Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's cute that there's a poster who's insistent in here that Justin should have just played ball with Lively, which would have helped his career in the long run. Ryan and Blake began accusing Justin of harassment before the cameras even began rolling. The alleged fat-shaming incident happened in pre-production. Blake was insistent in misreading Justin's actions at every single turn. When you deal with someone like, there's nothing you can do to counter their actions, and it's best to disengage immediately (unfortunately, Justin couldn't for the reasons outlined in his complaint).

You cannot charm your way out enough or act nice enough or act deferent enough. They are out to get you. I question the social survival instincts of the people here who think you can.

Exactly. And they gave Blake everything she asked for - considering her lawyers threatened that she’d walk at every turn they kind of had to. They even gave her the PGA credit clearly under duress. And Ryan tried to move the production up 2 weeks which he knows is an impossible ask. What more could Baldoni have done?

From the get go they were pushy bullies. Justin was in a no win situation. And he would have kept totally quiet about it if not for this lawsuit. Now everyone knows the truth and no one will work with Blake again.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:BL's popularity before IEWU was not based on her acting. It was based on her huge Instagram following, popularity with "fashion people" (hosting Met Gala, Vogue cover, relationships with Versace and other designers), her friendship with Taylor, and her marriage to Ryan Reynolds.

All that stuff together gave her a huge q score. The Shallows, the last movie she opened totally on her own, was a modest success. Hee magazine covers tend to sell. A Simple Favor did decent at the box office and then did really well on streaming, and she has the bigger character in that movie (Kendrick is good but her role is more of the straight man -- Blake for the more fun, showy role).

There are very few people in Hollywood who can do all that. I don't think much of Lively as an actress and find RR really annoying (I have zero interest in Deadpool and find his other ventures grating -- the last time I enjoyed him in a movie was The Proposal), but they both seem to understand celebrity and work it to their advantage, and it makes them a profitable investment. They also seem to have decent work ethics.

I completely understand why Hollywood is backing them. Baldoni is a nobody (sorry) and a lot of the people supporting him now have never seen any of his movies and didn't know who he was a year ago.

It's actually kind of a shame. I know it will get me screamed at on this thread, but having a monster hit like IEWU could have been huge for Baldoni. I think he was in talks to direct the Pacman movie before all this blew up (I mean ugh but that's the kind of garbage Hollywood makes now so it would have been big for him). I tend to think he blew it by not playing the game and figuring out how to work with Lively to his benefit. Even if he "wins" this case and even if Blake's career is in ruins, I think he blew his shot. Not because he'll be labeled a predator (lol this is not the problem in Hollywood people seem to think it is on this thread, look around), but because he showed himself to not know how to work with people like Lively or Reynolds. Are they narcissists? I'm sure they are! Just like everyone else in that town. That's the system. I don't think Baldoni is cut out for it.

I have to question this idea of a huge Q score meaning something in 2025. And middle America women do not care what celebrities where at the Met Gala. The Met Gala is essentially a circus to regular working Americans.

Here's a reality check on Hollywood. Once Taylor Swift dumps you it is a matter of time before everyone else has no use for you. Hollywood follows the cool girls and will shy away from controversy From now on it will be "pap walks" with Robyn and Blake and Ryan looking like a 50 year old lesbian trailing behind.

lmao. Were you the poster who made the Salma 60-th birthday comment? Please never leave.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also, I thought it was interesting that both Lively and Liman specifically made a point of not mentioning Taylor Swift's name in any of their filings on the Motion to Strike issue. It was only Freedman who kept invoking Swift over and over and over again, basically doing what the judge was accusing him of doing, and using her name for publicity and ego gratification.

Silly me, I thought it was Blake who first dragged her “dragon” into this holding her music rights over the studio’s head, name dropping her in texts to Justin, and making sure she was present for her zesty husband’s set up screaming match at their penthouse.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Baldoni supporters are sort of oddly hysterical this weekend. Shouldn’t they be riding the big high of Freedman’s triple hearsay affidavit, struck or not? I don’t really understand them but if they want to spend their Sunday making post after weird post in here, whatevs. I’ll wait to see what the filings show.

Nobody cares about your creepy play by play obsession with filings. We all know it is just attorneys on both sides racking up billable hours. Baldoni will prevail because everyone with a three digit IQ can see this was a hoax scheme. The only question is how thick are Blake and Ryan and how much longer will they let attorneys, crisis consultants, public relations, and tabloids rob them before they get serious about settling and paying victims what they’re entitled to for this hoax.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also, I thought it was interesting that both Lively and Liman specifically made a point of not mentioning Taylor Swift's name in any of their filings on the Motion to Strike issue. It was only Freedman who kept invoking Swift over and over and over again, basically doing what the judge was accusing him of doing, and using her name for publicity and ego gratification.

Blake is the one who dragged Taylor into this. Used her name because she knows she has no clout.

Anonymous wrote:Also, I thought it was interesting that both Lively and Liman specifically made a point of not mentioning Taylor Swift's name in any of their filings on the Motion to Strike issue. It was only Freedman who kept invoking Swift over and over and over again, basically doing what the judge was accusing him of doing, and using her name for publicity and ego gratification.

Anonymous wrote:The Baldoni supporters are sort of oddly hysterical this weekend. Shouldn’t they be riding the big high of Freedman’s triple hearsay affidavit, struck or not? I don’t really understand them but if they want to spend their Sunday making post after weird post in here, whatevs. I’ll wait to see what the filings show.

Anonymous wrote:Also, I thought it was interesting that both Lively and Liman specifically made a point of not mentioning Taylor Swift's name in any of their filings on the Motion to Strike issue. It was only Freedman who kept invoking Swift over and over and over again, basically doing what the judge was accusing him of doing, and using her name for publicity and ego gratification.

Anonymous wrote:I think the idea that this was some longterm plot by Blake and Ryan, or even that they seized an opportunity to allege SH in order to take over the movie, is a sign that you've been thinking too much about this whole thing and your imagination is taking over. It does not make sense. This is every bit as fanciful and weird as a Lively supporter thinking that Baldoni cast Lively so that he could SH her. No. I sincerely believe both these people went into this situation with good intentions.

I think they had serious culture clash and it spiraled. I also think that Baldoni was tone deaf at times in a way that compounded problems that otherwise could have been addressed and moved on from. Like the whole thing with the birth scene. He shouldn't have asked her to be nude in that scene when it wasn't scripted that way, and he shouldn't have been pushy about it. But fine, they found a middle ground and it got filmed. Then the next day he's telling Heath to go show Lively Heath's wife's birth video? Dude, why? This is a sign of someone who can't bear to not win an argument and who lacks boundaries. I don't think it's SH, I just think it's super annoying. I think a lot of the stuff Blake alleges is in this category -- Baldoni doing something that is a little weird to people who don't know him, Blake reacting negatively, and then Baldoni doubling down like "no really, this is good, we *should* discuss our history with pornography more." He needed someone to rein him in and tell him to lay off and let some of this stuff go. He seems like a kind of intense guy who has very specific ideas about how people should interact (in line with his whole "male vulnerability" schtick from his podcast and books) and he needed to understand that not everyone likes that and not to force it on people.

Lively, for her part, just seems to have been in a sensitive, vulnerable place coming off the birth of her fourth child, and I think overreacted to certain things or viewed behavior that was simply tone deaf or dumb as intentional. I say this as someone who has been through PPD and knows it's hard. I actually have a lot of empathy for her.

Both people here needed to have people around them who cooled them off and encouraged them to be more understanding and to let stuff go. Instead the opposite seems to be true. I think Baldoni got spun up by Heath and the billionaire dude and also that Wayfarer might have a kind of insular culture because of the religion angle and that gave them an "us versus them" attitude. Meanwhile I think RR totally encouraged Lively to nuclear and not give an inch. And that was the problem. Then once Melissa Nathan and Bryan Freedman were involved, I think it got way worse because Nathan is extremely aggressive in her PR approach and we can all see that Freedman doesn't have a light touch.

Basically every choice either of them made after those first few weeks of filming with all the little issues, just ramped up the tensions and made things worse. This is why it's good to have people in your life who are like "yes I agree with you but do you really want to fight over this, or do you want to just get through it and move on?" Both of them needed a friend who would tell them to just suck it up, finish the movie and promotion, and then forget about the whole thing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's cute that there's a poster who's insistent in here that Justin should have just played ball with Lively, which would have helped his career in the long run. Ryan and Blake began accusing Justin of harassment before the cameras even began rolling. The alleged fat-shaming incident happened in pre-production. Blake was insistent in misreading Justin's actions at every single turn. When you deal with someone like, there's nothing you can do to counter their actions, and it's best to disengage immediately (unfortunately, Justin couldn't for the reasons outlined in his complaint).

You cannot charm your way out enough or act nice enough or act deferent enough. They are out to get you. I question the social survival instincts of the people here who think you can.

It sure reads like a choreographed me too set up blackmail extortion whatever you want to call scheme from the very get-go. Really cool how the New York Times helped these scammers.

So I have been on the fence about whether Blake planned this from the start. I've gone from thinking no way, she's just an oversensitive psycho, to now thinking maybe she did.

It's very curious to me that the set had so many problems and then, bam, after the 17-point list is signed, everything runs completely smoothly. I know people will say this is evidence that Justin finally got put in his place and he became too scared to try anything. I now view it more as Blake finally got something to hold over his head, so she didn't need to accuse him of anything anymore.

I don’t know that they sat at the kitchen table in their NY penthouse and plotted this from day one. I think they saw opportunities to exploit justin early and took them. They know that he has this image and brand as a male feminist, and that made him an easy target. I also think Blake was way, way over sensitive about her postpartum body as her texts clearly showed. I think she was looking for a way out of the lift scene and found one. I truly think when he sent her the name of that woman to get probiotics from, the woman had something on her website like supplements for weight loss, and Blake flipped out and immediately thought he was trying to get her to take supplements or something, which is ridiculous.

But then once she had leverage I do thick she thought well what more can I get and saw him as a shortcut to a PGA.

I think if they planned it from the beginning, she would’ve been a lot more careful about her texts and her friendship with him, which was clearly there in the first few months. I also think the early pushback from fans seeing in the outfits and saying she was too old for the part really pushed her over the edge as well and she took a lot of that out on Justin.

And there’s no doubt in my mind that Ryan returning from the overseas Deadpool shoot and seeing some of the dailies or something had something to do with us as well. He is clearly very insecure.

I do think there are some strange things like Wayfair was pushing her to sign and make any amendments to the nudity rider and she didn’t do that. So she shot the birthing scene without it and then was conveniently able to say that she was uncomfortable with it. I definitely think that was strategic. It seemed strategic for her not to sign her contract and for her not to return that rider so that she could pull crap like that. It still amazes me that they paid her 3 million before she had signed the contract. She was then just able to hold a lot over their head. That was certainly a mess up on their part but I do think they were feeling pressure from Sony to just play ball and get through the shoot.

I don’t think people understand that she had not decided to go crazy after the writer strike and whip out this list of demands Justin would’ve only had to deal with her a couple more weeks. Then he would’ve been free to spend the next several months editing the movie. I don’t think he anticipated her totally trying to take over the edit and the marketing. It sounded like they were just trying to get through the next few weeks and be done with it. This might have played out very differently if not for the strike….who knows.