Blake Lively and How Hollywood Works Behind the Scenes

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This story published today about Blake Lively and her legal battle with the actor/director of her latest movie is a real eye-opener. There is a gossip element here but it’s really about how the business of Hollywood intersects with people who have a lot of money and power, enough to shape the media landscape into whatever they want it to be.

For those of you who don’t know, Blake Lively is an actress who recently starred in a pretty successful film called It Ends With Us. In addition to being a movie star, she is married to Ryan Reynolds, an even bigger movie star who recently appeared in Deadpool & Wolverine, one of the biggest hits of the year (It came in 2nd in total box office behind Inside Out 2). She’s also apparently good friends with Taylor Swift who is currently the biggest pop star in the world. All that to say, Blake Lively is a big deal in Hollywood and arguably and even bigger deal in the celebrity media industry that is built around Hollywood. 

I haven’t seen It Ends With Us but it’s based on a novel about a woman who gets involved in an abusive relationship. The man in that film was played by Justin Baldoni who also directed the film. Apparently life was imitating art in this case as things didn’t go very well on set. Afterwards the media was full or rumors of what a difficult person Lively was to work with.

But it turns out those rumors didn’t arise on their own. Lively has now sued her co-star and his production company claiming they ran a media campaign to badmouth her, harming her reputation in order to downplay news about how she was treated on set. It seems that mean girls isn’t just a film in Hollywood, it’s a profession. 

Production on It Ends With Us was interrupted by the writer’s strike and when it resumed, Lively raised concerns with the producers about conditions on set. She said she needed certain guarantees if she was going to finish the film.

“Our client is willing to forego a more formal HR process in favor of everyone returning to work and finishing the Film as long as the set is safe moving forward,” her legal team wrote to the studio.

She detailed her complaints during a meeting with Mr. Baldoni, Mr. Heath and other producers in January, according to the legal filing. She claimed Mr. Baldoni had improvised unwanted kissing and discussed his sex life, including encounters in which he said he may not have received consent. Mr. Heath had shown her a video of his wife naked, she said, and he had watched Ms. Lively in her trailer when she was topless and having body makeup removed, despite her asking him to look away. She said that both men repeatedly entered her makeup trailer uninvited while she was undressed, including when she was breastfeeding.

The movie did get finished but in addition to the issues on set, there was also a creative struggle pitting Lively against the director, a struggle she ultimately won. She hired an editor and made her own, more upbeat, cut of the film and even added a song by her friend Taylor Swift. Sony preferred her version to the director’s and gave her a producer’s credit. 

When the film was released, Lively refused to do any promotion opposite her co-star/director. This was noteworthy and unusual and people in celebrity media were speculating what had happened to create this rift. News of the on-set behavior of Baldoni and the producer seemed likely to come out.

Here’s where things got weird. The producers hired a crisis communications team. Texts and emails which Lively got via a subpoena suggest that this team wasn’t there to simply advise Baldoni on how to talk about the issue, they were there to turn the press against Lively while he continued promoting himself as a Hollywood feminist.

In an initial planning document sent to Wayfarer and Mr. Baldoni on Aug. 2, Ms. Nathan suggested media talking points, including that Ms. Lively used an imbalance of power to take creative control of the film.

But Mr. Baldoni wanted more.

“Not in love with the document they sent,” he responded in a text exchange that included Ms. Abel and Mr. Heath. “Not sure I’m feeling the protection I felt on the call.”

Ms. Abel relayed his frustration to Ms. Nathan: “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 can be buried.”

“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,” Ms. Nathan responded, adding, “We can’t write we will destroy her.”

Moments later, she said, “Imagine if a document saying all the things that he wants ends up in the wrong hands.”

Additional texts talk about “plant[ing] pieces” about what a difficult person Lively was to work with as a way to “get ahead” of negative news about the production. The celebrity media seems to operate on the same silence for access basis as the regular media so the efforts of the crisis PR team were able to keep a lid on the stories about Baldoni’s alleged on-set behavior. It’s not clear exactly how they pulled this off, but they were clearly celebrating their success.

“He doesn’t realise how lucky he is right now,” Ms. Nathan texted Ms. Abel.

In other exchanges, Ms. Nathan claimed that she had kept allegations against him out of stories, writing in one message that major news outlets were “standing down on HR complaint.”

The PR campaign seems to have worked. LIvely’s reputation has taken a hit and Baldoni remains untouched. The movie recently moved to Netflix which prompted another round of PR. Baldoni, did an “Access Hollywood” interview in which he said, “We men have to step up and figure out how we can be better allies.”