The Daily - The Legal Battle Riveting Hollywood

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

Warning: This episode contains descriptions of alleged sexual harassment, and a fictional portrayal of domestic violence.Over the last few weeks, the Hollywood stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni have gone to battle over exactly what happened during the making and promotion of their latest film.It’s a dispute that has pulled back the curtain on an alleged smear campaign and the new set of tools that celebrities can use to defend themselves and redefine their enemies in the court of public opinion.Megan Twohey, an investigative reporter at The New York Times, discusses the legal complaint that started it all.Guests: Megan Twohey, an investigative reporter at The New York Times.Background reading: “We can bury anyone”: Inside a Hollywood smear machine.Mr. Baldoni and his publicists have sued The New York Times for libel over its reporting about Ms. Lively’s allegations.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Ketroweth. This is The Daily. The legal battle we've been paying a close eye on, this is between former co-stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. Over the last few weeks, two Hollywood stars, Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, have gone to battle over exactly what happened during the making and promotion of their latest film. Blake Lively has filed a federal lawsuit claiming her,

it ends with us, co-star Justin Baldoni, sexually harassed her. Justin Baldoni is now suing his former co-star, Blake Lively. It's a dispute that's pulled back the curtain on an alleged smear campaign, and the new set of tools that celebrities can use to defend themselves and redefine their enemies in the court of public opinion. The tea is piping hot. I mean, there's just so much currently being said about it ends with us.

Today, my colleague Megan Toohey on the legal complaint that started it all. It's a mess, so let's get into it. It's Tuesday, January 28th. Megan, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me. So you have broken and covered some of the biggest stories of sexual harassment in Hollywood, but your latest article has generated an extraordinary amount of attention, even for you. And I have to confess to being pretty read in on this one, it has been difficult to avoid

the online conversation around it. And it all began with this story that you wrote. Tell me how you came to that story. So in December, Blake Lively, the movie star, filed a legal complaint. It was made with the California Civil Rights Agency. And it is a formal complaint against Justin Baldoni, her co-star and the director of the latest hit movie that she just made. It ends with us.

Yeah, who she says sexually harassed her. And what's particularly interesting to us was the information that forms the foundation of the filing, which are excerpts from thousands of pages of text messages and emails that Lively's team acquired through a subpoena. In them, in these documents, Valdoni and his publicists orchestrated what Lively describes as a modern-day smear campaign, what she said was a coordinated push to tank her reputation out of fear that her allegations may come to light.

And what really interested me and my colleagues Mike McIntyre and Julie Tate in this complaint and in what it purported to show is not just how to protect someone's reputation, but how to harm someone else's. — That's the alleged smear campaign. — Yes. — Okay, let's talk about the campaign as described in the filing. Where does that story start?

It starts with the filming of It Ends With Us. What is this place going to be? A flower shop. And the movie is about this young woman chasing her dream of opening a flower shop who falls in love with this seemingly perfect guy. What do you do for a living? Arrows surgeon. I'm terrible, I'm sorry. I thought you were a crypto-bro.

But as the relationship progresses, he becomes physically abusive. Please just listen to me. Please. Promise me, Lily. Stop. Stop. Please just stop. Please just stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. The film was based on a novel by Colleen Hoover, one of the most popular novelists today.

Yes, I know her. I think I've seen her books like a million times at the airport, for example. Yeah, yeah, of course. And, you know, there was actually huge anticipation for the movie rights because of how many Hoover fans there are out there. And a studio called Wayfarer eventually gained the rights. And Baldoni, who is also co-chair and co-founder of the studio, called it an act of providence for him to get to direct the film. So this is something he's really excited about. Yes. It was right up his alley.

He had gotten his start as an actor on the show Jane the Virgin, but in recent years he'd become like a very vocal critic of toxic masculinity. Are you confident enough to listen to the women in your life and actually believe them, even if what they're saying is against you. He hosted a Ted Talk. Will you actually stand up and do something so that one day we don't have to live in a world where a woman has to risk everything

and come forward to say the words, me too? He wrote multiple books on the topic. Final question. Why did you, after reading my book for the first time, look at me? We were in bed. Look at me and say, babe, you need to read your own book. And he also co-hosted a podcast called Man Enough. Because you're still doing that journey that you talk about in the book, the journey from

your head to your heart. So this movie, which is about, you know, yes, it's about domestic violence, but is also about ending the cycle of abuse and uplifting women, is a good fit for him to tell. So he signed on to direct and he casts as his co-star Blake Lively, you know, this popular actress, wife of Ryan Reynolds, friend of Taylor Swift. —Big star. —Yeah. And a lot is coming together that would seem to put this project on a path to success. But then, according to her complaint, when filming begins, a number of incidents happen that

make her uncomfortable. Like what, for example? So the complaint says that Baldoni wanted to add some sex scenes to the movie that she felt were gratuitous. She also alleges that he improvised unwanted kissing, discussed his sex life with her, and entered her trailer without permission while she was breastfeeding. And she also has made allegations against one of the film's lead producers, Jamie Heath,

who is the CEO of the studio, Wayfarer. And Lively says that Heath also entered her trailer when she was breastfeeding, watched her when she was topless and having body makeup removed despite her asking him to look away, and showed her a video of his wife naked during childbirth. And she alleges that both men also discuss pornography with her. Wow. So what does she do in response? Well, in the midst of filming, there was a writer strike, which put a pause on things. And Lively used that pause to try to fix some of the issues that she said she had experienced

on set and actually said she wouldn't come back to set unless they met certain conditions. Okay, so according to Lively's complaint, there are a number of things on set that make this situation unworkable. What are the conditions that she asks for to deal with them? So one was a full-time intimacy coordinator to be with her on the set at all times, like not just during intimate scenes. And another was no more unwanted comments or discussion about sex.

And she also asked them not to retaliate against her for raising these issues or requesting these safeguards. And Wayfair agrees to all these conditions, writing that, I'll quote here, although our perspective differs in many aspects, ensuring a safe environment for all is paramount. Now, Baldoni and Heath are now disputing her claims of misconduct and saying that they only agreed to the terms because they feared that Lively would pull out of the movie

and it would fall apart. But yeah, at the time they agreed and filming continued. Okay, so Lively gets the conditions that she asks for. How do those work out in the end? Well, you know, that's interesting. Lively says that when they return to work, Baldoni's behavior improved with these new protections in place. It kind of sounds like the situation was handled relatively well in the end.

I mean, she asks for certain things to happen, they happen, and according to her, the situation on set is better. Yeah, I mean, I think that by her account, this was like a situation of problem identified, problem solved, everybody moves on. But while she doesn't have any other allegations of misconduct, once they come back to finish making the movie, they do end up having major creative differences. What do you mean?

So Baldoni does an edit of the movie one way, but Lively did her own edit. And in the end, Sony, the distributor of the film, supports her version. And as the premiere approaches, the public starts to pick up on indications that there had been some drama behind the scenes. You know, Lively and some other cast members had unfollowed Baldoni on Instagram, fans wondered, like, why was that? Then Lively, the cast, and Hoover did not do any appearances alongside Baldoni. And it seemed increasingly apparent that something had gone wrong. Right.

I mean, in Instagram world, being unfollowed, you couldn't get a more obvious sign of a disagreement than that. Yes. And as speculation grows and people start asking more and more questions, according to the text messages, Baldoni is getting more and more worried. He's concerned that the allegations that Lively had made against him during the filming of the movie could now become public. So by the first week of August, he makes a move.

He hires a crisis PR firm. Megan, in my reporting, I'm used to people hiring crisis PR firms to deal with a corporate crisis or a political problem. In this case, I'm assuming the function is essentially the same. I mean, you're hiring a crisis PR firm to avert a reputational crisis. Right. And in this case, he hired a PR firm led by a woman named Melissa Nathan. And she's worked with a variety of high profile clients, including Johnny Depp, who was accused of physical abuse, as you may recall, by his ex-wife, Amber Heard.

And Nathan, as soon as she comes on, presents Baldoni with an initial strategic plan that included backchanneling with journalists to try to push positive messaging about him and defend against any negative stories that might arise. But the text messages included in Lively's complaint, which we reviewed, suggest that Baldoni wanted to go further. Can you just read me some of this? Because I think a lot of what we're going to be talking about here are about the internal

communications that are going on. I just think it would be useful to hear some of these messages. Sure. So, Baldoni wrote in a text message to a publicist, not in love with the document they sent, not sure I'm feeling the protection I felt on the call. And after receiving that message, the publicist texted Nathan, saying, I think you guys need to be tough and show the strength of what you guys can do in these scenarios. He wants to feel like she, meaning Lively, can be buried.

And the text message back from Nathan is, of course, but you know when we send over documents, we can't send over the work we will or could do because that could get us in a lot of trouble. We can't write, we will destroy her. And Nathan wrote, imagine if a document saying all the things that he wants ends up in the wrong hands, and added, you know we

can bury anyone. Wow, that's pretty strong. Yeah, and a few days later, Baldoni texted his PR team a social media thread that accused a female celebrity of being a bully, and this thread had something like 19 billion views. And he writes, this is what we would need. So in these texts, in the complaint, you do see a shift from just protecting Baldoni's reputation to potentially targeting Blake Lively, going after her.

Yes. And soon these text messages show Nathan presented a plan for how to do that. And it would involve hiring digital contractors to dominate social media through, quote, full social take downs. And by starting, quote, threads of theories. You know, there's also a reference to the, quote, creation of social fan engagement to go back and forth with any negative accounts, helping to change narrative and stay on track.

All that is sort of jargony, but it sounds like what's being discussed is a proposal for an all-out push on social media to take control of the public narrative here, you know, intervening in the online conversations about Lively and Baldoni and influencing it specifically to benefit Baldoni and to hurt Lively. this will be, most importantly, untraceable. We'll be right back. So, Megan, what did this plan, which was supposed to be untraceable, actually look like when it was put into action? Well, they hired a digital contractor who offers crisis management services. His name is Jed Wallace, and there's actually very little trace of him online.

But in a deleted LinkedIn profile, he described himself as a, quote, hired gun with a proprietary formula for defining artists and trends. And court records show that his clients have included Paramount Pictures and YouTube celebrity Aiden Ross. Other than that, we don't actually know that much about him. But in the documents included in Lively's complaint, there are references in emails to, quote, social manipulation and, quote, proactive fan posting. And text messages cite efforts to boost and amplify online content that was favorable to Valdoni and critical of Lively.

Okay, so this sounds in keeping with the kinds of things they had outlined in their plan to Valdoni. What does that actually involve? We don't know. We can't be sure. But last August, after the film premieres, instead of the negative press that Baldoni feared, there was a flood of negative press and comments online about Blake Lively.

And what does that criticism say? Well, the official promotion plan for the movie instructed the cast to focus more on the uplifting aspects of the movie. Hello, Blake Lively here. Colleen Hoover. And It Ends With Us is in theaters now, so grab your friends, wear your florals,

and head out to see it. And to embrace a floral theme, you know, her character owns a flower shop. I'm seeing Blake Lively in a whole new light. She is so tone-deaf, honestly. And Lively got criticized for appearing to ignore one of the movie's main subjects. She really did with all seriousness say like grab your florals, grab your besties, and sit down to enjoy this movie.

And the movie's about domestic violence. In several appearances, Lively never even made reference to domestic violence at all. You guys we talked about our movie, not at all. Thanks for joining us. In theaters August 9th. made reference to domestic violence at all. You guys, we talked about our movie, Not At All. Thanks for joining us. In theaters August 9th. She faced additional criticism when her Betty Boo's alcoholic beverage company promoted the film, given the role that alcohol can play

in abusive relationships. Like, are you promoting a film, or are you promoting yourself? Some real potential missteps here. Certainly that's how they were being publicly received. And, you know, according to Lively's legal complaint and numerous text messages, when Baldoni's team saw this,

they decided that Baldoni would make domestic violence a focus of his interviews and social media. The one thing you want people to take away from this project, what would you say? Hope. That everybody has the ability to end a cycle that they didn't ask for. We can all say it ends with us in our life. You know, clearly some of this criticism is organic, but as this backlash is gaining momentum, we see in the text that Baldoni's PR people are taking credit for the online narrative.

There's one text from a PR person that reads, we've started to see a shift on social, due largely to Jed and his team's efforts to shift the narrative towards shining a spotlight on Blake and Ryan. And according to Lively's complaint, Baldoni himself took an active role in this process. I mean, text messages show that he encouraged the PR team, sometimes flagging social media posts for amplifying. On August 15th, he actually proposes, quote, flipping the narrative on a positive story about Lively and Reynolds by, quote, using their own words against them. You know, at other times in these text messages, Baldoni appears to worry that his team is

going too far, and he seeks assurances that he won't be implicated in the backlash. For example, when he notices a tabloid article critical of Lively, he sends a worried text, quote, how can we say somehow that we are not doing any of this? It looks like we are trying to take her down. And on another occasion, he wondered whether his team was deploying fake bot accounts on social media. And Nathan writes, I can fully confirm we do not have bots. And she adds that any digital team would be too intelligent to, quote, utilize something

so obvious. Jed Wallace's operation, she wrote, quote, is doing something very specific in terms of what they do. I know Jamie and Jed connected on this. Okay, so you see Baldoni kind of vacillating, you see Nathan responding, but Megan, do we know actually whether the online backlash against Lively is the result of these quote very specific things that the team is doing?

We don't. I mean, it's difficult to know how much of the backlash was authentic and how much they might have seeded and amplified the discussion. What we do know is that in addition to the backlash against Lively, by the end of the movie's promotional run, there was also a very strong pro-Justin narrative online, which Baldoni's team was celebrating. Describe that. Well, for instance, one PR person texts Melissa Nathan, quote, the narrative online is so

freaking good and fans are still sticking up for Justin. You did such amazing work, she writes. And Nathan replies, narrative is crazy good. The majority of socials are so pro-Justin and I don't even agree with half of them. LOL. When you reached out to them, to the Baldoni team. What did they say about all this? So before the story was published, we contacted them. And we detailed each allegation, item by item, so

they could respond to each point and told them that we needed to hear back within 14 hours. Standard operating practice for stories like this, the no surprises email. LESLIE KENDRICK Right. And less than two hours later, we got a statement prepared by a lawyer that said the story was false, denying that a smear campaign existed and broadly denying the allegations and liveliest complaint. Baldoni and his team did not address specific allegations, text messages, and other documents referenced in the story.

They did not agree to interviews, nor did they provide any additional information. Then ten days after our story was published, Baldoni and his associates filed a legal complaint against the New York Times. SONIA DARAGOS Let's talk about that lawsuit. What does it say? The lawsuit takes on two issues. First is the alleged smear campaign, and second, Lively's allegations of misconduct during filming.

Baldoni's team continues to deny that a smear campaign ever took place, and they accuse Lively and the Times of cherry-picking or misrepresenting text messages to suggest that it did. What do they mean by cherry-picking? Well, the lawsuit, for example, signals out one text exchange between the PR people, which we quoted in the story, in which they appeared to take credit for a negative article about Lively that was published last summer.

Valdoni's team says other parts of the exchange indicate that it was sarcastic and showed they were not really taking credit for the article. Right. And this is something his supporters have really seized on online, right? Mm-hmm. Well, they also claim that this exchange between the PR people was Lively's only evidence of the smear campaign. But as you just heard, that wasn't the extent of it.

Her complaint in our story referenced many text messages and other documents. And we should say for listeners that before this interview, the team at The Daily got an official statement on this lawsuit from the New York Times company. It says that the Times stands by the story, saying it was meticulously and responsibly reported and that the company plans to quote, vigorously defend against the suit. So Megan, how did Baldoni's legal team respond to the second issue, Lively's allegations of sexual harassment during filming? Here, they don't deny that Lively made allegations during shooting and that Wayfair agreed to

accommodate her requests. Instead, they are disputing her characterization of events and taking aim at her credibility. So for example, they cite a text message that she sent Baldoni in which she said, I'm pumping in my trailer if you want to work on lines to suggest that this means she wouldn't have minded if he saw her breastfeeding. They don't say whether he did come to her trailer at that time or if he did, whether she continued to pump in front of him. In effect, Wayfair is saying, yes, we made accommodations to Lively on set,

but they weren't because of any underlying wrongdoing on our part. Yes. They're also saying that Lively made the allegations as a way to wrest control of the movie away from Baldoni and his production company. They say that all of this was a power grab and that her legal complaint was part of a smear campaign that she's been waging against him. —Megan, after all this, this whole discussion that we've had, I feel genuinely confused about what to think here. And I'm also keenly aware that this has been about public narratives and public perceptions

all along. So where do we stand with that tug of war over narratives now? So after Lively filed her legal complaint against Baldoni and our story came out, there was an outpouring of support for her. But since that time, Baldoni has gone on the offensive. He is being represented by a well-known Hollywood lawyer named Brian Friedman, who has been very aggressive in defending his client. He has attacked Lively and the New York Times in multiple press interviews

and has released a flood of information that he says proves that Baldoni is the real victim here. Last week, for example, a scene was leaked from filming of the movie. And it was a scene where Baldoni and Lively were dancing together and talking. And Lively said that his behavior in this moment was an example of him being inappropriate. Baldoni's team said that it shows he did nothing wrong. Yeah, I watched the video and read a lot of commentary about it. And what was striking to me was just how differently people were interpreting what it actually proved.

Yeah, and all of this, the video, the interviews, is getting nonstop coverage in the tabloids and entertainment publications, and it's being sliced and diced and spread on social media. And as I've watched all this unfold, I keep thinking of an exchange that was actually cited in Lively's legal complaint between two of Valdoni's publicists as they were working on their campaign last summer. One of the publicists wrote, quote,

"'So are we in the clear now? Did we survive? And Melissa Nathan responded, we survived. All press is so overwhelming. We've confused people. So much mixed messaging. It's actually really funny if you think about it. Why is that stuck in your mind?

What does that tell you? Well, Natalie, you are obviously not the only one confused. And it seems like, at least according to these messages that were cited in her legal complaint, the mixing of messages confusing people, that was the goal. Megan, after spending all of this time looking deep into this story and this alleged smear campaign, seeing the responses from both sides, the debates about the responses, what's your takeaway from all this? You know, when our story was published, I got a ton of response from people saying how eye-opening this was, even

among people in Hollywood who say they had never seen anything like this before. And I think the fact that this kind of thing is happening or can happen, the kind of campaign that LiveList complained and these text messages purport to show, speaks to what might be a next phase in claims of harassment or misconduct. How so? Well, over the years, we've seen what these allegations can mean for someone's reputation, for someone's career, like how utterly damaging they can be. And now we are also seeing the lengths that people will go to protect their reputations

and their livelihoods and the new tools that are available to them. Right. And so in your mind, it sounds like the very existence of a campaign, like the one alleged in the complaint that uses these new tactics and tools to prevent reputational damage, that's what's most significant here. Right. And this is really only a glimpse behind the curtain. There's a lot more for us to look into and try to figure out about exactly how these tools work and who is using them.

And you know, I think it would actually be a mistake to think that this is limited, that these kind of strategies are limited just to like Hollywood or to me too. You know, if this much effort was expended over the two stars of this movie, it makes you wonder how these strategies are being applied in other realms, by politicians, by governments, by business executives. So I think this story raises broader questions about just how much of what we consume online

is being manipulated to serve one interest or another. Megan, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. A jolt of panic hit technology stocks on Monday after the debut of a chatbot from the Chinese company DeepSeek. DeepSeek's models appear to rival those from OpenAI, Google, and Meta, and the company says it created its chatbot with a small fraction of the specialized computer chips that its American competitors use. Hardest hit in the sell-off was chipmaker Nvidia, which dropped nearly

17% and lost roughly $600 billion in market value. The assumption in the tech industry was that in order to build bigger and better AI systems, companies would have to spend billions on new data centers that relied on NVIDIA's chips, an assumption that DeepSeek has potentially upended. Today's episode was produced by Will Reed and Mujzadeh with help from Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by Mike Benoit, contains original music by Alicia Bietup, Rowan Niemesto, Diane Wong and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood.

Our theme music is by Jim Brumberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for the daily. I'm Natalie Ketroweth. See you tomorrow.