Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Mamma Mere acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on Hello out louders. It's Monday,
Speaker 2: the twenty third of December, and I'm Holly Wainwright, I'm
Speaker 2: me of Friedman, and.
Speaker 3: I'm Jesse Stevens. And we were not meant to be
Speaker 3: here right now, but alas.
Speaker 2: We are here because we can bury anyone inside a
Speaker 2: Hollywood smear machine. That is the New York Times headline.
Speaker 2: That meant we definitely had to be here right now,
Speaker 2: Jesse Stevens, because you might remember, you definitely remember bits
Speaker 2: of it. It was one of the stories of the
Speaker 2: year that one of the most watched movies of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four, It Ends with Us, came alongside the mass
Speaker 2: cancelation of its star, Blake Lively. The prestore that accompanied
Speaker 2: that movie was notable for the fact that the star
Speaker 2: and producer Lively and its other star and director, Justin Baldoni,
Speaker 2: went to great and unusual lengths not to be seen together,
Speaker 2: to be interviewed together, to show any of the usual
Speaker 2: camaraderie required of co creators of a big film. Lively
Speaker 2: the rumors went wanted to promote the movie as if
Speaker 2: it were a flowery rom com. Baldoni supposedly loudly insisted
Speaker 2: that he wanted its serious subject matter coercive control and
Speaker 2: domestic violence, to be front and center. Lively was criticized
Speaker 2: for trivializing a serious topic, for being a tone death
Speaker 2: self promoter, for launching a haircare brand. The backlash was huge,
Speaker 2: and then yesterday The New York Times reported that Lively
Speaker 2: is taking legal action against Baldoni, accusing him of sexual
Speaker 2: harassment and an effort to destroy her reputation. It's a
Speaker 2: story that has massive implications for I'd say almost every
Speaker 2: celebrity story you see on the internet. Mia, what did
Speaker 2: the story the one with the we can bury anyone
Speaker 2: headline allege?
Speaker 4: I think Jesse's going to take us through some of
Speaker 4: the allegations in more detail, but overall, it alleged serious
Speaker 4: misconduct on the set. Now, what's important to understand is
Speaker 4: that Justin was not only the director and the producer
Speaker 4: and the co star. He also was a co owner
Speaker 4: of the studio that was making the film. So even
Speaker 4: though Blake Lively was more famous, he had huge power
Speaker 4: in the context of making this film, so it alleged
Speaker 4: sexual harassment, and then also it detailed that when Blake
Speaker 4: Lively complained about it and insisted on a meeting with
Speaker 4: all the stakeholders before she returned to filming in January
Speaker 4: this year, after the writers' strike, Justin Baldoni hired a
Speaker 4: crisis pr to smear her, which we're also going to
Speaker 4: get into in a moment, but let's just rewind to
Speaker 4: August to remind ourselves what this movie was about and
Speaker 4: why there was so much controversy when it was released,
Speaker 4: because it was only released a few months ago, and
Speaker 4: it's about to come on streaming, or I think it's
Speaker 4: just come on to streaming. The movie is based on
Speaker 4: the Colleen Hoover book that was also called It Ends
Speaker 4: with Us, and it tells the story of a florist
Speaker 4: called Lily Bloom played by Lively, who navigates the romance
Speaker 4: with a neurosurgeon called Ryle Kincaid that becomes abusive.
Speaker 1: That's the essence of the film.
Speaker 4: The three of us went to see it, it was
Speaker 4: already completely swamped in controversy. I really liked the film.
Speaker 4: I thought Blake Lively was fantastic. Yeah, I thought it
Speaker 4: was not the best film in the world, but I
Speaker 4: thought it was really good. And I was surprised at
Speaker 4: the controversy that had completely engulfed this film. It seemed
Speaker 4: really out of whack. So what was the controversy. Well,
Speaker 4: there's a few different elements to it, but it was
Speaker 4: basically all about Blake Lively being inappropriate during the promotional
Speaker 4: part of the tour, So it wasn't about the actual
Speaker 4: movie itself, it was about how it was promoted. There
Speaker 4: was an interview where she encouraged fans to grab your friends,
Speaker 4: wear your florals, and head out to see it, which
Speaker 4: kind of suggested that it was a lighthearted viewing experience.
Speaker 4: There was no trigger warning at the beginning of it,
Speaker 4: so there was a whole big debate about trigger warnings,
Speaker 4: and the whole marketing campaign was criticized as tone deaf
Speaker 4: given how serious the themes were in the movie about
Speaker 4: domestic abuse, and that all landed on Blake Lively. Now,
Speaker 4: there were some things she did during the tour that
Speaker 4: particularly made her a target of criticism, like she was
Speaker 4: launching a hair care line at the time. She also
Speaker 4: promoted her beverage brand, which was called Betty booze, and
Speaker 4: many people said that alcohol is often connected with domestic violence,
Speaker 4: so that's insensitive, and so it was seen that she
Speaker 4: was just not taking it seriously, which led to this
Speaker 4: big backlash against her. And you'd have to say one
Speaker 4: of the worst cancelations that we've seen in a long
Speaker 4: time for reasons that it seemed really spurious.
Speaker 3: Yes, I agree, because back at the time we talked
Speaker 3: about it, and it felt as though the facts we
Speaker 3: had in front of us were not proportionate to the
Speaker 3: avalanche of hate that Blake Lively was getting, particularly on TikTok.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's because that's where I leave most of the time,
Speaker 3: and we were getting these leaks. So the leaks that
Speaker 3: we were getting were that there was something that said
Speaker 3: justin Baldoni lingered too long on a kiss, He asked
Speaker 3: how much she weighed because he had a former back
Speaker 3: injury and was worried about picking her up like weird,
Speaker 3: weird stuff.
Speaker 4: None of those took hold, so there were a few
Speaker 4: rumors of was it uncomfortable on set. The other thing
Speaker 4: that really came out was Blake had taken over and
Speaker 4: she'd insisted on doing her own edit that somehow Ryan
Speaker 4: Reynolds got involved and was rewriting a few scenes.
Speaker 1: So the image that came across through the press tour
Speaker 1: was that she was.
Speaker 4: Not taking it seriously, was dominating an a diva on set,
Speaker 4: and that he was a victim of all this. Because,
Speaker 4: in case you're not familiar with Justin Baldoni, his most
Speaker 4: famous role as an actor was in Jane the Virgin,
Speaker 4: and he's really fushioned himself over the last few years
Speaker 4: as a feminist and as he has a podcast called
Speaker 4: Man Enough where he questions toxic masculinity.
Speaker 2: He had a viral ted talk about it like he's
Speaker 2: very much he's that.
Speaker 1: Guy, a champion of women. That was his vibe.
Speaker 2: And among all these rumors, what was very clear the
Speaker 2: whole like smoke fire thing, is that they had definitely
Speaker 2: fallen out, Like there was no question about that. You know,
Speaker 2: the other cast members had stopped following him on Instagram
Speaker 2: and seemed to very much be siding with her. As
Speaker 2: I said at the beginning, they weren't photographed together, they
Speaker 2: didn't do any promo. It was kind of like jeweling
Speaker 2: press tours, which is very unusual.
Speaker 3: And Baldoni at the time he spoke to Today and
Speaker 3: of addressing some of the creative differences, and he said,
Speaker 3: I'm a best idea wins person and I always have
Speaker 3: been to a fault, sometimes to a point where at
Speaker 3: times I think I've had people wonder if I know
Speaker 3: what I'm doing or if I have a point of view,
Speaker 3: because I'm so willing to have my vision changed. I
Speaker 3: don't believe that inspiration or creativity comes through one person.
Speaker 3: On the night of the premiere, he was saying, this
Speaker 3: isn't about me, It's a night for Blake, It's for Colleen.
Speaker 3: I'm so grateful we're here, and again it was clear
Speaker 3: that neither of those women were speaking to him.
Speaker 2: What happened on the weekend is that Blake Lively has
Speaker 2: filed a legal complaint that presents her side of the
Speaker 2: story to all of the things that we were just discussing,
Speaker 2: and Jesse's going to tell us about them in a minute,
Speaker 2: but first short break.
Speaker 3: So the allegations of misconduct on set are pretty damning
Speaker 3: in terms of physical boundaries and relations. There are allegations
Speaker 3: that he improvised unwanted kissing scenes. He would enter this
Speaker 3: is Baldoni would enter her makeup trailer uninvited, while she
Speaker 3: was undressed, including while she was breastfeeding. In terms of
Speaker 3: sexual harassment, Baldoni and Jamie Heath, he was a producer
Speaker 3: and co owner. There are allegations that they would describe
Speaker 3: their genitalia on set. Baldoni would frequently refer to his
Speaker 3: past porn addiction and describe previous sexual encounters where he
Speaker 3: said he may or may not have received consent. Now
Speaker 3: we know that Lively made a series of requests. Part
Speaker 3: way through filming. They actually had this all hands meeting
Speaker 3: which included her husband, Ryan Reynolds, and it was held
Speaker 3: to address Baldoni and Jamie Heath's alleged inappropriate conduct.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, this was interesting because this was like she
Speaker 4: had Ryan there as her support person, and it was
Speaker 4: after the Writer's strike, so they'd only been filming for
Speaker 4: six weeks. Then that was the writer's strike and she
Speaker 4: had this meeting and she said, I'm not coming back
Speaker 4: unless we have this meeting. She included Sony who's the distributor,
Speaker 4: and all these different people, So there are a lot
Speaker 4: of people at that meeting, which means that there will
Speaker 4: be a lot of you know, and none of this
Speaker 4: was disputed at the time.
Speaker 3: So there was a list of thirty things. They're quite
Speaker 3: revealing some of Lively's requests, and these were, as you say,
Speaker 3: they were confirmed because it's a document. Her requests were
Speaker 3: that Baldoni would stop asking her about religious beliefs, stop
Speaker 3: asking her trainer about her weight she was four months
Speaker 3: postpartum with her fourth baby, and stop claiming to be
Speaker 3: able to speak to her dead father. There are allegations
Speaker 3: that Baldoni improvised while on set, so in one scene,
Speaker 3: they weren't miked up. It was just to be filmed.
Speaker 3: It was just a visual scene, and Lively claims that
Speaker 3: as himself, Baldoni leaned in and slowly dragged his lips
Speaker 3: from her ear to her neck and said, it smells
Speaker 3: so good. It says that when Lively objected to his actions,
Speaker 3: Baldoni retorted, I'm not even attracted to you. Baldoni added,
Speaker 3: this is an allegation improvised sexual content and nude scenes,
Speaker 3: and he fought to have a scene where the characters
Speaker 3: climaxed at the same time on their wedding night, and
Speaker 3: told Lively that he and his partner always did, and
Speaker 3: allegedly pressed her on whether that was the case with
Speaker 3: her husband. And she says she was very uncomfortable by
Speaker 3: that conversation. There's an allegation about the childbirth scene, which
Speaker 3: is particularly unsettling. It wasn't agreed that she would be
Speaker 3: naked for it, but then when she got on set,
Speaker 3: she says that he insisted she be naked. They compromised
Speaker 3: that she would be naked from the waist down, but
Speaker 3: the set wasn't closed and in the end his friend
Speaker 3: came in to play the role of the obgyn.
Speaker 4: I think this is possibly the most chilling thing because
Speaker 4: what's so illuminating about reading will link to it if
Speaker 4: anybody wants to look at it, which I think you should.
Speaker 4: But you learn a lot about Hollywood and how sex
Speaker 4: scenes work right, and there are things like nudity writers
Speaker 4: where everybody agrees what the parameters before.
Speaker 1: You go into a scene.
Speaker 4: Things like closed sets when there's nudity, so only essential
Speaker 4: people are there, Monitors are turned off so other people
Speaker 4: can't look from other rooms and even film you.
Speaker 1: So she was in stirrups.
Speaker 4: She had a little bit of fabric just literally covering
Speaker 4: her and the role of the gynecologist. They were like
Speaker 4: between her legs and also another owner of his studio
Speaker 4: Wayfair had just flown in to visit the set on
Speaker 4: that day for the first time, like it is so
Speaker 4: gross and creepy.
Speaker 2: It also is clearly from this very long list of
Speaker 2: requests clear that this set was a shit show, right
Speaker 2: because one of them is also stop having hours long
Speaker 2: meetings where Baldoni cries and no more pressing from Baldly
Speaker 2: to sage any of Blake Live's employees, like this is
Speaker 2: batshit what's going on on that set, And it seems
Speaker 2: that she's very much trying to say, let's get back
Speaker 2: to a professional set.
Speaker 3: And they're at claims as well that when you know
Speaker 3: there were certain moments where Lively was made to feel uncomfortable,
Speaker 3: other women from the set came up and said, I've
Speaker 3: also had that experience. So the allegations are that it
Speaker 3: was not just her, she was trying to protect the
Speaker 3: whole set. The last thing I'll say, and I.
Speaker 1: Could go on and on about what's in this.
Speaker 3: Complaint, but the last thing is she alleges that there
Speaker 3: was a clear marketing plan that was distributed to the
Speaker 3: cast and everyone involved in marketing it about how to
Speaker 3: promote the film. This was from Sony and they said
Speaker 3: they wanted to focus on hope and resilience and not
Speaker 3: position this as a domestic violence film. They say that
Speaker 3: Baldoni went against this, and that's massive because at the
Speaker 3: time everyone was going, why is she not acknowledged that
Speaker 3: this is a film about domestic violence. Baldoni was over
Speaker 3: here with a link in his Instagram bio to help victims.
Speaker 3: Everything he said in his messaging was acknowledging victims, and
Speaker 3: this made Lively look really bad.
Speaker 2: Well, as it turns out, or at least what's alleged
Speaker 2: here is that that pivot Jesse was a very deliberate
Speaker 2: one to smear Blake Lively because Baldoni and his team
Speaker 2: knew what was coming. So to the smear campaign and
Speaker 2: why I say that this is a story that's not
Speaker 2: just about Blake Lively and just In Baldoni, but gives
Speaker 2: an insight into what is really behind a lot of
Speaker 2: what we believe right on social media. So all those
Speaker 2: tiktoks and stories that we talked about at the beginning
Speaker 2: that were being shared and reshared as facts that Lively
Speaker 2: was a mean girl, that Lively tried to hijack the movie,
Speaker 2: that Lively just wanted to promote a haircare brand. What's
Speaker 2: alleged in this document is there was nothing organic about
Speaker 2: those stories, and that the PR firm hired by when
Speaker 2: he realized that Reynolds had blocked him on Instagram, Baldonian,
Speaker 2: his producing partner, hired this firm who were expert in
Speaker 2: the dark arts of smearing, starting rumors and fanning the
Speaker 2: flames of negativity. Some of the tactics that are alleged
Speaker 2: to have happened are that the PR team would boost
Speaker 2: negative stories about Lively, branding her as difficult and tone deaf.
Speaker 2: That contractors were allegedly hired to dominate social media with
Speaker 2: untraceable tactics like social manipulation and proactive fan posting. A
Speaker 2: hired gun helped amplify negative narratives online, including on platforms
Speaker 2: like TikTok and Reddit, and basically all these threads of
Speaker 2: theories started being sown and then amplified. Now it's actually
Speaker 2: impossible even by the investigative journalists at the New York
Speaker 2: Times and actually by the legal team, to be able
Speaker 2: to absolutely identify exactly what the amplification did. As we know,
Speaker 2: the Internet is sprawling and enormous. But the negative stories
Speaker 2: that were planted, were planted very deliberately and then encouraged.
Speaker 2: So this tells you everything about how we the public
Speaker 2: were manipulated in this story.
Speaker 3: In August, there were two things we talked about. The
Speaker 3: first was something that we've referred to as the dig,
Speaker 3: which is what happens when someone is in the process
Speaker 3: of cancelation, and we were saying that it's again back
Speaker 3: to it being disproportionate. Is that people started yelling about
Speaker 3: her plantation wedding, about how Reynolds cheated on Scarlet your
Speaker 3: Hansen with Lively, how she's always been rude. Everyone on
Speaker 3: Gossip Girl hated her. There were weird videos of people
Speaker 3: gifting her a bracelet on a red carpet and she
Speaker 3: would not accept it, or something like.
Speaker 4: The one that got the most traction was and I
Speaker 4: remember thinking at the time, this is weird. Without wanting to,
Speaker 4: we definitely had our doubts and we spoke about this
Speaker 4: on the show, as did others. That interview with a
Speaker 4: Swedish journal last entertainment journalist called Christie Flaher which came
Speaker 4: out where it showed her interviewing Blake Lively for a
Speaker 4: different movie. I think back in twenty fifteen, and it
Speaker 4: showed Blake being a little bit rude, and for some
Speaker 4: reason she posted that with the headline the interview that
Speaker 4: made me want to quit my job. That was in
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen. That interview happened, and yet it came out.
Speaker 4: Now why did it come out? Well, you could say
Speaker 4: that organically that journalist was just trying to ride the
Speaker 4: wave of hate against Blake Lively. But what was revealed
Speaker 4: in this was that this journalist had worked with the
Speaker 4: PR company before, because they'd also represented Johnny Depp in
Speaker 4: his trial against Amber Heard. And we know that some
Speaker 4: really dodgy things happened then, in terms of how Amber
Speaker 4: Heard was trolled and the volume of internet hate towards her,
Speaker 4: so much of which was seen to be manufactured. So again,
Speaker 4: it wasn't organic. And there's a word called ASTROI which
Speaker 4: I learned, which is basically means you think something is
Speaker 4: organic it looks like natural grass, but when you look.
Speaker 1: Closer you see that it's artificial.
Speaker 4: And what that means is that these things are planted
Speaker 4: and then amplified.
Speaker 1: Either by bots or by these agencies. That's what they do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So in terms of being planted, I think That's
Speaker 3: an important point because in the investigation it sort of
Speaker 3: said this isn't bots. I always imagined it was bots.
Speaker 3: But at the time, I was posting on TikTok about
Speaker 3: the Blake Lively thing, and I was noticing that every
Speaker 3: time I posted something that was defensive, it got no reach.
Speaker 3: So I remember talking about this on the show, only
Speaker 3: a few hundred views, and then I posted one thing
Speaker 3: that was cheeky that had like a something about Blake
Speaker 3: Lively's cancelation. It actually went against it, but all the
Speaker 3: metadata would have suggested that I was about to go
Speaker 3: her blew up, and it seemed that if you were
Speaker 3: being critical of Blake Lively, your content was on steroids.
Speaker 3: As someone who consumes a lot of social media content,
Speaker 3: it is not often that you get a unanimous view
Speaker 3: on anything, but you went onto these media platforms and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, it was like wall to wall.
Speaker 3: Everyone hated her. And let's be clear, if you saw
Speaker 3: someone pop up and have a go at Blake Lively,
Speaker 3: that was probably legitimate. But where they were getting the information,
Speaker 3: how their brain had been marinating in content kind of
Speaker 3: contributed to that.
Speaker 4: Well. It creates a lens, and I should say, Christy
Speaker 4: Flower has come out and said she has nothing to
Speaker 4: do with the alleged smear campaign, But she was exactly
Speaker 4: what you were talking about, Jesse. She was being opportunistic. Yes,
Speaker 4: so we live in the attention economy and if you
Speaker 4: wanted to go viral, everybody looks at the numbers who
Speaker 4: makes content and in the media, so you knew that
Speaker 4: if you did something that was against Lively, it would
Speaker 4: go off. So it's important to understand how something can
Speaker 4: be both organic and manipulated because.
Speaker 1: People will say, but hang on Blake Lively.
Speaker 4: They didn't make her try and promote her hair care line,
Speaker 4: they didn't make her reference alcohol, they didn't make her
Speaker 4: wear florals.
Speaker 1: But the thing is that it's the volume, so you can.
Speaker 4: Start to believe, oh, everybody hates Blake Lively, and when
Speaker 4: you hear enough of that, it does impact on how
Speaker 4: you view someone.
Speaker 3: And there was also I remember looking at interviews where
Speaker 3: she seemed really insensitive about the subject matter of the film,
Speaker 3: but it was so purposefully cut and if you watch
Speaker 3: the whole interview, that's not how it seemed. And then
Speaker 3: you were getting Justin Baldoni with these incredible cuts of
Speaker 3: him saying something really eloquent about domestic violence. So it
Speaker 3: did seem that, yeah, I suppose that that is allegedly
Speaker 3: part of the smearing.
Speaker 2: This is where the we can bury anyone headline comes
Speaker 2: because in the New York Times investigation, there are literal
Speaker 2: screenshots of text messages between Baldoni's people and the PR
Speaker 2: people saying exactly that that they can bury anybody with
Speaker 2: enough ammunition, and that they needed to do it to
Speaker 2: get Baldoni's story across. We're going to be back in
Speaker 2: a minute, but first a little break.
Speaker 4: I want to talk about the effect of how cancelation
Speaker 4: works and how it can be manipulated, because, having experienced
Speaker 4: it a number of times organically, certainly not to my knowledge,
Speaker 4: with a calculated or paid smear campaign by a publicist,
Speaker 4: things gain traction, and then everybody wants to be part
Speaker 4: of a pylon, right, That's why it's called a dog
Speaker 4: pile or a pylon, and there becomes status in reinforcing
Speaker 4: the accepted narrative, which in this case was that Justin
Speaker 4: Baldoni was a hero and cared about domestic violence victims,
Speaker 4: and Blake Lively was an entitled diva who cared about
Speaker 4: nothing other than her hair and looking pretty.
Speaker 2: And because of that that sort of narrative about who
Speaker 2: Blake Lively was, she's a prime candidate for this, right,
Speaker 2: because the thing that's very depressing about this story is
Speaker 2: that we're all being manipulated all the time right on
Speaker 2: social media, and we think we're having our own thoughts
Speaker 2: about things and going, yes, I see, But what this
Speaker 2: shows very clearly is that we're being As Lively said
Speaker 2: in her statement about it, she said she wanted to
Speaker 2: show behind the curtain of how these things start. But
Speaker 2: one of the things that we've got to ask ourselves
Speaker 2: is why are we so invested in thinking awful things
Speaker 2: about women? And women like Lively? You know she in particular,
Speaker 2: I guess she is blonde and beautiful, married to a
Speaker 2: rich man. She is a striver we've talked about on
Speaker 2: this show lots of times, is the worst thing you
Speaker 2: can be. She has her own businesses, She tries really
Speaker 2: heart like, she promoted the shit out of that movie,
Speaker 2: and it's almost like the world was dying to believe
Speaker 2: this about her, which is one of the things I
Speaker 2: find deeply depressing about it.
Speaker 3: And that's what the crisis pr person behind all of
Speaker 3: this actually said in one of them. And the reason
Speaker 3: we have these texts, I should say, is because they
Speaker 3: were subpoened. So it's the genius of Blake Lively, and
Speaker 3: all of this is to go, I'm going to get
Speaker 3: all the evidence I need to show what really happened,
Speaker 3: which is that you have Melissa Nathan saying basically, I
Speaker 3: can't believe how quickly people just want to hate a woman.
Speaker 3: I'm seeing all this positive justin Baldoni stuff, and I
Speaker 3: don't even agree with half of it. So it was
Speaker 3: like they lit the fire and then when it blew up,
Speaker 3: they didn't need to do a thing, because people want
Speaker 3: to hate a woman. And the irony of this entire
Speaker 3: story is that it's an allegory for domestic violence in
Speaker 3: the context of a film about domestic violence, which is
Speaker 3: that people were so ready to jump on a woman
Speaker 3: who maybe didn't use the right words, or was profiting
Speaker 3: or something. And except that this man was a feminist ally,
Speaker 3: it's almost Shakespearean in that in order to defend his
Speaker 3: image as a feminist ally he had to bury a
Speaker 3: female co star, and we were so happy to follow
Speaker 3: him there, and to go not only follow him there,
Speaker 3: like we didn't look at all the facts, which is
Speaker 3: that none of the cast were on speaking terms with
Speaker 3: him anymore. Colleen who all on her side, yes, and
Speaker 3: we were so happy to follow him there. And I
Speaker 3: think that there's a difference between doing something and expressing
Speaker 3: the doing of something. This speaks to something that feels
Speaker 3: very very true, which is that there are people who
Speaker 3: use the right word to have the right link in
Speaker 3: their Instagram bio. But that is not the same as
Speaker 3: being the thing you're purporting to being, which is that
Speaker 3: he's saying he supports women and that this story was
Speaker 3: really important to him. It's just an incredible, like look
Speaker 3: at potential if it's true hypocrisy.
Speaker 2: I think this story has many places to go. And
Speaker 2: today one of the PR wizards involved in this, Jennifer Abel,
Speaker 2: has some messages that are allegedly from her, who's saying
Speaker 2: that those messages that we were just talking about, Jesse
Speaker 2: were cherry picked and that you didn't see others. And
Speaker 2: I'm sure that's true. So there's are many more places
Speaker 2: to go. But your point, Jesse is so spot on,
Speaker 2: because I remember at the time a lot of people
Speaker 2: have a lot of love for Baldoni and he was
Speaker 2: seen to be doing all the right things. But I'll
Speaker 2: just listened to the interview with him that he did
Speaker 2: on how to Fail with Elizabeth Day and the guy Worry.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to say it is insufferable, like he
Speaker 2: is insufferable. He doesn't obviously go to Lively in that interview,
Speaker 2: and it happened before the legal letter, but he described
Speaker 2: the filming as devastatingly difficult for a number of reasons.
Speaker 2: He made very clear on the record that he thought
Speaker 2: there should have been a trigger warning, like it was
Speaker 2: very clear. But the whole feeling about it, Elizabeth Day
Speaker 2: barely gets a word in, is that he was lecturing
Speaker 2: about victimhood. And we are always saying that we want
Speaker 2: men to talk about domestic violence, and we do, but
Speaker 2: we want men to talk to men about domestic violence.
Speaker 2: We don't want them to lecture women about it. And
Speaker 2: I know people have problems with the movie, and people
Speaker 2: have problems with the source material of the book, But
Speaker 2: this movie was aimed at women. The book was aimed
Speaker 2: at women, right. It's the way that they chose to
Speaker 2: promote it. That Baldoni then flipped in order to virtue
Speaker 2: signal because he knew basically that he was going to
Speaker 2: be taken down. What's also interested in all this is
Speaker 2: that Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively and the power that
Speaker 2: they wield in Hollywood is probably always going to come
Speaker 2: for him, right, So he knew that was coming, so
Speaker 2: he wanted to position himself as the perfect allocate ally
Speaker 2: and advocate, and he's there lecturing women about victimhood and violence.
Speaker 2: That's not what we want from the guys. I mean,
Speaker 2: I can't speak for all women.
Speaker 4: But can we talk about timing for a second, because
Speaker 4: it's pretty sobering to go online and look at some
Speaker 4: of the reactions to this where people are just they
Speaker 4: want to twist it and still make it about Blake
Speaker 4: and they're not interested in facts or perspectives. Why now,
Speaker 4: Why now it's pre Christmas? Some people have said, well,
Speaker 4: it's just come out on Netflix. It's a calculated move.
Speaker 4: She wants to just try and salvage the damage to
Speaker 4: her reputation. But she didn't say anything back then like
Speaker 4: this is everyone had gotten about it.
Speaker 1: Essentially, she'd come back.
Speaker 3: Why now it would have been totally lost. If she
Speaker 3: said something back then, she would have sounded And this
Speaker 3: is also such a great example of gas lighting. She
Speaker 3: would have been told she was crazy. If she said
Speaker 3: at the time that there is a manufactured effort to
Speaker 3: bury me, people would have gone, you are grasping, how embarrassing, blah.
Speaker 4: Blah blah, and that she was making it all about
Speaker 4: her instead of centering the centering victims.
Speaker 3: It's about to come out on Netflix. I'm not sure
Speaker 3: if that's just in the US or if that's here too.
Speaker 3: And just in the last week I started seeing stories
Speaker 3: about Blake Lively pop up again. I saw a story
Speaker 3: about something Ryan Reynolds had said about how he and
Speaker 3: Blake grew up working class, and then people were going
Speaker 3: into Blake Lively's childhood and going, that's not working class,
Speaker 3: how embarrassing.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, were they anticipating another wave? That's a question. And
Speaker 3: the other reason why I think it's is because of
Speaker 3: how long this takes. In order to do this properly,
Speaker 3: in order to get lawyers do the research subpoena, those
Speaker 3: text messages prove it they needed to buide their time.
Speaker 3: And it's important to remember Blake Lively is worth about
Speaker 3: thirty million dollars. She's rich, but she's not like the
Speaker 3: richest person in Hollywood Ryan Reynolds is worth more than
Speaker 3: three hundred million because he hasn't had these business ventures.
Speaker 2: Right and also intensely well connected.
Speaker 3: Yes, so I think it took because you can look
Speaker 3: at this case and go, what does Blake Lively want?
Speaker 3: This isn't going to be about damages. This isn't about
Speaker 3: sending Justin Baldoni to jail, like, nothing about that.
Speaker 1: Not criminal.
Speaker 3: She wants to correct the record. And in order you
Speaker 3: need to have power, and you need to have the
Speaker 3: financial means, and she does. And I think that's why
Speaker 3: she's doing it because imagine how many actresses have been
Speaker 3: buried and have never been able to tell their story.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the.
Speaker 4: Rule of cancelation, isn't it. You can't defend yourself. Well
Speaker 4: it's happening, otherwise it makes it worse. But the other
Speaker 4: thing to note is that there's a civil complaint. But
Speaker 4: then there's also the New York Times investigation. The lead
Speaker 4: journalist on this was the same journalists that exposed Harvey Weinstein,
Speaker 4: Megan Towey. And they don't just publish what someone else
Speaker 4: wants them to publish. They go and corroborate everything. They
Speaker 4: do their own extensive reporting out making sure that all
Speaker 4: the sources can be confirmed. So in many ways, the
Speaker 4: timing was more about what The New York Times was
Speaker 4: going to do. But the other thing to remember, when
Speaker 4: we're talking about power and money, the guy who is
Speaker 4: the financial backer of Wayfarer, which is the studio that
Speaker 4: Jamie Heath and Justin Baldonia partners in, is like a billionaire.
Speaker 4: So he's also got unlimited funds. He has a lot
Speaker 4: more money than Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively put together.
Speaker 4: So it's not a case of Blake Lively punching down.
Speaker 4: The complexity of power dynamics on both the set and
Speaker 4: in Hollywood aren't just about who's the most famous in
Speaker 4: the Daily Mail.
Speaker 2: You know what though, and this is a more pragmatic
Speaker 2: reason too, is they let the movie do its thing.
Speaker 2: That movie was really successful, Yeah, you know, so she
Speaker 2: would have been contractually obliged to promote that movie. Also,
Speaker 2: she clearly wanted to, and she didn't want to promote
Speaker 2: it with him, which is again very unusual. But she
Speaker 2: promoted the shit out of that movie while all this
Speaker 2: was going on. It was very successful. It's had its
Speaker 2: period of box office time and now you can sit
Speaker 2: there and reflect on that that was all happening in
Speaker 2: real time to her. It does seem extraordinary to me,
Speaker 2: though I know that Baldoni has very powerful backer their
Speaker 2: me of course, but that he ever thought that they
Speaker 2: weren't going to do this Because Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively
Speaker 2: Reynolds is one of the most powerful men in Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Deadpool was the second biggest movie of the year. He
Speaker 2: makes a lot of people a lot of money. They
Speaker 2: are intensely powerful. He would be furious. Imagine sitting in
Speaker 2: that meeting that he sat in with his wife and
Speaker 2: all those people and literally listening to that list being
Speaker 2: read out about them walking in on her when she's
Speaker 2: half naked and breastfeeding in her trailer. Revenge is a
Speaker 2: dish best served cold, right. Those guys have gone and
Speaker 2: got their ducks in a row in a very professional,
Speaker 2: very organized manner, and now they're coming for them. And
Speaker 2: fair enough, if indeed everything that's in that legal letter
Speaker 2: is true, absolutely fair enough.
Speaker 4: So what are our takeaways before we wrap up and
Speaker 4: actually go on holidays.
Speaker 3: I think the reason why people are so fascinated by
Speaker 3: this is because it's an exercise in perspective, but also
Speaker 3: we were used as audiences and consumers of media. We
Speaker 3: were played. And the other thing is that I am
Speaker 3: now looking at other examples of cancelation. I'm sorry, but well,
Speaker 3: actually there are some examples of men. But what's confusing
Speaker 3: about them are I don't know who benefited. So it's
Speaker 3: really important when you look at a cancelation like this
Speaker 3: to see who the winners are. But it makes me
Speaker 3: think very differently about Megan Markle. I just wonder when
Speaker 3: you see Walter all and wheneverone walks around and they
Speaker 3: go I just have a sense of something. I have
Speaker 3: a sense that they're not very nice or something.
Speaker 1: It's a great point.
Speaker 3: It just makes me go, how much of this is
Speaker 3: all manufactured? And how difficult is it to prove when
Speaker 3: these social media wizards are so much smarter than us.
Speaker 4: So out loud as we will be returning to our
Speaker 4: scheduled programming of hot Pods summer, where we are going
Speaker 4: to be giving you all sorts of delicious things to
Speaker 4: listen to over summer.
Speaker 1: If only you could see us. Now it's early in
Speaker 1: the morning, we are all at home.
Speaker 4: But we really wanted to bring this to you because
Speaker 4: we just thought that it was an important story to cover.
Speaker 3: It was one of those stories that in terms of
Speaker 3: the group chat, it was just going off. Look, chances
Speaker 3: are in two days there'll be another story that blows
Speaker 3: up our group chat and we're like, let's jump on.
Speaker 3: But this time of year, I think we all tend
Speaker 3: to fall into some rabbit holes, and it appears that
Speaker 3: we were.
Speaker 1: Victims of that.
Speaker 2: If this conversation has brought anything up for you, help
Speaker 2: is available. We're going to put links to resources that
Speaker 2: can help in the show notes.
Speaker 1: Take care, I'm going outside to touch some grass. We
Speaker 1: love you out louders. We will be in your ears shortly.
Speaker 3: Bye bye bye