Justin Baldoni’s lawyer has spoken out again after Blake Lively filed a lawsuit accusing the It Ends With Us director and star of sexual harassment as well as plotting a smear campaign against the actress.
Speaking to Us Weekly, lawyer Bryan Freedman said in a statement: “TAG PR operated as any other crisis management firm would when hired by a client experiencing threats by two extremely powerful people with unlimited resources.”
“The standard scenario planning TAG PR drafted proved unnecessary as audiences found Lively’s own actions, interviews and marketing during the promotional tour distasteful, and responded organically to that which the media themselves picked up on,” the lawyer continued.
He went on to claim that the leaked text messages between Baldoni and his PR team in the lawsuit have been misrepresented and taken out of context.
“It’s ironic that the New York Times, through their effort to ‘uncover’ an insidious PR effort, played directly into the hands of Lively’s own dubious PR tactics by publishing leaked personal text exchanges that lack critical context — the very same tactics she’s accusing the firm of implementing,” Freedman concluded.
Its Ends With Us stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. (Credit: It Ends With Us)
The lengthy court documents, which were filed on Friday, December 20 (US time), were first published by The New York Times. In the docs, they reference “thousands of pages of text messages and emails” that Blake Lively reportedly obtained through a subpoena.
“The subpoena disclosed and referenced in the Complaint was served on Jonesworks LLC. The internal documents referred to in the Complaint were produced subject to that subpoena. We expect that further details regarding the subpoena process will be disclosed during discovery,” Lively’s legal team told the publication.
In the alleged text messages, the film studio’s publicist wrote to a crisis management expert, “He wants to feel like she can be buried.”
The paperwork also alleges “this plan went well beyond standard crisis PR,” claiming Baldoni’s team devised a plan called ‘astroturfing’, which basically means: ‘the practice of publishing opinions or comments on the internet, in the media, etc. that appear to come from ordinary members of the public but actually come from a particular company or political group.’
The docs read: Baldoni “set the narrative for the social media campaign,” for example, by using a social media post about Hailey Bieber “that had accused another female celebrity of bullying women.”
Baldoni wrote in the text, “This is what we would need.”
Baldoni also name-dropped Lively’s pal Taylor Swift in messages to his crisis management team: “Our team can also explore planting stories about the weaponisation of feminism and how people like Taylor Swift, have been accused of utilising these tactics to ‘bully’ into getting what they want.”
It also mentioned the infamous red carpet pics that featured the whole cast including Blake Lively, except Baldoni.
“[When] nearly all cast members chose to appear in public separately from Mr. Baldoni given his on-set behaviour,” Baldoni allegedly “became concerned that the public would discover that “something is much bigger under the surface,” per the docs.
This prompted him to change his PR strategy: “After the Film’s premiere, Mr. Baldoni changed his Instagram profile, cancelled lighthearted social media posts, and instructed his team to look for survivors reactions and support — all in an effort to quickly shift his own public narrative to focus solely on survivors and domestic violence organisations.”
When the lawsuit was first announced, Freedman slammed Lively’s accusations as “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious” in a statement to Us Weekly.
He claimed Blake Lively filed the lawsuit to “fix her negative reputation” and “rehash a narrative” about the behind-the-scenes happenings of the controversial movie.
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