Perhaps not so surprising when her co-star and harasser is also the film’s director?
Oh, man, I miss SO much by not being on social media…
[/sarc]
But even I knew who she is (hey, she was in Green Lantern… wonder who Live Blakely slept with to get that plum role).
But, seriously, good for her standing up and fighting back like this.
…no, it isn’t standard. It’s still a fairly recent innovation in the film industry, and are only required if requested. If the actors agree to go ahead without one, they can, and often do.
I recently read that the leads in Anora chose not have an intimacy coordinator. Variety then had a very thorough article about whether this was necessarily a good thing.
It seems to me that the best policy would be for there to always be one, and sometimes their job is just easy if everyone involved is already cool with everything. That would also address the issue where a new starlet is “encouraged” to “freely choose” not to have one.
She is probably most well-known (career-wise) for the TV show Gossip Girl. Which is pretty ironic.
She is half of power couple Ryake, or maybe it’s Blan or Reyvely or Livnolds. Anyway, she’s not a superstar actress in her own right.
I was really puzzled when the movie came out. The reviews were pretty good and it looked like something I would put on my watch list.
Then there was a bunch of negative stuff about it and/or Lively. References to “controversial” but no clear explanation of what was “controversial”.
Now I get it. A very well orchestrated smear campaign. Although I think it hurt the movie’s box office.
The PR agent allegedly responsible for the smear campaign released a lengthy Twitter defense of herself, which basically boils down to, “We were ready to release a bunch of false accusations against Lively, but she’s just so awful on her own, we never needed to!”
Hopefully they can trace the rumors backwards to find out where they started. Even if the PR firm didn’t become fully engaged, it sounds like someone was seeding the rumor mill with the stories.
It sounds like they’ve already done that. Lively’s lawyers reportedly have a huge trove of documents from the PR firm showing the smear campaign.
It sounds like the PR firm is denying they actually started the rumors. They were just prepping the mud for slinging, not that they actually slung the mud. They seem to be alleging that the rumors fortuitously sprung up on their own and that they had nothing to do with it. But with public blog posts and social media posts, it should be possible to go back in time to see where the rumors about her being hard to work with started. Maybe they can trace it back to the first blog post or news story and then try to find out where they got the info. Of course, I’m guessing that Baldoni et al. were making subtle comments about Lively that got the rumors going in the first place. Perhaps the internet history will be able to prove that.
Note that Justin Baldoni, the director of the film and principal harasser, was dropped by his talent agency, WME on Saturday morning when the New York Times story broke. It may not be a coincidence that this is also the agency for Blake Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds.
Isn’t the standard advice of basically every PR person to their client under stress to shut the fuck up and not engage on social media? I mean, what the hell - that’s just digging a hole to stand in to make it easier for people to shit on you.
When I become a mega-billionaire and come under attack for compulsively stealing other people’s pets, I don’t think I’ll be hiring her to wrangle my PR issues.
Giving advice is easier than taking it
Just read an interesting Guardian piece on this. If even half the quotes from the publicist and crisis manager’s interchanges are true, none of her (Abel’s) ass-covering is going to stand up.
Telling to me is that Abel is no longer with the PR firm, and it’s likely the PR firm that turned over her correspondence with Nathan the crisis manager.
According to Variety, Abel got dismissed from the firm, Joneswork, in August because her boss, Steph Jones, found out that Abel planned to leave and start her own firm, taking Baldoni with her. So a proactive dismissal from Joneswork.
As part of the dismissal, Abel had to turn over her phone to Joneswork.
Lively’s lawyers subsequently served a subpoena on the firm, and that’s how they got the texts.
Jones’s lawyer says that Jones is being scapegoated for complying with a subpoena, but there no doubt are questions, such as how Lively’s lawyers decided to serve the subpoena, and when.
The article notes that Jones and Joneswork are not named n the complaint, although Abel was working there at the time of the alleged scheme to sink Lively’s reputation.
However, in a counter article in Hollywood Reporter, Abel says that the steps they were taking were in response to a smear campaign that Lively started against Baldoni, so purely defensive. Also says they didn’t actually do anything.
Abel also denied that the texts were obtained via a subpoena, with the implication that Jones is cooperating with Lively.
Abel’s lawyers say that anyone pushing a false narrative will be « sued into oblivion ».
Sit back and watch, folks. This will take a while to get sorted.
One difference between the parties is that Lively was expressing her displeasure and concern over troubling things that Baldoni actually did, while Baldoni was creating a false narrative designed to cause doubt in the public about what Lively was saying. What Baldoni was doing was a smear campaign, but I wouldn’t classify what Lively was doing that way. She was bringing his problematic behavior to light, while he was trying to besmirch her reputation to preserve his own.
This whole thing has the feeling of when a middle schooler gets in trouble for something, and when asked if they did it, says “Yes but it was so-and-so’s fault”.
Which happens a lot in middle school, of course, but one would hope that people would grow out of it.