Reply to Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote] And the problem with that is she also needs to show it wasn’t mutual, which she won’t be able to do because she participated in and even initiated a lot of the conversations she now wants to call SH[/quote]

Guess what?  Her calling herself a ball buster doesn’t mean he didn’t sexually harass her.  Your weird addition to the order of proof for sexual harassment — proving it “wasn’t mutual” — that isn’t a thing, but if it were I’m pretty sure she can show she wasn’t on board with with being nude for the birth scene or the additional sex scenes he wanted to film of her climaxing etc.  Nor does her calling herself a “ball buster” mean he didn’t run a smear campaign against her. And his texts basically admit the smear campaign. His texts are like, hey guys, shouldn’t we be smearing a little harder?   And are we sure we’re smearing her in a way where we won’t get caught?

So your boy may still have some problems, not least of which is getting his own MIA amended complaint approved in a way where the claims stick because the judge has indicated that as written there are enormous problems with it, and moreover his biggest fish worth the most in his potential recovery, the NYT, may swim away entirely.

We’ll see what happens. [/quote]

This is how we can tell you didn't read the exculpatory evidence because otherwise you would have known the full context of text messages were omitted from the NYT article and Justin had actually texted his PR team he didn't want to slander her. None of know what you're talking about. [/quote]

Saying he didn't want to slander her is not exculpatory. He isn't accused of slander -- he's accused of a retaliatory PR campaign. Even if everything they posted online was true or couched as opinion (so not slander), by spreading negative publicity about an employee who had brought credible SH allegations, they were engaging in retaliatory behavior. Especially when there are a number of texts where Justin makes it clear the goal of the campaign is to discredit Lively should she speak publicly about her allegations.
[/quote]

Lively didn't bring sexual harassment allegations until December when she filed the lawsuit. Sony has denied there were any sexual harassment complaints filed to their HR. Your allegation that Justin was aware of the fact that she was going to file a sexual harassment complaint and thus hire a PR firm to discredit her specifically before it came out is literally baseless and a complete distortion of the facts and timelines of the case. [/quote]

She made multiple complaints about Baldoni's and Heath's behavior, to Wayfarer and Sony, before the hiatus. These are detailed in both their complaints. She did not go through formal channels to file a "sexual harassment complaint" because (1) she wanted to handle it less confrontationally in order to protect the production, and (2) there were structural problems that made a more formal complaint possible -- Wayfarer had inadequate HR resources and Sony, which had  a more formal HR process, kept kicking things back to Wayfarer. But Lively repeatedly raised concerns about everything she alleges in her lawsuit -- Baldoni asking her trainer about her weight, the unscripted kissing in scenes, the proposed nudity in the birth scene, Heath showing her the birth video, etc. None of this came as a surprise to Baldoni or Heath when it was raised again later in the 17 point list -- they knew she was unhappy about that stuff and had had discussions with her and with Sony about it.[/quote]

That's not Justin or the studio's problem that she didn't take the proper protocol and issue a sexual harassment complaint to Sony and/or SAG-AFTRA as soon as she felt he was sexually harassing her. Had she done that, her case would have been rock solid. She's under fire because she has left out pertinent details and fabricated quotes by Baldoni and others on a number of occasions in her amended complaint that put the validity of her case into question. She is a grown woman and veteran of the industry and at this conjecture post me-too, there are clear conduct and behavioral boundaries that every cast member is subject to and is aware of what to do when those lines are crossed. Especially the lead stars of the film. She made a plethora of inappropriate sexual jokes, innuendos, comments, physical moves, and threats against Baldoni that any reasonable person could argue were in equal value to the ones she claims he made against her and yet, he did not file a sexual harassment suit or complaint. This is their problem and now the courts will decide and weigh in all of their conduct and exchanges to evaluate if it had malice.

Where is the proof that Lively has stated that 1, she wanted to handle it less confrontationally in order to protect the production and 2, stated that there were structural problems that made a formal complaint possible (I think you meant impossible). Show me where she specifically stated these two key issues about [b]sexual harassment specifically.[/b] Sony has again denied she filed a sexual harassment complain to HR. Lively did not issue a sexual harassment allegation until the lawsuit in December.

[quote]What Wayfarer should have done, and what a competent company would do, is involve HR as soon as it was clear Lively was raising these concerns, and create a formal process to address discomfort and prevent any future issues moving forward. That is what Sony would have done, for instance, if this happened on the set of a movie they were actually producing as the producing studio. Sony has lots of lawyers and HR professionals who would have investigated and laid out a framework for moving forward. Wayfarer blew it off, figured Blake would get over it, and made no changes to their operations. And then during the hiatus when Blake became so stressed about returning to set and having to film all her intimate scenes with people who had repeatedly blown off her concerns specifically about how they handled intimacy and nudity on set, she essentially forced Wayfarer to do what they should have done from the jump and commit to certain protections on the set, and also forced Sony to get more involved to protect the production and actors.

To say that's not a "credibly SH allegation" is bizarre to me. You can't avoid a credible allegation by just refusing to take an employee's *repeated* complaints about behavior related to sex and gender in the workplace seriously. And it wasn't even just Blake! At least one other actress on the set vocally complained about gendered or sexist comments by Heath. So you have what appears to be a pattern of behavior that is making multiple women on the set uncomfortable to the point of raising concerns with Sony or directly with Heath and Baldoni, and Wayfarer at no point initiated an HR investigation into the incidents to try and address the issues. In fact, Wayfarer didn't initiate an investigation until 2025, when they hired a law firm to conduct an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment on the set of the movie, likely because they knew the total absence of any action by the company to look into these allegations looks really, really bad for their defense against Blake's claims.[/quote]

That's not what I said. The burden of proof is on her to prove she was a victim of pervasive workplace sexual harassment. And her allegations so far, have not met the threshold. You are trying to include unrelated complaints by another actress about another person on set to the sexual harassment case against Baldoni and it's comically absurd. Gendered and sexist comments doesn't = sexual harassment and neither does it rise to the threshold of pervasive workplace sexual harassment. If Lively felt that Wayfarer was so incompetent and fostered such an unsafe work environment, she could have completely severed ties with the production and never returned. What we do know is she that was enjoying the production and the cast and crew (including Justin), until he rebuffed some of her intiial demands. As time moved forward, she drafted a list of demands that they all agreed to before resuming filming, and she had no issues after the fact.

[quote]The idea that Baldoni and Wayfarer didn't know about the SH allegations until Blake filed her lawsuit is ludicrous. They not only knew, there are multiple texts between Baldoni and Abel where he expresses concern about the allegations being made public. There are even texts between Abel and others where she expresses concern about how the allegations could affect Baldoni's reputation or the film. These texts date as far back as January 2024 when the movie was still in production. They knew. They knew and did nothing to address it, but gosh they sure were busy little bees when it came to making sure no one would believe Blake if she came forward, by trashing her rep online via TAG and JW.[/quote]

I would love to see the text message exchanges between Baldoni and Abel that you have that show he expressed concern about sexual harassment allegations being made. I would also love to see the dates presented on the text messages about the sexual harassment you have because that was a point of contention for his NYT lawsuit with the dates being redacted. It's interesting in February Blake was shut down by Judge Liman from obtaining 2 years worth of text messages and phone records she was trying to subpoena from Baldoni. Further cementing the argument that her team nor the NYT's had all the text messages and evidence they claimed they did. [/quote]

It is 100% their problem.

If you run a business, and an employee starts making complaints about your behavior or another employee's behavior, and the complaints involve sexual comments or situations, or gendered or sexist comments, the onus is on YOU to investigate those complaints and address them. The employee is not actually required to say "this is sexual harassment" in order to preserve a right to sue later. And in fact, the first few complaints may not even constitute sexual harassment because if it's not quid pro quo, and if the behavior stopped after the first or second incident, it's unlikely it would rise to the level of "severe and pervasive" needed for a hostile work environment claim.

But the employer has a duty to look into the incidents and address them. Even if the employee doesn't say "this is sexual harassment." This is why employers generally have HR staff who are well versed in SH and other forms of workplace harassment who can step in and investigate and then suggest a plan for going forward that will prevent a couple incidents from becoming SH if the incidents continue or worsen. This is one of the main purposes of HR.

So yes, it is very much Justin's and Jamey's and Wayfarer's problem that after multiple complaints from Blake concerning issues that could give rise to an SH claim (including Justin requesting Blake's weight from her trainer, and Blake complaining about Jamey looking at her when she was topless/nursing/pumping, both of which happened either in pre-production or very early in filming and both of which Wayfarer was fully aware of) they failed to involve HR, conduct and investigation, and take steps to address any issues. Instead, they tried to placate Blake with apologies/promises, and then proceeded to pressure her to do unscripted nudity. And then Justin told Jamey to go show Blake Jamey's wife's birth video, which is just a weird thing to do at work in general, but especially weird when you remember that at this point, Blake had expressed multiple complaints about Justina and Jamey violating boundaries.

Their failure to involve HR very early on when it was clear there was some kind of boundary/miscommunication issue between Blake and Justin and possibly between Blake and Jamey was stupid, and potentially, a massive liability.[/quote]

This is a film production. There are unions the actors are represented by who are responsible for ensuring their clients are in a safe workplace. Lively did not go to through her union or filed a formal HR complaint to Sony or Wayfarer as she was supposed to. It's not their responsibility to invoke HR when the employee did not report a formal HR complaint. This is the reality for nearly all working companies in America. Plenty of employees make complaints about sexist, religious, political, or unpalatable jokes or comments made towards them or another person or group and none of these complaints are taken seriously unless they make a formal complaint to HR so they can begin a proper investigation.  Lively did not do this and thus, no HR investigation commenced. Wayfarer went above and beyond accommodating Lively's numerous request and demands. And when everyone agreed to her final 17 point demand, she went back to work without issue as stated in the suit. They listened, took action, and performed to her standard. This solidifies the fact that she felt safe enough to continue working there.

Now she's doubling back and making insidious claims to sexual harassment and a retaliatory hate campaign once she received widespread backlash for her tone deaf marketing over the film and her subsequent hair and drink line failures. She admitted to interviewers she had never had the experiences Lily Bloom had and neither did she conceive the "Grab your florals" marketing pitch. If her argument had any merit, she should be suing Sony for the backlash and her abysmal sales. She wanted the narrative changed so she's suing him to destroy his reputation and career. Because she isn't that smart, she didn't realize he has all the original dailies and audio + the text messages and email exchanges to refute many of her claims.[/quote]

You or others keep asserting that this is the "proper" way to report sexual harassment on a film set and... it's not.

Sure, she could have reported the incidents to SAG. That's one way to go about it. SAG would likely kick it back to the production company and say "please address." Even if the complaints didn't say "this is sexual harassment." So Wayfarer and Blake would wind up in the same position as they did, which is where Blake is complaining about behavior she believes to be problematic, and Wayfarer knows it. This changes nothing about the fact pattern except puts SAG on notice, but I don't see what good it does.

Also, I don't know that all of the incidents would be covered by SAG. The pressure on her to do a scene nude at the last minute -- definitely, they have guidelines for nudity and this explicitly violated those guidelines. But by the time this happened, there was already a laundry list of incidents.

The first incident happened in pre-production and I don't know that SAG would even have any say in that -- Baldoni asking Lively's trainer for her weight. It didn't happen on set. It did concern Lively as an actor, so maybe the union would have a say, but I don't know. Again, had Lively gone to the union here, I think they would have just alerted Wayfarer and said "hey, there's an issue with this production." Which they already knew.

Also, one thing SAG does in situations like this is ensure that an actor has representation and advocates. For someone like Lively, there's no point -- she has agency representation, she has lawyers, she's already advocating for herself. So SAG's involvement isn't as important as it would be for a rank and file member.

Anyway, there's no reason she HAD to go to SAG to report this stuff. There's no rule that says you have to handle it that way. She *did* report these incidents. Wayfarer knew about them.

As for HR, that's the whole problem. Wayfarer does have HR. It looks like they just have one HR person for the whole company though, and there's no indication this person was ever on set. Was Lively ever provided with this person's contact info or a method for reaching out to them with issues? That's normally something an employee should be provided with before they start work. But it sounds like Lively's primary contacts at the company were Baldoni and Heath. So she reported the incidents to Baldoni and Heath, who were on set. If a company doesn't provide employees with access to HR, I don't see how you can complain that they failed to go through proper channels -- they didn't set up "proper channels."

This was Wayfarer's rodeo. If they wanted to ensure that any potential harassment issues were handled well, they could have set up their company and this production to ensure everything would be handled above-board by an HR professional. That's their failure. Lively appears to have made plenty of effort to make sure Wayfarer was aware of problems as they arose. They did nothing and did not even appear to understand that these repeat issues were signs of a serious issue, instead simply writing it off as an actress being difficult.[/quote]

You keep mentioning her weight and that he talked about her weight with her trainer like this is some egregious strange thing. Baldoni has a documented history of back problems, including a herniated disk and chronic pain, which he has proof to show he manages through physical therapy and other treatments. This was a factor in his decision making on set and and why he was concerned about protecting himself from further injury. That's why he inquired about her weight and how he could train to lift her and protect his back when working with her personal trainer because he had to lift her during one of the scenes. She took this as saying he "fat shamed" her and ran to her husband with this narrative. He never addressed her about the comment nor called her fat but this is the way she interpreted information she got from the trainer. And take caution to notice he asked the trainer HOW he could train to lift her, not how she could lose weight to accommodate him. Very important distinction to note when she and the trainer are cross-examined and forced to explain to the judge how he "fat shamed" her.

It is her responsibility to report sexual harassment to her union's HR. She did not do that, no HR investigation will commence. That's exactly how it works. Wayfarer did exactly what they were supposed to do. Listened, took action, and accommodated her demands. And she went back to work without issue. The burden of proof is on her. [/quote]

Asking for her weight as part of a discussion about the lift would have been appropriate -- just have the stunt coordinator get the relevant info and then create a lift that will work for his back problems.

[b]Asking someone who works for Blake for private health info is a violation of privacy.[/b] Which was immediately apparent to the trainer, who responded by immediately reporting to his employer (Blake) that he had been asked to provide this info.

I would also be interested to hear from the trainer exactly what was asked and how. If Baldoni said "I'm concerned about this lift because of my back issues," I would assume a trainer who is a professional would say "oh I understand why you are worried but I can't disclose a client's weight -- I recommend you discuss it with Blake directly or work with your stunt coordinator."

If, on the other hand, Baldoni didn't mention the list at all and instead said something about Blake needing to lose weight for the production, it's very different, isn't it? That would get into the realm of fat shaming, which is what Blake alleges.

So we don't know enough about this to know whether it was harassment or not. Sure, Baldoni is now saying that he was asking because he was worried about his back. But is that what he said at the time? If not, why not? Why was the trainer bothered enough by the conversation that he felt he had to disclose it to Blake and Ryan?

We can't assume either of their accounts is "the truth." There is a third party here, the trainer, who has important info about what happened and we have nothing from that person yet. Presumably he will be deposed or served interrogatories and eventually the truth will come out.[/quote]

Huh? JB asking her weight for a scene is not a ‘violation of privacy’ in any legal sense. I think you’re trying to pull in privacy laws regarding PHI and ‘covered entities’ - which Baldoni obviously isn’t- to confuse issues. You are either totally uneducated or purposely obfuscating. [/quote]

I think people forget that they shared a trainer. So JB asked HIS trainer how much he thought Blake weighed so he could train for the scene and prevent injury. Not an invasion of privacy. I’m pretty sure the trainer could’ve given a ballpark estimate to work with. This trainer was clearly being messy and violated Justin’s privacy by running to Blake and telling her what he (the trainer) had discussed with another client (Justin). If it was just about privacy, the trainer would’ve just said “I’m not at liberty to share” or something like that, but the trainer was trying to carry favor with Blake and Ryan by throwing Justin under the bus—a common theme in this case, as one could argue Jones and the entire iewu cast did the same. It’s all about the power dynamics. [/quote]

Maybe. We can't know until we've heard from the trainer and have more info from Justin about what they discussed and more info from Blake about what her trainer told her.

I also think that if Justin had simply told the trainer he needed Blake's weight to determine whether he could lift her for the scene, the trainer would have just said "oh I can't disclose that, sorry" and moved on.

Maybe the fact that the trainer told Blake about the conversation means the trainer is a "messy" person. OR maybe it means that what Justin asked was not straightforward or professional. Maybe it means Justin said things about Blake's weight that were inappropriate to the trainer's ears, and/or was demanding about finding out her weight (not accepting the trainer's explanation that he couldn't disclose a client's weight to another client). I'm just speculating here. It could be a variety of things, none of us know.

But it strikes me as weird that Justin would try to get Blake's weight from her trainer when there were other ways to handle the lift (it just would have made so much more sense for the stunt coordinator to have gotten her weight, and then they wouldn't even have to disclose it to Justin but could plan the lift based on Blake's weight and what they know Justin could lift with his back issues). And it also strikes me as weird that the trainer would feel like he had to disclose the interaction to Blake. Either the trainer is messy and weird (possible, but we know nothing) or there was something inappropriate about the conversation between Justin and the trainer that the trainer felt it was important to make Blake aware of.[/quote]

Pro-Lively defenders are so focused on the minutiae of the case that they will rationalize every situation in defense of Blake Lively instead of realizing that the way normal people approach this topic (and the way the jury will too, is) is by asking themselves: Was Justin actually trying to fat shame Blake? Like, in my heart of hearts, do I truly believe that? And the answer is no. This dude has back problems, and he whether or not he's performative, it seems weird that he'd be brazen enough to fat shame her in front of her trainer.

But instead, the question you guys think this case is about is: Did Justin maybe not ask about Blake's weight in a perfectly tactful way? In which case, you try to drag us down into these asinine conversations about how Justin maybe said the wrong word, or maybe moved his arm the wrong way, or maybe he should have approached Blake at 3 o'clock instead of 2 o'clock. [/quote]

I don't mind the counter arguments presented. It's the insinuation that every move he's made has been calculated and in malice while she's been given the benefit of the doubt at every turn. For what reason, I'm unsure. Her problematic pattern of behavior has been consistent from beginning to end. The Forbes interview laid out her manifesto. The Kjersti Flaa interview stoked the fire. The tone deaf marketing and plugs threw more gasoline. I don't understand how this is being overlooked by her supporters. These are behavioral patterns that are critical to the case. [/quote]

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