wouldn’t have been able to take on the much more lucrative Baldoni/Sarowitz/Wayfarer team, so I guess that worked out for Freedman.

You left this out of your “rah rah Baldoni” summary somehow — reading your description I thought it was a pro-Baldoni piece, which it decidedly was not. lol okay.

Also, is it ethical for Baldoni to be represented by the attorney who previously sued him and convinced his client to settle? Seems like Freedman could have an ABA/legal ethics issue, but shouldn't this have set off alarm bells for Mr. So Much Love Baldoni? The whole thing smells rotten.

Lawyer here and no, it's not an ethics violation. It would be problematic if it was the same parties in both representations and the attorney just changed sides -- you'd need the parties to agree to that and I doubt the party who had been represented previously would agree.

But if it's a totally different case with a different party, there's nothing wrong with it. It happens more than you think, because people who litigate a lot will encounter a lawyer they think is really tough and then the next time they need an attorney they'll remember: hey, that person was really hard to go up against. Not insanely common but not unheard of.

The thing about Freedman that is frankly weirding me out at this point is that his past representations have so much overlap among multiple parties with this case that it seems bizarre. Like by my count:

- Represented Jed Wallace previously AND, long before the thing with Baldoni, had even been accused in court of having Wallace smear an opponent in another case on his behalf.
- Represented Perez Hilton and Meghyn Kelly, both of whom are now riding hard for JB in their coverage of the conflict.
- Represented Travis Flores in his action against Wayfarer.
- Appears to have been mentioned/suggested by Melissa Nathan to JB in August 2024 (she references JB getting a lawyer and that it may be time to call "BF"). I had previously thought this made it likely that Freedman was recommended to Baldoni/Wayfarer by Nathan, and thought she might have known of him through Wallace.

But now I know Baldoni/Wayfarer must have known of Freedman before they even filmed IEWU, because of the Travis Flores lawsuit. When did they hire Freedman? Was it before or after hiring Jed Wallace? Are those two hires just a coincidence? That seems insane.

I think it’s just a Hollywood lawyer thing. BL and Drake also have the same lawyers and they’re both making bad legal decisions.

[Anonymous]

I was just listening to a podcast about what it means for Livelys team to be hiring Shapiro and Brennan.

It looks like they are really going all out to protect Reynolds multi billion dollar corporate entities. It’s not just PR, or spin doctoring, or getting better headlines. It’s pretty intense and it definitely makes me wonder what they are hiding well beyond this case.

I’m not sure if Baldoni’s team will really be able to survive up against this, but who knows. It’s clear they want this squashed for good. This is not a typical Hollywood hire.

If they prevail in getting this killed, it will be interesting to see what becomes of them. Will Blake just go back to launching businesses and doing movies and will the public support that? I feel like reynolds will be fine behind the scenes, he’s clearly got a good business sense, but I wonder how much more acting and comedy he will do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was just listening to a podcast about what it means for Livelys team to be hiring Shapiro and Brennan.

It looks like they are really going all out to protect Reynolds multi billion dollar corporate entities. It’s not just PR, or spin doctoring, or getting better headlines. It’s pretty intense and it definitely makes me wonder what they are hiding well beyond this case.

I’m not sure if Baldoni’s team will really be able to survive up against this, but who knows. It’s clear they want this squashed for good. This is not a typical Hollywood hire.

If they prevail in getting this killed, it will be interesting to see what becomes of them. Will Blake just go back to launching businesses and doing movies and will the public support that? I feel like reynolds will be fine behind the scenes, he’s clearly got a good business sense, but I wonder how much more acting and comedy he will do.

This doesn't make sense. "Getting this killed"? She sued him. All the allegations about "stealing the movie" and the bad press about people disliking their personalities has been a direct result of suing Baldoni and Wayfarer. Those are all defensive strategies to discredit Lively and try to force them to settle.

They may have been surprised by how negative the press has been against them since filing the lawsuit, but I think they had an inkling of what it would be like based on what August was like. It's also clear from the texts with Abel and Nathan that Baldoni just wanted to destroy her. It also increasingly looks like Baldoni hired Freedman back in August, and has been working with Freedman, Nathan, and Wallace since that time. Lively filed suit 5 months later.

[Anonymous]

So today they planted an obvious puff piece in LA Times but I thought the Blake stans said they didn't plant the hit piece in NY Times? Media is all fake and all for sale.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So today they planted an obvious puff piece in LA Times but I thought the Blake stans said they didn't plant the hit piece in NY Times? Media is all fake and all for sale.

Oh my god there have been TWO WHOLE NEGATIVE ARTICLES about Justin Baldoni, what is the matter with the world? Meanwhile Lively is receiving death threats but TWO ENTIRE ARTICLES what is going on???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was just listening to a podcast about what it means for Livelys team to be hiring Shapiro and Brennan.

It looks like they are really going all out to protect Reynolds multi billion dollar corporate entities. It’s not just PR, or spin doctoring, or getting better headlines. It’s pretty intense and it definitely makes me wonder what they are hiding well beyond this case.

I’m not sure if Baldoni’s team will really be able to survive up against this, but who knows. It’s clear they want this squashed for good. This is not a typical Hollywood hire.

If they prevail in getting this killed, it will be interesting to see what becomes of them. Will Blake just go back to launching businesses and doing movies and will the public support that? I feel like reynolds will be fine behind the scenes, he’s clearly got a good business sense, but I wonder how much more acting and comedy he will do.

This doesn't make sense. "Getting this killed"? She sued him. All the allegations about "stealing the movie" and the bad press about people disliking their personalities has been a direct result of suing Baldoni and Wayfarer. Those are all defensive strategies to discredit Lively and try to force them to settle.

They may have been surprised by how negative the press has been against them since filing the lawsuit, but I think they had an inkling of what it would be like based on what August was like. It's also clear from the texts with Abel and Nathan that Baldoni just wanted to destroy her. It also increasingly looks like Baldoni hired Freedman back in August, and has been working with Freedman, Nathan, and Wallace since that time. Lively filed suit 5 months later.

You are missing the point. You don’t hire Shapiro and Bruno to take down Justin and his team. They have bigger fish to fry. They are trying to protect reynolds as a corporate entity and they are not playing around. If you think this is only about this case you are woefully naïve.

It is likely they are afraid something could be uncovered, perhaps people feeling emboldened to come out since they are at a low point or something in the process that reveals financials or personal relationships or something. I don’t think you are understanding the seriousness of this move. They didn’t hire them for Hollywood PR, they’re setting up a war room.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So today they planted an obvious puff piece in LA Times but I thought the Blake stans said they didn't plant the hit piece in NY Times? Media is all fake and all for sale.

Oh my god there have been TWO WHOLE NEGATIVE ARTICLES about Justin Baldoni, what is the matter with the world? Meanwhile Lively is receiving death threats but TWO ENTIRE ARTICLES what is going on???

The LA Times article isn't even particularly negative. It shares true things about him that are not necessarily flattering, but it also interviewed people who have worked with him and like him and find his social justice advocacy to be genuine. It offers a decent amount of neutral info about his religion and background -- neither negative nor positive, just info that kind of fills out the picture of him, since he really was not very well known before all this. I appreciated that it wasn't a caricature at all. I didn't walk away from it thinking he was guilty or innocent. I walked away thinking he has some personality qualities that could either make it more likely he might harass someone, but could also make it likely he would merely annoy someone or that people would really misinterpret his behavior. I didn't think the article was good for Lively except in the way that it offers a more nuance, balanced take on Baldoni than most of what you find online, which paints him as some kind of middle class artistic hero with a heart of gold and no flaws.

This is different than a tabloid hit piece that's like "Did Ryan Reynolds Reveal Movie-Stealing Plot in 2018 Graduation Address????" Come on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So today they planted an obvious puff piece in LA Times but I thought the Blake stans said they didn't plant the hit piece in NY Times? Media is all fake and all for sale.

Oh my god there have been TWO WHOLE NEGATIVE ARTICLES about Justin Baldoni, what is the matter with the world? Meanwhile Lively is receiving death threats but TWO ENTIRE ARTICLES what is going on???

The LA Times article isn't even particularly negative. It shares true things about him that are not necessarily flattering, but it also interviewed people who have worked with him and like him and find his social justice advocacy to be genuine. It offers a decent amount of neutral info about his religion and background -- neither negative nor positive, just info that kind of fills out the picture of him, since he really was not very well known before all this. I appreciated that it wasn't a caricature at all. I didn't walk away from it thinking he was guilty or innocent. I walked away thinking he has some personality qualities that could either make it more likely he might harass someone, but could also make it likely he would merely annoy someone or that people would really misinterpret his behavior. I didn't think the article was good for Lively except in the way that it offers a more nuance, balanced take on Baldoni than most of what you find online, which paints him as some kind of middle class artistic hero with a heart of gold and no flaws.

This is different than a tabloid hit piece that's like "Did Ryan Reynolds Reveal Movie-Stealing Plot in 2018 Graduation Address????" Come on.

What I find most interesting is that the traditional media won’t touch Blake (untouchable I guess). If it wasn’t for the egalitarianism of social media, Baldoni wouldn’t stand a chance against Blake. I’d love to see the nyt or LAT do a in depth profile on Blake and Ryan. There’s so much content—dead stunt doubles, plantations, crying interns, history of movie stealing, adultery, groping castmate’s chest. Yet only nontraditional media will report these stories. It really shows who has the power here, which again is why BL’s flimsy harassment claims are hard to believe. She’s always had the power.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was just listening to a podcast about what it means for Livelys team to be hiring Shapiro and Brennan.

It looks like they are really going all out to protect Reynolds multi billion dollar corporate entities. It’s not just PR, or spin doctoring, or getting better headlines. It’s pretty intense and it definitely makes me wonder what they are hiding well beyond this case.

I’m not sure if Baldoni’s team will really be able to survive up against this, but who knows. It’s clear they want this squashed for good. This is not a typical Hollywood hire.

If they prevail in getting this killed, it will be interesting to see what becomes of them. Will Blake just go back to launching businesses and doing movies and will the public support that? I feel like reynolds will be fine behind the scenes, he’s clearly got a good business sense, but I wonder how much more acting and comedy he will do.

This doesn't make sense. "Getting this killed"? She sued him. All the allegations about "stealing the movie" and the bad press about people disliking their personalities has been a direct result of suing Baldoni and Wayfarer. Those are all defensive strategies to discredit Lively and try to force them to settle.

They may have been surprised by how negative the press has been against them since filing the lawsuit, but I think they had an inkling of what it would be like based on what August was like. It's also clear from the texts with Abel and Nathan that Baldoni just wanted to destroy her. It also increasingly looks like Baldoni hired Freedman back in August, and has been working with Freedman, Nathan, and Wallace since that time. Lively filed suit 5 months later.

You are missing the point. You don’t hire Shapiro and Bruno to take down Justin and his team. They have bigger fish to fry. They are trying to protect reynolds as a corporate entity and they are not playing around. If you think this is only about this case you are woefully naïve.

It is likely they are afraid something could be uncovered, perhaps people feeling emboldened to come out since they are at a low point or something in the process that reveals financials or personal relationships or something. I don’t think you are understanding the seriousness of this move. They didn’t hire them for Hollywood PR, they’re setting up a war room.

It makes sense that Reynolds, who has extensive business interests that are far more lucrative than his acting career, would take more of a corporate "war room" approach to PR in this situation. I do not think it means there is some dark secret they are afraid of having uncovered.

If such a secret existed, they would not have filed litigation that would necessitate them participating in discovery. When you file a lawsuit like Lively filed, you wind up having a meeting (or more than one) with your lawyer before you file and they walk you through what engaging in litigation like this will mean for you, personally. They explain what it will be like to be deposed by an unfriendly attorney whose goal is to trip you up and make you look stupid and untrustworthy. They explain that the other side might be able to read your emails and texts that could be embarrassing to you. That your friends and family might be called as witnesses and this can be a burden on relationships.

Now, sure, someone might hear all that and say "whatever, I don't care, it won't be that bad." People do go into litigation not taking it seriously all the time. But if you have a huge secret that could totally destroy you if it were found out? You say "ok, cool, not interested -- we will duke this out via PR instead."

I think some people just hear "ex-CIA" and start thinking double agents and dark plots. The guy runs a PR firm. Did you know Melissa Nathan repped Trump during his first impeachment? That doesn't mean Baldoni secretly plotted with Russia to blackmail Ukraine into investigating Hunter Biden's laptop. It means she's had more than one client and that people hire her when they are worried about getting very bad PR.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s an LA Times article out today on Baldoni. There’s a paywall so some may not be able to read it. What’s fascinating is it’s pretty clear a lot of Lively’s allegations seem to be from his book. To me this makes her look particularly hysterical, which we already knew. I’m guessing a lot of these “uncomfortable conversations” was JB telling BL stories from his book (e.g. being bullied in high school and turning to porn and that his first girlfriend initiated sex without consent—his Bahai faith preaches abstinence). Obviously these were not uncomfortable conversations for JB as he published them for millions of readers and probably also raised them on his podcast. I don’t think he’d see these things as harassment. Blake sounds really delicate. In her complaint she takes these conversations out of context and makes them sound like harassment. She obviously never read his book or iewu for that matter.

Uh, I'm reading the article now and you literally buried the lede. The piece opens by detailing a legal battle with a screenwriter named Travis Flores who wrote a script titled "Three Feet Distance" about his own experiences with cystic fibrosis. Baldoni's directorial debut was a featured called "Five Feet Apart" about cystic fibrosis patients, which Baldoni claims was based on the experiences of a different person.

Also, painting a VERY different portrait of Baldoni than what he puts forth in his complaint:

Yet some former colleagues, in more than a dozen interviews with The Times and a previously unreported 2020 lawsuit against Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios, paint a more complicated picture. Several described a pattern of performative virtue and power plays that, in their view, conflicted with the ideals Baldoni professes to uphold. “They keep talking about [the Baldoni-Lively battle] as David and Goliath but that’s just not my experience,” said one former collaborator, who like numerous others interviewed by the Times declined to be named out of fear of being drawn into litigation. “Justin has a lot of power and a lot of money, and he is not afraid to use them to get his way. We need allies, but we need allies whose personal and business dealings align with who they say they are.” Through a spokesperson, Baldoni declined to be interviewed for this story, as did Wayfarer Studios’ senior leadership. The spokesperson said the company “has always proudly publicized [its] founding mission of harnessing storytelling to champion inspirational stories that act as true agents for social change, and actively strives to maintain a positive workplace environment that is rooted in this mission.”

Also, in talking about his porn addition, this jumped out at me as potentially very creepy and problematic:

Years later, in Hollywood, he found himself working alongside actresses he had once fantasized about. “Some of the weirdest moments of my life have happened in the past few years as my teenage fantasies have merged with my midthirties professional life, and some of these women have become friends,” he wrote in “Man Enough.”

This is disturbing, frankly.

Didn’t bury the lead. We covered that case on this thread probably 100 pages ago lol and didn’t want to return to it. The connection between BL’s allegations and the book were new to me.

Huh. We hadn’t covered the fact that Bryan Freedman represented Travis Flores, convinced him to drop his suit against billionaire-funded Baldini because the fight would take too long, and the. Only months after Flores died, Freedman conveniently took Baldoni and Wayfarer as his own clients. Good thing for Freedman that Flores dropped the case and died, or Freedman wouldn’t have been able to take on the much more lucrative Baldoni/Sarowitz/Wayfarer team, so I guess that worked out for Freedman.

You left this out of your “rah rah Baldoni” summary somehow — reading your description I thought it was a pro-Baldoni piece, which it decidedly was not. lol okay.

Also, is it ethical for Baldoni to be represented by the attorney who previously sued him and convinced his client to settle? Seems like Freedman could have an ABA/legal ethics issue, but shouldn't this have set off alarm bells for Mr. So Much Love Baldoni? The whole thing smells rotten.

Lawyer here and no, it's not an ethics violation. It would be problematic if it was the same parties in both representations and the attorney just changed sides -- you'd need the parties to agree to that and I doubt the party who had been represented previously would agree.

But if it's a totally different case with a different party, there's nothing wrong with it. It happens more than you think, because people who litigate a lot will encounter a lawyer they think is really tough and then the next time they need an attorney they'll remember: hey, that person was really hard to go up against. Not insanely common but not unheard of.

The thing about Freedman that is frankly weirding me out at this point is that his past representations have so much overlap among multiple parties with this case that it seems bizarre. Like by my count:

- Represented Jed Wallace previously AND, long before the thing with Baldoni, had even been accused in court of having Wallace smear an opponent in another case on his behalf.
- Represented Perez Hilton and Meghyn Kelly, both of whom are now riding hard for JB in their coverage of the conflict.
- Represented Travis Flores in his action against Wayfarer.
- Appears to have been mentioned/suggested by Melissa Nathan to JB in August 2024 (she references JB getting a lawyer and that it may be time to call "BF"). I had previously thought this made it likely that Freedman was recommended to Baldoni/Wayfarer by Nathan, and thought she might have known of him through Wallace.

But now I know Baldoni/Wayfarer must have known of Freedman before they even filmed IEWU, because of the Travis Flores lawsuit. When did they hire Freedman? Was it before or after hiring Jed Wallace? Are those two hires just a coincidence? That seems insane.

I think it’s just a Hollywood lawyer thing. BL and Drake also have the same lawyers and they’re both making bad legal decisions.

I think this is a good point. There are a limited number of heavy hitters who play in this arena. Same for the PR firms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s an LA Times article out today on Baldoni. There’s a paywall so some may not be able to read it. What’s fascinating is it’s pretty clear a lot of Lively’s allegations seem to be from his book. To me this makes her look particularly hysterical, which we already knew. I’m guessing a lot of these “uncomfortable conversations” was JB telling BL stories from his book (e.g. being bullied in high school and turning to porn and that his first girlfriend initiated sex without consent—his Bahai faith preaches abstinence). Obviously these were not uncomfortable conversations for JB as he published them for millions of readers and probably also raised them on his podcast. I don’t think he’d see these things as harassment. Blake sounds really delicate. In her complaint she takes these conversations out of context and makes them sound like harassment. She obviously never read his book or iewu for that matter.

Uh, I'm reading the article now and you literally buried the lede. The piece opens by detailing a legal battle with a screenwriter named Travis Flores who wrote a script titled "Three Feet Distance" about his own experiences with cystic fibrosis. Baldoni's directorial debut was a featured called "Five Feet Apart" about cystic fibrosis patients, which Baldoni claims was based on the experiences of a different person.

Also, painting a VERY different portrait of Baldoni than what he puts forth in his complaint:

Yet some former colleagues, in more than a dozen interviews with The Times and a previously unreported 2020 lawsuit against Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios, paint a more complicated picture. Several described a pattern of performative virtue and power plays that, in their view, conflicted with the ideals Baldoni professes to uphold. “They keep talking about [the Baldoni-Lively battle] as David and Goliath but that’s just not my experience,” said one former collaborator, who like numerous others interviewed by the Times declined to be named out of fear of being drawn into litigation. “Justin has a lot of power and a lot of money, and he is not afraid to use them to get his way. We need allies, but we need allies whose personal and business dealings align with who they say they are.” Through a spokesperson, Baldoni declined to be interviewed for this story, as did Wayfarer Studios’ senior leadership. The spokesperson said the company “has always proudly publicized [its] founding mission of harnessing storytelling to champion inspirational stories that act as true agents for social change, and actively strives to maintain a positive workplace environment that is rooted in this mission.”

Also, in talking about his porn addition, this jumped out at me as potentially very creepy and problematic:

Years later, in Hollywood, he found himself working alongside actresses he had once fantasized about. “Some of the weirdest moments of my life have happened in the past few years as my teenage fantasies have merged with my midthirties professional life, and some of these women have become friends,” he wrote in “Man Enough.”

This is disturbing, frankly.

Didn’t bury the lead. We covered that case on this thread probably 100 pages ago lol and didn’t want to return to it. The connection between BL’s allegations and the book were new to me.

Huh. We hadn’t covered the fact that Bryan Freedman represented Travis Flores, convinced him to drop his suit against billionaire-funded Baldini because the fight would take too long, and the. Only months after Flores died, Freedman conveniently took Baldoni and Wayfarer as his own clients. Good thing for Freedman that Flores dropped the case and died, or Freedman wouldn’t have been able to take on the much more lucrative Baldoni/Sarowitz/Wayfarer team, so I guess that worked out for Freedman.

You left this out of your “rah rah Baldoni” summary somehow — reading your description I thought it was a pro-Baldoni piece, which it decidedly was not. lol okay.

Also, is it ethical for Baldoni to be represented by the attorney who previously sued him and convinced his client to settle? Seems like Freedman could have an ABA/legal ethics issue, but shouldn't this have set off alarm bells for Mr. So Much Love Baldoni? The whole thing smells rotten.

Lawyer here and no, it's not an ethics violation. It would be problematic if it was the same parties in both representations and the attorney just changed sides -- you'd need the parties to agree to that and I doubt the party who had been represented previously would agree.

But if it's a totally different case with a different party, there's nothing wrong with it. It happens more than you think, because people who litigate a lot will encounter a lawyer they think is really tough and then the next time they need an attorney they'll remember: hey, that person was really hard to go up against. Not insanely common but not unheard of.

The thing about Freedman that is frankly weirding me out at this point is that his past representations have so much overlap among multiple parties with this case that it seems bizarre. Like by my count:

- Represented Jed Wallace previously AND, long before the thing with Baldoni, had even been accused in court of having Wallace smear an opponent in another case on his behalf.
- Represented Perez Hilton and Meghyn Kelly, both of whom are now riding hard for JB in their coverage of the conflict.
- Represented Travis Flores in his action against Wayfarer.
- Appears to have been mentioned/suggested by Melissa Nathan to JB in August 2024 (she references JB getting a lawyer and that it may be time to call "BF"). I had previously thought this made it likely that Freedman was recommended to Baldoni/Wayfarer by Nathan, and thought she might have known of him through Wallace.

But now I know Baldoni/Wayfarer must have known of Freedman before they even filmed IEWU, because of the Travis Flores lawsuit. When did they hire Freedman? Was it before or after hiring Jed Wallace? Are those two hires just a coincidence? That seems insane.

Another lawyer here, and the list you presented doesn’t bother me. They appear to be different matters. That Freeman represented fake news people (Hilton, Kelly) who are now talking about this fake news isn’t surprising (or in any inappropriate or a conflict).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So today they planted an obvious puff piece in LA Times but I thought the Blake stans said they didn't plant the hit piece in NY Times? Media is all fake and all for sale.

Oh my god there have been TWO WHOLE NEGATIVE ARTICLES about Justin Baldoni, what is the matter with the world? Meanwhile Lively is receiving death threats but TWO ENTIRE ARTICLES what is going on???

You are quite selective in the articles you count.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was just listening to a podcast about what it means for Livelys team to be hiring Shapiro and Brennan.

It looks like they are really going all out to protect Reynolds multi billion dollar corporate entities. It’s not just PR, or spin doctoring, or getting better headlines. It’s pretty intense and it definitely makes me wonder what they are hiding well beyond this case.

I’m not sure if Baldoni’s team will really be able to survive up against this, but who knows. It’s clear they want this squashed for good. This is not a typical Hollywood hire.

If they prevail in getting this killed, it will be interesting to see what becomes of them. Will Blake just go back to launching businesses and doing movies and will the public support that? I feel like reynolds will be fine behind the scenes, he’s clearly got a good business sense, but I wonder how much more acting and comedy he will do.

This doesn't make sense. "Getting this killed"? She sued him. All the allegations about "stealing the movie" and the bad press about people disliking their personalities has been a direct result of suing Baldoni and Wayfarer. Those are all defensive strategies to discredit Lively and try to force them to settle.

They may have been surprised by how negative the press has been against them since filing the lawsuit, but I think they had an inkling of what it would be like based on what August was like. It's also clear from the texts with Abel and Nathan that Baldoni just wanted to destroy her. It also increasingly looks like Baldoni hired Freedman back in August, and has been working with Freedman, Nathan, and Wallace since that time. Lively filed suit 5 months later.

You are missing the point. You don’t hire Shapiro and Bruno to take down Justin and his team. They have bigger fish to fry. They are trying to protect reynolds as a corporate entity and they are not playing around. If you think this is only about this case you are woefully naïve.

It is likely they are afraid something could be uncovered, perhaps people feeling emboldened to come out since they are at a low point or something in the process that reveals financials or personal relationships or something. I don’t think you are understanding the seriousness of this move. They didn’t hire them for Hollywood PR, they’re setting up a war room.

It makes sense that Reynolds, who has extensive business interests that are far more lucrative than his acting career, would take more of a corporate "war room" approach to PR in this situation. I do not think it means there is some dark secret they are afraid of having uncovered.

If such a secret existed, they would not have filed litigation that would necessitate them participating in discovery. When you file a lawsuit like Lively filed, you wind up having a meeting (or more than one) with your lawyer before you file and they walk you through what engaging in litigation like this will mean for you, personally. They explain what it will be like to be deposed by an unfriendly attorney whose goal is to trip you up and make you look stupid and untrustworthy. They explain that the other side might be able to read your emails and texts that could be embarrassing to you. That your friends and family might be called as witnesses and this can be a burden on relationships.

Now, sure, someone might hear all that and say "whatever, I don't care, it won't be that bad." People do go into litigation not taking it seriously all the time. But if you have a huge secret that could totally destroy you if it were found out? You say "ok, cool, not interested -- we will duke this out via PR instead."

I think some people just hear "ex-CIA" and start thinking double agents and dark plots. The guy runs a PR firm. Did you know Melissa Nathan repped Trump during his first impeachment? That doesn't mean Baldoni secretly plotted with Russia to blackmail Ukraine into investigating Hunter Biden's laptop. It means she's had more than one client and that people hire her when they are worried about getting very bad PR.

Fair, but I really don’t think they thought it would it get this far. It’s at least possible that they thought the New York Times article would essentially neutralize him, he would try to do some settling out of court, then this would be behind them and the public would proclaim Blake a hero to women for standing up to harassment. Oh, and she’d probably get to produce and star in the sequel.

I just don’t think they envisioned Baldoni's teams tactics of taking it this far, involving Taylor Swift, essentially ruining that friendship or at least the public friendship, which is huge for Blake’s image. And now, here they are. I think they’re going on the offense and preparing for something larger than this case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So today they planted an obvious puff piece in LA Times but I thought the Blake stans said they didn't plant the hit piece in NY Times? Media is all fake and all for sale.

Most people here (if i understand Blake Stan to be anyone who isn't 100% against her, all the time) thought she brought her story to NYT all along. It's the other side who claims, despite significant evidence, that Baldoni never ran a smear campaign against her because all hate is organic, even when there are pretty much texts bragging about doing it, which we are supposed to buy were all sarcastic.

[Anonymous]

The piece opens by detailing a legal battle with a screenwriter named Travis Flores who wrote a script titled "Three Feet Distance" about his own experiences with cystic fibrosis. Baldoni's directorial debut was a featured called "Five Feet Apart" about cystic fibrosis patients, which Baldoni claims was based on the experiences of a different person.

So, if anyone is interested, I found the docket. I will caution that the complaint is merely the allegations made by Flores, which were not ultimately proven as he withdrew his complaint. I'll post a brief summary.

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/60332946/travis-flores-v-justin-baldoni/

Flores had cystic fibrosis and people with CF cannot come within 3 feet apart of each other because they can spread bacteria to each other. He wrote a teen romance based on this concept and optioned it in 2015 to a production company that did not ultimately make the film. He also registered his copyright with WGA. He continued to shop it around and a genetic testing company called Ambry Genetics expressed interest. He emailed them the screenplay and they promised to keep it confidential and Flores cites a standard implied agreement, common in Hollywood not to use the screenplay without his name attached to it (ie, implying that part of the agreement was not in writing). Caleb Remington, a defendant, was one of the people at Ambry Genetics who received the email. In 2017 Wayfarer and Baldoni announced he would be directing and producing a movie about teens with CF. A year after that, Flores appeared in a documentary by Baldoni, but he did not discuss his screenplay with Baldoni because Baldoni was making a film that competed with his project. Baldoni hired Remington as a consultant, and given Remington had the script, Flores noticed a lot of similarities.

The list starts out broad - they are both teen dramas about teens with CF who need to stay a distance apart, have best friends, etc. Then it gets into some pretty specific plot points. The protagonist in both movies has a dead sister, both have an "edgy" best friend with more experience, both have scenes where the protagonist is guest of honor at a surprise party, and other pivotal scenes take place in similar locations (there are more, but those stood out to me). On this basis, Flores believes Remington shared details of the script with Wayfarer and Baldoni.

Ambry Genetics filed a motion to dismiss. Most of their arguments don't involve Baldoni but more technical matters like Flores doesn't state a cause of action specifically against Ambry but rather uses impermissible group pleading (heh) to lump the defendants together, and that he missed the two year statute of limitations. One relevant point is it does state CBS hired writers for Baldoni's film in January 2017 but Baldoni didn't meet Remington until April 2017. Ultimately, they argue the complaint does not specify how Ambry, specifically, provided a copy of the screenplay to the other defendants who allegedly infringed, nor that Ambry was involved in the production of Baldoni's film or received any revenue from it.

Flores goes on to reach a settlement with Remington, and dismisses the rest of the defendants with prejudice. And that's all the docs that are available for viewing.

So, it's sort of hinky and suspicious but nothing conclusive because Baldoni didn't file an answer or motion to dismiss so we don't really get to see his side.