Jean de La Fontaine’s prophetic words remain galvanized throughout history: “A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.” For Justin Baldoni, these words could not be truer, as the same crisis management public relations team he hired to make his situation with Blake Lively go away now seems to be the leading reason people assume his guilt. Adding to the drama, Amber Heard — a former target of that same P.R. firm — has stepped forward to lend her support to Lively.
Amber Heard’s long-drawn-out defamation lawsuit at the hands of her ex-husband Johnny Depp is now regarded as one of the most successful exercises in misinformation. That civil case served as a testament to how absurd the theater of public opinion can become after manipulation engineered in the sinister backrooms of P.R. firms. Business Insider even reports that, at one point, the public was led to believe that Heard had lifted her courtroom testimony from the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley. No fact-check from any news publication seemed to matter, because the truth simply couldn’t compete with the dramatic, salacious rumors spread by the P.R. firm.
The Blake Lively case has now shed light on exactly how this P.R. team operates. According to The New York Times, Baldoni is not the firm’s first major client — previous clients include Johnny Depp and hip-hop’s resident sore loser, Drake. The investigative piece by Times reporter Megan Twohey is as thorough as it is shocking. It alleges that Baldoni and his producer, Jamey Heath, were sexually inappropriate with Lively on set. After Lively lodged a formal complaint, the two men agreed to certain “compromises,” such as bringing in an intimacy coordinator and pledging not to retaliate against her.
Unfortunately for Lively, the two men allegedly engaging in sexual misconduct on the set of a film about domestic violence were, unsurprisingly, not men of their word. Leading up to the film’s release, they hired The Agency Group P.R., which, through publicity expert Melissa Nathan, launched a smear campaign against Lively. They manipulated online discourse to paint her as the villain, capitalizing on a studio-led miscommunication encouraging cast members to be upbeat about the film. This was twisted to portray Lively as out of touch with the film’s message. Yet even this wasn’t enough for Baldoni. Reportedly, Baldoni wanted Lively “buried.”
Unearthed text messages reveal Nathan mentioning that she had already buried other allegations against Baldoni, so doing the same to Lively should be no problem. Disturbingly, Nathan later admitted in those same messages that the success of her smear campaign saddened her, as it underscored how easily people are willing to hate women. It seems Nathan wanted to have her misogyny cake and eat it too. Gross.
Amber Heard, well aware of Nathan’s tactics, released a statement to NBC, saying she saw the firm’s work “firsthand.” Heard’s full statement reads: “Social media is the absolute personification of the saying, ‘A lie travels halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.’ I saw it firsthand and up close. It’s as horrifying as it is destructive.” Heard, who has been largely silent since her case ended, chose this striking way to finally break her silence.
The point of It Ends With Us, as the title suggests, was that Blake Lively’s character, Lily Bloom, would finally stop the cycle of violence plaguing her and the women in her family. Off-screen, Lively seems equally determined to ensure that Baldoni’s alleged cycle also ends with her.