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Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims
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Anonymous
Exactly, FACTS. The gaslighting my that poster is incredible. |
Anonymous
Just because I feel like people are going to gloss over this on their way to some insane conspiracy theory: Here is an Instagram post by Plank from March of 2022, before Lively was cast in IEWU, where Plank praises Lively for her and Ryan's initiative on The Adam Project (a movie Reynolds starred in) to provide training and opportunities for BIPOC and other marginalized people in the film industry. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cak2Ov4pczn/?hl=en&img_index=5 So Plank has known Lively and Reynolds since at least 2022, pre-IEWU, and appears to have worked with them or known people who worked with them on this initiative (the Group Effort Initiative). Which makes it not at all weird that Ryan would have introduced Plank to Rick Binder, or that Plank might work with Binder and Reynolds to set up her own production company when the Man Enough podcast fell apart. None of this is evidence of bribery -- it's evidence of functional professional and social relationships working as they often do. |
Anonymous
Stop gaslighting. |
Anonymous
Ugh, I feel like I am being gaslit. If you think Ryan Reynolds bribed Liz Plank to take Lively's side in all this, how do you explain Plank clearly knowing Lively well before IEWU was even made, attending an industry event with her and knowing a lot about a charitable effort by Lively and Reynolds, indicating stronger ties? Doesn't it seem more likely that Plank, who has known Lively/Reynolds for years, simply got an intro to Reynold's business partner when Plank expressed an interest in setting up a production company, after leaving the Man Enough podcast? Like where is the evidence of a bribe? |
Anonymous
No it doesn’t. |
Anonymous
| Who first found the Vanzan lawsuit and the plank production company? Just people on internet? |
Anonymous
The poor lively defenders have to really twist themselves into circles. One of the big problems with this case is that Justin Baldoni age 41 has no history of sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior in the workplace. Sexual harassment almost always have a pattern of behavior that starts young. For him to all of a sudden, just decide to pick on Blake, an incredibly powerful female celebrity who had as much power than him onset is not credible. Add onto the fact that Liz blank would have never picked up on this and would’ve encouraged her friend to work with him? All of a sudden he stumbled on the set of it ends with us, and he simply can’t help himself? It doesn’t add up. But regardless of that-what you are saying makes no sense. It takes money to establish a production company. It takes personnel to be attached to it, influential personnel, like Rick Binder, who is well known in the industry. The timing is very suspicious since it was just a couple weeks before they published the article and Liz quit. It is incredibly problematic and looks incredibly bad for Liz which is why her socials are being taken over by pissed off people. Blake and Ryan bribed Liz plank by setting up a production company for her. Everyone can see it, it is as clear as day. |
Anonymous
The evidence of the bribe is that it’s Ryan Reynolds company. It is at his home address and it is his business partner. |
Anonymous
If journalists and lawyers and influencers are people on the Internet, then yes. That’s the problem with a high profile case, things that would normally be more hidden don’t stay that way because these things are not too hard to find. The subpoena issue has been suspicious for a while and it was only a matter of time before people dug in and discovered this first lawsuit. I’m actually shocked that it took this long. |
Anonymous
But the podcast did not fall apart yet. Can you see the holes in your theory? The company was set up on November 22. Liz plan was shocked, SHOCKED I TELL YOU, to see that Justin had been a sexual harasser on December 21 when the New York Times article came out. She quit at that time and not a minute before. Do you see now why this looks like things were being cooked up for a long time and she knew exactly what she was doing. If she actually thought he was a harasser, she would have quit the podcast before. She was clearly willing to make feminist content with him all through 2023 and 2024, even though she was supposedly friends with Blake who was being harassed by him? How does that make any sense? It just looks weird if she was such good friends with Blake, she didn’t know any of the harassment? Or is it possible the harassment didn’t happen and they decided to cook up this lawsuit to get control of the movie. Yep that’s it. |
Anonymous
Ok, so many things here. First, yeah, the podcast has fallen apart. Baldoni appeared in almost no episodes in 2024 (I think one or two episodes in January), so it was just Liz and Jamey in those episodes. The last episode they made was in October of last year, a full two months before Lively's lawsuit. It was Jamey and Liz interviewing FKA Twigs. Then nothing. Then the lawsuit came out and Liz formally quit. That podcast is over. But when Liz quit, she didn't say "oh my gosh I had no idea." She said: "I will have more to share soon as I continue to process everything that has happened." Vague but not a statement of shock. In Lively's amended complaint, she references texting with a "mutual friend" of hers and Baldoni's during the production of IEWU. Many people (including me) believe this person to be Liz Plank. Here is what Lively's complaint says about these texts:
Please note this is just a week or two into production of the movie. Liz knew what was going on, from early in the process. |
Anonymous
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It’s more likely to me that Liz Plank simply believed one friend over the other. Why she believed Blake over Justin only Liz knows.
Look, I don’t think Justin harassed Blake - I think he offended her, and she couldn’t handle it. Then she got really mad after seeing those texts. But some people want this to be a massive takeover scheme and coverup when it’s really just your garden variety workplace conflict. I’ve seen stuff like this play out in my own workplace, so it makes sense to me how this could happen. Add in much higher financial stakes, and it’s pretty easy to see how this all got so out of hand. |
Anonymous
+100, this is it. It's a workplace/employment dispute. I wouldn't describe what happened as harassment. It doesn't seem targeted, it all seems like tone deaf stuff that probably Baldoni/Heath should have known better than to say or do, and that Lively was not inclined to be forgiving about. I do think the stuff with the birth scene gives me a strong "ick" reaction. But I do think Lively genuinely believed it to be harassment. She clearly complained about it a lot. It was a bad working relationship but it's not clear Baldoni understood that because he was overwhelmed and frankly not doing a good job running the production. Then the hiatus happened, she stewed and came out guns blazing with the list and the Jan 4 meeting, he got super defensive, and then it was war. Which culminated in him hiring Nathan and the texts. I don't think there was a plot to "steal" the movie. I still don't really know what that means. I don't view anyone involved in this as a victim. Not Lively but also definitely not Baldoni. He made his bed. I don't get the David and Goliath framing. Blake's more famous but I think Baldoni was more instrumental in creating a toxic workplace that led to this point. He should not have directed that movie. He didn't have the skills, it didn't make sense for this particular movie to have a make director, it was absurd for him to start and direct and created a ton of extra problems that were then handled poorly. Blake also screwed up a bunch but it was Baldoni's/Wayfarer's movie so I think more of the blame lies with them. |
Anonymous
I don’t understand why if Blake started complaining about being sexually harassed to her friendl Liz in 2023 Liz did another 18 months worth of podcast. Your timeline is not adding up and why would she wait till December 21 to quit? Seem like either, she was enjoying the perks of doing the podcast and making money with him until she couldn’t anymore? It just doesn’t look good for Liz. It makes her seem like she’s an opportunist. She was happy to work with Baldoni for a while until it was more lucrative to work with Ryan, who was promising her a production company and access to an influential business partner, who never would’ve looked twice at her. Liz on her own is just not enough to get her own production company. She has like 600,000 followers on Instagram. I follow Amazon shopping influencers and mommy fitness influencers with more followers than that. It’s literally nothing. |
Anonymous
I think the answer is in that post upthread about how this is really just a workplace dispute with like a toxic environment and it wasn't really sexual harassment per se but also Baldoni and Heath didn't behave great and may still be liable (especially for the alleged retaliation). If you've ever worked in a toxic workplace, this will make more sense to you. It's normal for these kinds of conflicts to kind of fester below the surface for long periods of time as people are unsure if they are going to go away or blow up. It's not surprising to me that people were putting on a positive face for a long time even as they were aware that there was this major conflict between Baldoni and Lively and even that some of Lively's accusations were fairly serious. We're all looking at it with 20/20 hindsight knowing it blows up into competing law suits and massive PR coverage, but I'm sure pretty much everyone -- Liz, the rest of the cast, even Lively and Baldoni -- believed this would ultimately be resolved behind the scenes or that it would blow over as the promotion of the movie wrapped up and everyone moved on to other projects. The trigger for things blowing up was Jennifer Abel leaving Jonesworks. Had that not happened, or had she not tried to take Wayfarer/Baldoni with her, then Jones would never had seen the text, never shown them to Leslie Sloane, Lively would never have subpoenaed them via the Vanzan lawsuit, etc. You could also say that Baldoni hiring Nathan and involving Jed Wallace was a trigger. At the time this probably felt necessary to Baldoni but in retrospect it looks like an escalation to me, when you consider that they were incredibly close to just being done with each other at that point -- the divided premiere was weird but most people didn't care that much and I think it would have blown over within a month or so. People move on. Basically, if Nathan/Wallace didn't get involved, or if Jennifer Abel hadn't screwed up with Jones (and hadn't been stupid enough to put those texts on a Jonesworks phone), I think it's possible that everyone would have moved on with their lives after that. The coincidence of Lively having a big product release coming out at the same time as the movie, which was also potentially impacted by all the bad press she was getting, also helped give rise to the lawsuit because it created possible damages that otherwise would not have existed. I think it's just a big cluster**** and not some multi-year plot. Everyone involved screwed up to some degree or another. Jennifer Abel truly is the lynchpin of stupidity but I think a lot of the other secondary players -- Plank, Slate, Sklenar, Ferrer -- were forced into having to choose a side and chose the side they liked more/believed more. I don't think people have been bribed. But it's also a reality that Lively/Reynolds are more famous and connected and so I could also see them getting more benefit of the doubt. That's just the way the world works. I've seen stuff like this unfold many times in my life, albeit on a much smaller scale. |