Be honest: did you start to hate Blake Lively this summer? If your answer is yes, you wouldn’t have been alone.
Because this August, in the lead-up to the release of It Ends With Us, the blockbuster film —adapted from the hit Colleen Hoover novel starring Blake Lively and directed by Justin Baldoni — it felt as though the tide was turning on Lively at breakneck speed.
It wasn’t even really clear why. There were some flimsy claims: Lively was being too flippant in her promotion of the film, which centres around domestic violence. Lively had a rift with Justin Baldoni, her director and cast mate (even though many of the other cast were still following Lively on social media and had unfollowed Justin). Lively was suddenly “badly dressed” and had cruelly influenced the clothing choices of her character, too.
Flimsy. But all of these issues combined, with enough voices repeating them, were enough to sway the narrative about her.
As one of Hollywood’s most beloved leading women, you’d think it would take more to topple Blake Lively. The belle of the Met Ball. Wife of Ryan Reynolds and, by extension, Deadpool. The face of Gossip Girl. The golden girl.
Yet, within weeks, she was a pariah. Now, it’s becoming clear how Lively thinks that happened.
This weekend, it was revealed that Lively is suing Justin Baldoni for sexual harassment on the set of It Ends With Us, as well as an alleged smear campaign designed to tarnish her reputation. Baldoni’s legal team have denied the allegations as "categorically false".
As part of the legal filing, Lively alleges that she made a list of 30 demands while filming It Ends With Us in order to put a stop to Baldoni’s “invasive, unwelcome, unprofessional and sexually inappropriate behaviour.”
These included: “No more showing nude videos or images of women to Blake [by Baldoni], no more mention of Baldoni's alleged previous 'pornography addiction,' no more discussions about sexual conquests in front of Blake and others, no further mentions of cast and crew's genitalia, no more inquiries about Blake's weight, and no further mention of Blake's dead father,” as per TMZ.
As part of her demands, Lively also requested “no more retaliatory behaviour” in response to her raising these concerns.
She believes Baldoni did not comply with this demand, and instead set up a “carefully crafted, coordinated, and resourced retaliatory scheme to silence her” during the promotional period of the film.
In order to do so, it is alleged that Baldoni recruited the PR firm The Agency Group (or TAG), led by communications and public relations strategist Melissa Nathan. The same Melissa Nathan who worked for Johnny Depp during his trial against Amber Heard.
As part of Lively’s pre-complaint discovery, her legal team managed to obtain texts between Nathan, Baldoni, Jennifer Abel (a PR for the production company, Wayfarer) and Wayfarer exec Jamey Heath, which appear to show them planning an organised takedown of Lively.
“You know we can bury anyone,” Nathan is shown to have written in one text exchange. Another text, from Abel, says: “I think we need to put the social combat plan into motion.” Melissa Nathan responds: “So do I.”
The mountain of evidence has not only called Lively’s reputational “downfall” this summer into question — that is, if it hasn’t completely unwritten it altogether — but has also lead to questions being raised about the treatment of Amber Heard back in 2022.
When the American actress was eviscerated on social media during her US defamation trial against Johnny Depp in 2022, it was generally taken as fact that Heard was “crazy”. A “liar”. The narrative was that Heard was “the real abuser” who deserved every second of bad press she was receiving.
But now that the public knows Nathan was behind Depp’s PR strategy at this time, people are looking back with suspicion.
A Tortoise Media podcast released earlier this year addressed this topic before Lively and Baldoni had even released the trailer for It Ends With Us. Entitled, “Who Trolled Amber?”, journalist and presenter Alexi Mostrous speaks to former spy Daniel Mackey about the “organised trolling campaign” aimed at Heard during her 2022 trial.
Mackey, who noticed the online onslaught at the time and found it unusual, said it was “more akin” to a disinformation campaign than standard social media sentiment. “There is no f***ing way that that was all organic, there’s no f***ing way,” he told the Tortoise Media podcast.
The sad thing is that it worked. Melissa Nathan’s protection of Depp’s reputation, however she managed it, was so successful that she was able to depart her old PR firm and start her own business this year, in June 2024. With her, she brought clients Drake, Depp, the Chainsmokers, Logan Paul and his company, PRIME.
The even sadder thing is that the public let it work. Twice. We are so able to be manipulated into hating a woman that all it takes is a coordinated PR effort for us to switch sides against a domestic abuse victim, or a long-beloved American sweetheart. Now our eyes are open, will we be harder to fool? Or will we still want any excuse to turn on a famous woman who is suddenly, in our eyes and the eyes of the ones manipulating us, no longer worthy?
