Crime Weekly - S3 Ep266: Crime Weekly News: Justin Baldoni vs. Blake Lively

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

In this episode, we delve into the escalating legal dispute between actress Blake Lively and actor-director Justin Baldoni, stemming from their collaboration on the 2024 film It Ends With Us. Try ou...r coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. WildGrain.com/CrimeWeekly - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY and get $30 off your first box plus FREE croissants! 2. NPADPodcast.com - Check out National Park After Dark, a podcast created for the morbid outdoor enthusiast, wherever you listen to podcasts! 

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey everyone, welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derek Levasseur. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. And before we get into what we're going to be covering tonight from the thumbnail, you can see there's a lot to unpack. I just wanted to mention the hat I have on right now. The Stay Safe Out There hat is back in stock on CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com. A lot of you asked about it. We finally got them in. It takes a little while to get them embroidered, but they look great.
Starting point is 00:00:36 If you haven't seen them before, they're on the site. We don't have a ton of them. So if you want one, make sure you go over and grab it. Okay. This case tonight, Justin Baldoni. Am I saying Baldoni right? Yeah. Okay.
Starting point is 00:00:44 Blake Lively. I don't know the details of it, but obviously if I, you know, I'm not living under a rock. I've definitely heard about it. I've, I've seen a different sway of emotions online. One week it's team Justin. Next week it's team Blake. It's been crazy. It's back to team Justin and it's bringing up a lot of conversations, but we were talking about what we wanted to cover this week. This is something that people seem to care about. So we wanted to talk about it as well, because although there's not a criminal element, there is possibly a civil element here that's going on where lawsuits are flying left and right. So we felt like it was in our, in our, our genre and we should give it a go. And apparently I, Stephanie's an expert on it. Cause I asked her
Starting point is 00:01:22 about it and she said, oh, I got this one. So usually I'll give you a little bit of an opening. But to be transparent, I don't think I'm qualified to. So, Stephanie, take it away. Now, listen, you know I'm not an expert on this. I would never claim to be an expert in anything. Oh, you're an expert. The pressure's on.
Starting point is 00:01:40 Because then the comments would be like, she's not an expert. She forgot to say what color Blake Lively was wearing. So no, I'm not an expert, but I do hyper fixate. And I've been following it. I don't know how it came onto my radar. But I remember the drama that started during the premiere, during the press tour of It Ends With Us, which I'm going to explain in a minute. And I kind of watched it.
Starting point is 00:02:03 And I was like, is this like a publicity thing? You know, kind of like the Don't Worry Darling with Harry Styles. Like, is it a publicity? I don't even know if that was a publicity thing, but it obviously did create publicity. And so I kind of watched it for a little bit and then everything went down, which we're going to talk about in a minute. And then I just hyper fixated and started watching a lot of videos, watching lawyers talk about it. And so I know enough to know that it's insane. And it's one of those he said, she said things. And lawsuits are flying now, accusations are flying. And I think that the greater issue here, or the more interesting point for me is how these celebrities, which I'm going to be honest with you, I'm over Hollywood. I'm completely over Hollywood. I don't care about these people
Starting point is 00:02:52 anymore. I think that the majority of people in the world right now have their own burdens and their own problems. And to hear people in Hollywood complaining constantly and talking about how hard life is. We're kind of all sick of it. But this kind of – it speaks to a deeper issue of how these celebrities use the media to paint their narratives and attack each other and kind of get their way because both of these people, Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively, can't be right. One of them is wrong and one of them is right. But we will never – I don't think we'll ever really know because they've both sort of gone and started their own smear campaigns against the other, allegedly. So it's very interesting. I'm going to kind of start from the beginning. It was early 2023 when it was announced
Starting point is 00:03:41 that Colleen Hoover's novel, It Ends With Us, was going to be adapted into a film starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. Blake Lively, I know her from Gossip Girl as Serena. I was a Blair girl. I'm just going to be honest with you, but she was Serena in Gossip Girl. Justin Baldoni was in the CW show, Jane the Virgin. And honestly, outside of that, I'm not sure what else he does, but I know he has, I think, like a production studio. It's called Wayfair, things like that. So the book and the film, it ends with us. They're about domestic violence, breaking the cycle of domestic violence and trauma,
Starting point is 00:04:13 which is undoubtedly a very serious subject. But during the press tour, people were confused when it seemed like the film's two stars, Justin and Blake, were promoting it very differently. So Baldoni took a more serious approach. He focused on the message, while Lively promoted it almost like a chick flick. She was telling women, like, grab your girlfriends, wear your florals, go see this movie. And it was kind of, you could sense that there was tension brewing, that there was like a division, right? And then rumors of tension between the two leads grew
Starting point is 00:04:45 as it reported that Blake Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, and many other cast members had unfollowed Justin Baldoni on social media. And so from that point, rumor and conjecture has plagued this film for months with no one really knowing what caused the rift between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.
Starting point is 00:05:02 But in December of 2024, we did get some answers. And mainly, these answers came from the New York Times. And the reason I'm saying that is because it's important to say where it came from at this point. So in December, December 20th, I believe, Blake Lively filed a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department against Justin Baldoni and some of his associates. And in this complaint, Baldoni, his production company, which is Wayfair Studios, as well as the CEO, Jamie Heath, its co-founder, Steve Sarowitz, and Baldoni's publicist, Jennifer Abel, along with Abel's company, RWA Communications, and crisis communication specialist, Melissa Nathan, as well as her company, the agency group, PR LLC.
Starting point is 00:05:51 The complaint was sort of all-encompassing. and all of these other people embarked on a sophisticated press and digital plan in retaliation for her voicing her concerns about alleged misconduct on set. She said that she and other cast and crew members experienced invasive, unwelcome, unprofessional, and sexually inappropriate behavior, specifically from Justin Baldoni and Jamie Heath, the CEO of Wayfair. Further than that, not only did she say that there was sexual harassment and really inappropriate things happening on set, but she said that once she made this known, they then turned around and smeared her. Not them with their own faces and their own names, but using the media, using different publications, using social media as a way to sort of bring up old videos of Blake L, and she was being very laissez-faire about the whole domestic violence message in It Ends With Us. She wasn't taking it seriously.
Starting point is 00:07:11 She was promoting her husband's movie, Deadpool and Wolverine, while she was on the press tour for It Ends With Us. She was promoting her new hair care line while she was on the press tour, she was sort of not taking this film as seriously as the people who had experienced domestic violence and had used this book and were hoping to use this film as an outlet for that, as a way to feel heard and seen and things like that. So Blake Lively has alleged that this campaign against her caused her substantial harm. Even Ryan Reynolds came out and said she was a mess, that everything that was happening on the set and in the aftermath of being on the set in the smear campaign was causing her
Starting point is 00:07:50 not only professional harm, but personal harm. She was bringing it home. It was affecting him, their children. And obviously, we don't want to hear that. But the accusations, basically, she said things like she had wanted to hire an intimacy coordinator and there wasn't one. There were certain things that Justin Baldoni and his associates were doing to her on set, unprofessional things. For instance, there was a scene of her giving birth and she wanted to wear clothes. And then I guess Justin Baldoni and I believe Heath were like,
Starting point is 00:08:25 oh, you don't wear clothes when you give birth. You should be naked from the waist down. And then they showed her an inappropriate video. So in the complaint, she says that they had a meeting about this while they were still filming. And in this meeting, there was a list of things that she was asking them to stop doing, like stop talking about your sex addiction, stop talking about pornography, stop talking about Blake Lively's dead father. And it was very kind of vague about what these things meant. But the way it was worded was to make you feel like these things were definitely happening.
Starting point is 00:09:03 Otherwise, why would she say stop doing them? Also, all reasonable requests if occurring. 100%. They seem very commonsensical that they shouldn't be happening in any work environment. So just seeing those things, it's like, well, what she's asking for seems very reasonable and shouldn't have to be asked for. Agreed. Now, all of that, once again, this is all he said, she said. Exactly. I'm just
Starting point is 00:09:26 saying on paper, like you're saying, you read that and you go, why is this woman even having to ask for these things? A hundred percent. I mean, it was very basic stuff, but then again, the context is missing. Like in what context is Justin Baldoni talking about your dead father, you know, things like that. He was also not just starring in this film, but directing it, right? So that's going to cause some issues. Now I want to talk about what the New York Times printed the day after this complaint was made. And that's really interesting, but we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Okay, so then the New york times the next day they basically printed some stuff that had come out private messages and and listen we could talk about this for two hours and derek was like oh
Starting point is 00:10:16 is it enough for crime weekly i was like dude it's enough we could talk about this for two three hours it's so complicated but basically what happened is there is a Justin Baldoni's PR person who's Jennifer Abel, and then Melissa Nathan, who's an expert in crisis PR management. They were both hired by Justin in the wake of all of this. And some people were like, why? What did he think was going to happen? What did he think he was going to have to kind of quell at this point? He sort of knew something was going to come? What did he think he was going to have to, you know, kind of quell at this point? He sort of knew something was going to come. And that made people feel like he was definitely, you know, guilty of doing something. Consciousness of guilt in the criminal sense,
Starting point is 00:10:53 where because of his behavior after the fact, it kind of suggests that he knew he was guilty of something. Then the text came out between them. Okay. The text came out between them, okay? The texts came out between them. Basically, these texts were crazy because what Blake Lively was saying was Justin Baldoni and his team, they caused a smear campaign against her that they intentionally planted stories, right? To make her look bad and to make basically social media go crazy.
Starting point is 00:11:26 And so there would be nothing but bad press about Blake Lively. And so that if she ever did come out with what she had experienced, she would be discredited. So Jennifer Abel, the publicist, says to Melissa Nathan on August 2nd, Melissa Nathan is the crisis PR person, he wants to feel like she can be buried. And this is apparently Justin wants to feel that Blake can be buried. And this is apparently Justin wants to feel that Blake can be buried. And then Melissa Nathan writes back, you know, we can bury anyone, right? And yeah. And these texts kind of go on and on. And even surprised by this, by the way, that this is going on in Hollywood, that when something I'm disgusted, some type of controversy comes out, these athletes and these, you know, these famous celebrities,
Starting point is 00:12:05 actors, actresses, whatever they are, they will hire these crisis teams. And what we're consuming, you know, whatever article or whatever tweet you're seeing, there's a really strong possibility that this was created by some type of think tank or PR team behind the scenes to disseminate this type of information. There was one thing that I didn't recall you mentioning right here. If you did, I apologize. But there was something I did see where they were deciding what things to focus on. And they mentioned forums like Reddit, like going in there, infiltrating Reddit and spreading this information in Reddit as well. So they're covering all bases here. This isn't like they're just reporting to People Magazine. They know where people are getting their stories from, where they're getting
Starting point is 00:12:48 their information from. And these teams have become experts at disseminating whatever they want and making it feel like it was organically spread. So it's really crazy and scary to think that this can happen. Yeah. I mean, it's scary, but it's also like, listen, personally, in my opinion, both of these people suck. Justin Baldoni, Blake Lively, they both suck. Honestly, I'm sick of all of it. It's it's I'm over it. Like, and do you think that the complaint she made ended up going public accidentally? No, you know, they're both guilty of it. This should be something that should be settled between them. I don't care how, sue the crap out of each other. But honestly, why should we care at this point?
Starting point is 00:13:33 Why should we care when, because things like this happen, we're never going to know the truth. We're never going to know. We can't even trust what we read. See, he said, she said, however, these texts are pretty inflammatory. And it really bothered me when, I forget which one it was, whether it was Melissa Nathan or Jennifer Abel, but after they saw the bad publicity that Blake was getting, they were like, oh damn. One of them was like, wow, it's really kind of sad how everybody will just believe this about a woman
Starting point is 00:14:03 and then turn on her, but it's what we wanted kind of thing. It was very hard to read. Now, then Justin Baldoni turns around, right? He sues the New York Times and he's saying, listen, you guys took this complaint made by Blake Lively and you basically reported it as if it was true, but it wasn't, it's not necessarily all true. And so I'm suing you guys now. And in his, and Justin Baldoni's lawyer has come out and he's been like, listen, there's gonna be more messages. And then there are more messages, right?
Starting point is 00:14:36 So one of the things Blake Lively accused Justin Baldoni of doing was coming into her trailer unannounced when she was nursing or pumping because she had just had a baby. And then he produces a text where she's saying, hey, I'm pumping in my trailer right now if you want to come in and run our lines together. And he's like, all right, I'll be up in a little bit.
Starting point is 00:14:56 So it seems like she kind of invited him in while she was pumping. I don't know. It sucks. Also, there's stuff with the intimacy coordinator. She said there wasn't know. It sucks. Also, there's stuff with the intimacy coordinator. She said there wasn't one. And then Justin Baldoni released text messages where he's like, hey, I hired the intimacy coordinator. Do you want to meet her before we get started?
Starting point is 00:15:13 And Blake was like, no, it's cool. I'll just meet her when we get started. And things like that. She doesn't seem super concerned. There's times where Blake Lively said that Justin Baldoni during certain scenes was talking to her as if she was Blake Lively, not her character. And he was talking as if he was Justin Baldoni and he was, you know, kind of improvising scenes and adding things to like kissing scenes. And yeah, some of this stuff you can write off as like, oh, this guy is just like a weird director.
Starting point is 00:15:41 He's kind of edgy. You know, if you look at somebody like who's the dude that in Hollywood, the director who everybody's like, that guy's just like a weird director. He's kind of edgy. You know, if you look at somebody like, who's the dude that, uh, that I, in Hollywood, the director who everybody's like, that guy's really creepy. Um, I don't know why I can't, I don't have a brain. You know, he, he did, uh, I think it Quentin Tarantino. Yes, exactly. I said that name first. It's kind of impressive. Quentin Tarantino. Like everybody's like, he's kind of weird. He gets really close to you when he talks. He's very intense. Some of this can be written off as kind of that. And some of it is like, yeah, this is kind of pushing the line if that's what happened.
Starting point is 00:16:16 If that's what happened, right? Right, right. That's kind of where we're at. So now Justin Baldoni is suing the New York Times. He's releasing stuff. And now people are back on his side because they're kind of seeing that it wasn't exactly portrayed in Blake Lively's complaint, the way that things went down. And it's just a mess, right? That's where I'm at. It's kind of
Starting point is 00:16:37 just a mess because once again, I don't think either of these people has the moral high ground. You know what I mean? Like I don't think that I can say one's more right than the other. I don't think anybody can at this point. It's going to turn into another Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard. It's going to turn into another media circus. It's going to turn into these people's private lives and every single person that they've communicated to and talked to, their private communications being splashed all over the
Starting point is 00:17:09 internet and all these people on the internet being able to speculate on it without any context or without actually the full story. And I don't think that that's productive. And I don't think it's a productive use of our time, even though I did become hyper fixated on it. And I watched a bunch of videos and I kind of gathered what was going on. But now at this point, I'm just kind of like, every time something new comes out and they're like, oh, new text messages, new this, new that. I'm just like, what can I even believe? I don't trust the media. I don't trust these actors. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:17:42 Yeah. Let's take our last break. I have some observations just based on what you've told me already. And then some old, you know, my own anecdotal experience, very limited in the quote unquote Hollywood space. But let's take our last break. We'll be right back. All right. So we're back in and I agree with you entirely at this point. It's almost it reminds me a lot of the Johnny Depp case, Amber Heard case, where they both have high powered attorneys, they have PR teams and, and they're both kind of putting out information that they want to quote unquote, get out there, but it's been leaked, you know, and, and, you know, there are some things with Blake where I remember seeing a video that came out shortly after all these allegations started coming out where you see this video if you haven't seen it you can go watch it it's online where blake is pregnant she's relatively uh not too far early on a little bit of a bump and she's doing this interview for a movie i apologize i don't know what it is she's with another actress and the interviewer who's super nice seems just like super you know trying to be trying to build a rapport convers You know what, you already know what video I'm talking about, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:47 Yeah. And she says, oh, you know, when are you expecting? Or she says something along those lines. No, she said, she said, congratulations on your little bump. Yep. On your little bump. And then she turns to the interviewer who is clearly not pregnant and says, well, congratulations on yours. Congratulations on your little bump. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It yeah it was and listen just me looking at it she was definitely being an asshole for it i mean she wasn't saying it like she didn't mistakenly think she was pregnant she was offended that you know she she pointed it out which clearly she was pregnant and the two actresses kind of like ignored her and had like a side conversation so listen am i surprised that these actors and actresses at this level
Starting point is 00:19:25 treat people this way behind the camera? Of course not. It's in a sense of entitlement. I'm not saying every person is like that, but it's not a shock when you hear it, right? But as far as this particular situation, who knows? I can tell you that when I was on a much smaller set, I had my own show for two years and we had a crew of about 20, 25 people. And there's a side of that, I don't know what award show it was, but a voice memo note was released where you hear Justin Baldoni saying like, they basically sent me to the basement. The premiere, yes. To the premiere. And for me, from the outside looking in without having all the context, if Justin Baldoni was really completely innocent, I think more people would be coming out to defend him.
Starting point is 00:20:25 I know that some have come out for both sides, but I feel like there would be a unified front behind him to say, listen, this guy did a great job. We all love him. He didn't make any of us uncomfortable. And they wouldn't have ostracized him at the premiere. And he would have been allowed to be with everyone else. That's his words, not ours. He was saying they basically relegated me to the basement. So yes, with his fan, with his friends and family. And, um, well, uh, some people are saying it's cause she said, I'm not comfortable. She's the bigger, she's the bigger star. And she's, and let's be honest, Ryan Reynolds
Starting point is 00:20:54 is huge right now. Right? Exactly. I mean, he's, he's, he's huge right now. And he has a, a, a ton of influence in this industry, which is, it's all about who, you know, so I'm not saying that, you know, that says he's guilty of it. So I'm not saying that, you know, that says he's guilty of it, but I would think there would be someone who would go to him or her on the side and say, listen, we get it, but he's done a great job. We're not going to do that to him. But I don't think that's how Hollywood works. I know you're right. Like I said, I've never been even close to that. Breaking homicide is nowhere near that, but. I'm not defending anybody here, man. Trust. Yeah. What I was trying to say with that, there's a lot of people on set and you barely know them. There's
Starting point is 00:21:30 makeup artists, there's craft services, there's, you know, you have the director of photography, you have all the camera operators, you have the showrunner, you have a lot of different people, PAs. They're not all going to defend you if you've done something wrong. And I know that some people have come out. I know that there was a meeting on set, as you kind of mentioned, you know, when you were talking about it earlier. So I definitely think there's some truth to both sides. If I'm just sitting here, I think there's some truth. Oh, yes, I agree. I think at this point, and there's some lies on both sides. Absolutely. Embellishments for sure. You know, if I'm going to just kind of
Starting point is 00:22:05 give Blake a little bit here to balance it out, it seems like Justin's team, based on what we have seen behind closed doors, initially did try to smear her, no doubt about it. Maybe took something where she wasn't being very kind and wasn't being very cooperative. They claim that they did not. Now they're coming back out. That that's where Justin's suing the New York Times. He's saying it was not a spirit campaign. But we have those text messages. They were saying, we can do this, but they didn't. And because certain text messages were not included
Starting point is 00:22:36 in what was leaked to the New York Times, he's saying these other text messages that were not included will give you the context because you'll hear them say things like, oh, wow, we didn't even do anything and this happened, you know, things like that. So that's what I'm saying. When you selectively decide which parts of the truth to tell and leave out other parts, that missing context can make a difference in what the part you saw means. However, I will still say that these two women who were discussing Blake, who work for Justin, I understand they work for Justin. It was disgusting for me to see the way they were almost reveling, and I'm not a Blake Lively fan at all, but the way they were almost reveling in her downfall and seeing her and, you know, having been on the receiving end of that,
Starting point is 00:23:27 and we both have, we're, you know, we're public figures. I know how harmful it is and how much it hurts, whether or not, you know, you contributed to it or not. To see them be so happy and gleeful that she was just being harassed and completely taken down online. That was kind of disturbing. Yeah, I completely agree because you know they've done it before. Who else have they done it to? Everyone. I do have a question for you because-
Starting point is 00:23:56 Oh, wait, one more question. Did you see Deadpool Wolverine? Of course I did. It's one of my favorite movies of all time. So now Justin's lawyer is making an allegation that- Nice pool. Yes. You got to go watch all the clips. It's so deep to get into, but when you- I did watch them. Yeah. Basically to summarize for you guys, there's a character called Nice Pool. He's got like a bun.
Starting point is 00:24:13 You got to go watch the lines. It's available everywhere. He's like, oh, he says- I'm going to start a feminist podcast and hide behind this movement. Because Justin Baldoni is a self-proclaimed feminist and in fact has a TED talk that I forced myself to watch where he's talking about how to be a good feminist. And, you know, so it's like, is he actually a feminist or does he claim to be so that nobody looks at him and they don't dare to say like, oh, this isn't appropriate or, oh, you're doing this, because, oh, he's a feminist. So how could he be doing this bad stuff if he believes in this and stands on this platform? Is he hiding behind the feminist movement or does he truly believe in it? Right. There's a lot of a lot of lines that this nice pool character makes.
Starting point is 00:24:56 And they didn't make the comparison to Justin Baldoni in his career and his life. And there's a moment, not to spoil it for you guys, but not a while where Ryan Reynolds character Deadpool an ice pool while Blake Lively's character, she's in the movie, shoots this guy to death. And it's like people are saying that at this point, this was like an inside thing that, you know, they'll never come out and admit that publicly. But if it's that, if it's true, that's some next level trolling. Yeah. But then you had you'd have have to ask like, how serious was it? If you're trolling like this, how traumatized was she? If you can make a big joke out of it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and, you know, Ryan is going to defend his wife. Can't blame him for that. That's what he's supposed to do. So it is what it is. We're going to see how it plays out.
Starting point is 00:25:42 We'll never fully know the truth. People are going to, they're going to fall where they fall on this one. It's unfortunate for everyone. And the biggest unfortunate element of this whole thing to me is this movie. I have not seen it, but apparently, as you were saying, it's about domestic violence. And, and there's a lot of women out there who have can empathize with these characters and have been through something similar to this. I believe, like you said, it was a book first. And the whole point of this movie has kind of been hijacked by this alternate storyline, which nobody should care about, but it's what happened. So I feel for the victims of domestic violence out there that we're really hoping that this platform and this conversation would actually enhance the amount of attention and the amount of exposure for
Starting point is 00:26:25 domestic violence victims. And yet here we are on Crime Weekly News talking about something completely opposite to that. So that's the real loss here. I mean, there's conversations to be had about all of it, right? Are we sick of Hollywood? Yes. I think I'm sick of Hollywood. Okay. I'm sick of them. Am I still going to watch the movies? Probably. Some of them. Are we understanding that things like this happen on set, sexual harassment and making people feel uncomfortable and people feeling like they don't have a voice? We do know that happens.
Starting point is 00:26:59 Of course, that's happened as old as Hollywood is. These things have happened, okay? We know that. Do people launch smear campaigns against each other in the media and on social media? Yes, we know. There's a lot of conversations to have here. But at the end of the day, I don't think that either of these people are coming from, like I said, any moral high ground.
Starting point is 00:27:24 And honestly, I just don't, I don't know who to believe or what to believe. And that is not a comfortable position to be in as a consumer of these movies, as a human being who lives on this earth and is supposed to be able to go to the news, like the New York Times of all places and trust what's printed. But we can't anymore. And I think that, you know, that's why things like YouTube and podcasts and things have really taken over because you just got regular people and you might have an agenda, you might have a bias, but you're not sitting there like with Justin Baldoni or Blake Lively in your phone telling you what to say, right?
Starting point is 00:28:01 You're not, you don't have a direct line to somebody and they're telling you what to say. And because you are friends with them or because they're powerful or because they have influence, you do it because otherwise your editor will be mad at you or otherwise your friend, Blake Lively or Ryan Reynolds will be mad at you. And you would see this in the text between Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel, where she was like, oh, I have a friend over at this publication. Oh, I'm going to have lunch with them unofficially, blah, blah, blah. They're planting these stories. That's a tale
Starting point is 00:28:25 as old as time. I just don't trust it anymore. What do you guys think? Can't blame you. Can't blame you. And I think what this really could come down to, and again, they'll never admit it, you have this power struggle where this is Justin Baldoni's movie and he's passionate about it. He's trying to take the reins. Blake Lively comes in. She's a bigger figure. Her husband's a monster in the industry and she might've tried to take over some creative control. And clearly there was a personality conflict at minimum between the two. They were not getting along and it got worse and worse when you're spending 12 hours on set together. And then whatever happened, even if it was something minor, it irritates you or makes you uncomfortable that much more because you already don't like that person.
Starting point is 00:29:05 And that's on both sides. That's it. And so, but what this really comes down to is probably ego and just trying to flex your muscles as to who is in charge of this movie. Who's going to be in the position of authority? Who's going to control what happens here? Who's going to have the last word? And who's going to control the way that the public sees this? this yeah there was two different versions of the movie almost from what i understand
Starting point is 00:29:28 you know yes right i think ryan reynolds came in and like paid to film a completely different different cut of it for a different cut a different ending yeah yeah that's it's crazy well we'll keep up a lot too though by the way i don't know no yeah yeah well we'll keep updated on it obviously it's not going to be a top priority for us. At the end of the day, it's between these two. It's not going to affect the people that this should really be about in a positive way. So we'll keep an eye on it. We wanted to cover it.
Starting point is 00:29:54 Hope they can kind of hash it out behind closed doors. But based on what we've seen so far, I wouldn't count on it. Any final words, Stephanie? No, I am interested to hear what everybody else thinks and where everybody else is landing on this. And are you as sick of Hollywood as I am? Let us know in the comments. No, absolutely. Well, we're going to have later this week, Jason Bergeson and Amy Hsu part two.
Starting point is 00:30:15 It's the second and final part of our series. The first part went extremely well. We have some photos to share that we actually took the night when we were together in Rhode Island for the Traders event. We're going to have those in the episode if you're watching on video. If you're listening on audio, it'll be out on Friday. If you're watching on YouTube, it'll be out on Sunday. Everyone stay safe out there. We'll see you later this week.
Starting point is 00:30:34 Bye.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.