Speaker 1: You're listening to Amma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and Waders
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3: Hi everyone, it's me and Friedman in your ears from
Speaker 3: our sister podcast out Loud, and today we are sharing
Speaker 3: with spill listeners an emergency episode.
Speaker 1: That we recorded on out Loud.
Speaker 3: We're Holly Wayne Right, Jesse Stevens, and I unpack all
Speaker 3: the allegations that Blake Lively has made against Justin Baldoni
Speaker 3: her It Ends with Us co star.
Speaker 1: Have a listen and enjoy your holidays.
Speaker 4: Hello out louders. It's Monday, the twenty third of December,
Speaker 4: and I'm Holly Wainwright, I'm Weir Friedman, and.
Speaker 2: I'm Jesse Stevens.
Speaker 5: And we were not meant to be here right now,
Speaker 5: but alas.
Speaker 4: We are here because we can bury anyone inside a
Speaker 4: Hollywood smear machine. That is the New York Times headline
Speaker 4: that we definitely had to be here right now, Jesse Stevens,
Speaker 4: because you might remember you definitely remember bits of it.
Speaker 4: It was one of the stories of the year that
Speaker 4: one of the most watched movies of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 4: It Ends with Us, came alongside the mass cancelation of
Speaker 4: its star, Blake Lively. The pressure that accompanied that movie
Speaker 4: was notable for the fact that the star and producer
Speaker 4: Lively and its other star and director, Justin Baldoni, went
Speaker 4: to great and unusual lengths not to be seen together,
Speaker 4: to be interviewed together, to show any of the usual
Speaker 4: camaraderie required of co creators of a big film. Lively,
Speaker 4: the rumors went, wanted to promote the movie as if
Speaker 4: it were a flowery rom com. Baldoni supposedly loudly insisted
Speaker 4: that he wanted its serious subject matter, coercive control and
Speaker 4: domestic violence, to be front and center. Lively was criticized
Speaker 4: for trivializing a serious topic, for being a tone deaf
Speaker 4: self promoter, for launching a haircare brand. The backlash was huge,
Speaker 4: and then yesterday The New York Times reported that Lively
Speaker 4: is taking legal action against Baldooni, accusing him of sexual
Speaker 4: harassment and an effort to destroy her reputation. It's a
Speaker 4: story that has massive implications for I'd say almost every
Speaker 4: celebrity story you see on the internet. Mia, what did
Speaker 4: the story the one with the we can bury anyone
Speaker 4: headline allege I.
Speaker 3: Think Jesse's going to take us through some of the
Speaker 3: allegations in more detail, but.
Speaker 1: Overall, it alleged serious misconduct on the set.
Speaker 3: Now, what's important to understand is that Justin was not
Speaker 3: only the director and the producer and the co star,
Speaker 3: he also was a co owner of the studio that
Speaker 3: was making the film, So even though Blake Lively was
Speaker 3: more famous, he had huge power in the context of
Speaker 3: making this film. So it alleged sexual harassment. And then
Speaker 3: also it detailed that when Blake Lively complained about it
Speaker 3: and insisted on a meeting with all the stakeholders before
Speaker 3: she returned to filming in January this year, after the writers' strike,
Speaker 3: Justin Baldoni hired a crisis pr to smear her, which
Speaker 3: we're also going to get into in a moment. But
Speaker 3: let's just rewind to August to remind ourselves what this
Speaker 3: movie was about and why there was so much controversy
Speaker 3: when it was released, because it was only released a
Speaker 3: few months ago, and it's about to come onto streaming,
Speaker 3: or I think it's just come on to streaming. The
Speaker 3: movie is based on the Colleen Hoover book that was
Speaker 3: also called It Ends with Us and It tells the
Speaker 3: story of a florist called Lily Bloom played by Lively,
Speaker 3: who navigates the romance with a neurosurgeon called Ryle Kincaid
Speaker 3: that becomes abusive. That's the essence of the film. The
Speaker 3: three of us went to see it, it was already
Speaker 3: completely swamped in controversy. I really liked the film. I
Speaker 3: thought Blake Lively was fantastic. Yeah, I thought it was
Speaker 3: not the best film in the world, but I thought
Speaker 3: it was really good. And I was surprised the controversy
Speaker 3: that had completely engulfed this film. It seemed really out
Speaker 3: of whack. So what was the controversy. Well, there's a
Speaker 3: few different elements to it, but it was basically all
Speaker 3: about Blake Lively being inappropriate during the promotional part of
Speaker 3: the tour. So it wasn't about the actual movie itself.
Speaker 3: It was about how it was promoted. There was an
Speaker 3: interview where she encouraged fans to grab your friends, wear
Speaker 3: your florals, and head out to see it, which kind
Speaker 3: of suggested that it was a lighthearted viewing experience. There
Speaker 3: was no trigger warning at the beginning of it, so
Speaker 3: there was a whole big debate about trigger warnings, and
Speaker 3: the whole marketing campaign was criticized as tone death given
Speaker 3: how serious the themes were in the movie about domestic abuse,
Speaker 3: and that all landed on Blake Lively. Now, there were
Speaker 3: some things she did during the tour that particularly made
Speaker 3: her a target of criticism, like she was launching a
Speaker 3: hair care line at the time. She also promoted her
Speaker 3: beverage brand, which was called Betty Booze, and many people
Speaker 3: said that alcohol is often connected with domestic violence, so
Speaker 3: that's insensitive, and so it was seen that she was
Speaker 3: just not taking it seriously, which led to this big
Speaker 3: backlash against her. And you'd have to say, one of
Speaker 3: the worst cancelations that we've seen in a long time
Speaker 3: for reasons that seemed really spurious.
Speaker 5: Yes, I agree, because back at the time we talked
Speaker 5: about it and it felt as though the facts we
Speaker 5: had in front of us were not proportionate to the
Speaker 5: avalanche of hate that Blake Lively was getting, particularly on TikTok.
Speaker 5: Maybe that's because that's where I leave most of the time,
Speaker 5: and we were getting these leaks. So the leaks that
Speaker 5: we were getting were that there was something that said
Speaker 5: justin Baldoni lingered too long on a kiss, he asked
Speaker 5: how much she weighed because he had a former back
Speaker 5: injury and was worried about picking her up, like weird,
Speaker 5: weird stuff.
Speaker 3: None of those took hold, so there were a few
Speaker 3: rumors of was it uncomfortable on set. The other thing
Speaker 3: that really came out was Blake had taken over and
Speaker 3: she'd insisted on doing her own edit that somehow Ryan
Speaker 3: Reynolds got involved and was rewriting a few scenes. So
Speaker 3: the image that came across through the press tour was
Speaker 3: that she was not taking it seriously, was dominating an
Speaker 3: a diva on set, and that he was a victim
Speaker 3: of all this. Because, in case you're not familiar with
Speaker 3: Justin Baldoni, his most famous role as an actor was
Speaker 3: in Jane the Virgin, and he's really fushioned himself over
Speaker 3: the last few years as a feminist and as a
Speaker 3: podcast called Man Enough, where he questions toxic masculinity.
Speaker 4: He had a viral ted talk about it like he's
Speaker 4: very much he's that.
Speaker 3: Guy, a champion of women. That was his vibe.
Speaker 4: And among all these rumors, what was very clear, the
Speaker 4: whole like smoke fire thing is that they had definitely
Speaker 4: fallen out. There was no question about that. You know,
Speaker 4: the other cast members had stopped following him on Instagram
Speaker 4: and seemed to very much be siding with her. As
Speaker 4: I said at the beginning, they weren't photographed together, that
Speaker 4: they didn't do any promo. It was kind of like
Speaker 4: dueling press tours, which is very unusual.
Speaker 5: And Baldoni at the time he spoke to Today and
Speaker 5: obviously addressing some of the creative differences, and he said,
Speaker 5: I'm a best idea wins person and I always have
Speaker 5: been to a fault, sometimes to a point where at
Speaker 5: times I think I've had people wonder if I know
Speaker 5: what I'm doing or if I have a point of view,
Speaker 5: because I'm so willing to have my vision changed. I
Speaker 5: don't believe that inspiration or creativity comes through one person.
Speaker 5: On the night of the premiere, he was saying, this
Speaker 5: isn't about me, It's a night for Blake, It's for Colleen.
Speaker 5: I'm so grateful we're here, and again it was clear
Speaker 5: that neither of those women were speaking to him.
Speaker 4: What happened on the weekend is that Blake Lively has
Speaker 4: filed a legal complaint that presents her side of the
Speaker 4: story to all of the things that we were just discussing,
Speaker 4: and Jesse's going to tell us about them in a minute,
Speaker 4: but first shortbreak.
Speaker 5: So, the allegations of misconduct on set are pretty damning.
Speaker 5: In terms of physical boundaries and violations. There are allegations
Speaker 5: that he improvised unwanted kissing scenes. He would enter This
Speaker 5: is Baldoni would enter her makeup trailer uninvited while she
Speaker 5: was undressed, including while she was breastfeeding. In terms of
Speaker 5: sexual harassment, Baldoni and Jamie Heath, he was a producer
Speaker 5: and co owner, there are allegations that they would describe
Speaker 5: their genitalia on set. Baldoni would frequently refer to his
Speaker 5: past porn addiction and describe previous sexual encounters where he
Speaker 5: said he may or may not have received consent. Now
Speaker 5: we know that Lively made a series of requests part
Speaker 5: way through filming. They actually had this all hands meeting
Speaker 5: which included her husband, Ryan Reynolds, and it was held
Speaker 5: to address Baldoni and Jamie Heaths alleged inappropriate conduct.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, this was interesting because this was like she
Speaker 3: had Ryan there as her support person, and it was
Speaker 3: after the writer's strike, so they'd only been filming for
Speaker 3: six weeks. Then that was the writer's strike and she
Speaker 3: had this meeting and she said, I'm not coming back
Speaker 3: unless we have this meeting. She included Sony, who's the distributor,
Speaker 3: and all these different people. So there are a lot
Speaker 3: of people at that meeting, which means that there will
Speaker 3: be a lot of you know.
Speaker 1: And none of this was disputed at the time.
Speaker 5: So there was a list of thirty things. They're quite
Speaker 5: revealing some of Lively's requests, and these were, as you say,
Speaker 5: they were confirmed because it's a document. Her request were
Speaker 5: that Baldoni would stop asking her about religious beliefs, stop
Speaker 5: asking her trainer about her weight, she was four months
Speaker 5: pardon with her fourth baby, and stopped claiming to be
Speaker 5: able to speak to her dead father. There are allegations
Speaker 5: that Baldoni improvised while on set. So in one scene,
Speaker 5: they weren't miked up. It was just to be filmed.
Speaker 5: It was just a visual scene, and Lively claims that
Speaker 5: as himself, Baldoni leaned in and slowly dragged his lips
Speaker 5: from her ear to her neck and said it smells
Speaker 5: so good. It says that when Lively objected to his actions,
Speaker 5: Baldoni retorted, I'm not even attracted to you. Baldoni added,
Speaker 5: this is an allegation improvised sexual content and nude scenes,
Speaker 5: and he fought to have a scene where the characters
Speaker 5: climaxed at the same time on their wedding night and
Speaker 5: told Lively that he and his partner always did and
Speaker 5: allegedly pressed her on whether that was the case with
Speaker 5: her husband, and she says she was very uncomfortable by
Speaker 5: that conversation. There's an allegation about the childbirth scene which
Speaker 5: is particularly unsettling. It wasn't agreed that she would be
Speaker 5: naked for it, but then when she got on set,
Speaker 5: she says that he insisted she be naked. They compromised
Speaker 5: that she would be naked from the waist down, but
Speaker 5: the set wasn't closed and in the end his friend
Speaker 5: came in to play the role of the obgyn.
Speaker 3: I think this is possibly the most chilling thing because
Speaker 3: what's so illuminating about reading will link to it if
Speaker 3: anybody wants to look at it, which I think you should.
Speaker 3: But you learn a lot about Hollywood and how sex
Speaker 3: scenes work right, and there are things like nudity writers
Speaker 3: where everybody agrees what the parameters before you go into
Speaker 3: a scene, things like closed sex when there's nudity, so
Speaker 3: only essential people are there. Monitors are turned off so
Speaker 3: other people can't look from other rooms and even film you.
Speaker 3: So she was in stirrups. She had a little bit
Speaker 3: of fabric just literally covering her and the role of
Speaker 3: the gynecologist. They were like between her legs. And also
Speaker 3: another owner of his studio, Wayfarirer, had just flown in
Speaker 3: to visit the set on that day for the first time.
Speaker 1: Like it is so gross and creepy.
Speaker 4: It also is clearly from this very long list of
Speaker 4: requests clear that this set was a shit show, right
Speaker 4: because one of them is also stop having hours long
Speaker 4: meetings where Baldoni cries and no more pressing from Baldoni
Speaker 4: to sage any of Blake Live's employees, Like this is
Speaker 4: batshit what's going on on that set, And it seems
Speaker 4: that she's very much trying to say, let's get back
Speaker 4: to a professional set.
Speaker 5: And they're at claims as well that when you know
Speaker 5: there were certain moments where Lively was made to feel uncomfortable,
Speaker 5: other women from the set came up and said, I've
Speaker 5: also had that experience so the allegations are that it
Speaker 5: was not just her, she was trying to protect the
Speaker 5: whole set.
Speaker 2: The last thing I'll say, and I could go on
Speaker 2: and on about what's in this.
Speaker 5: Complaint, but the last thing is she alleges that there
Speaker 5: was a clear marketing place that was distributed to the
Speaker 5: cast and everyone involved in marketing it about how to
Speaker 5: promote the film. This was from Sony and they said
Speaker 5: they wanted to focus on hope and resilience and not
Speaker 5: position this as a domestic violence film. They say that
Speaker 5: Baldoni went against this, and that's massive because at the
Speaker 5: time everyone was going, why is she not acknowledging that
Speaker 5: this is a film about domestic violence. Baldoni was over
Speaker 5: here with a link in his Instagram bio to help victims.
Speaker 5: Everything he said in his messaging was acknowledging victims, and
Speaker 5: this made Lively look really bad.
Speaker 4: Well, as it turns out, or at least what's alleged
Speaker 4: he here is that that Pivot Jesse was a very
Speaker 4: deliberate one to smear Blake Lively because Baldoni and his
Speaker 4: team knew what was coming. So to the smear campaign,
Speaker 4: and why I say that this is a story that's
Speaker 4: not just about Blake Lively and just In Baldoni, but
Speaker 4: gives an in into what is really behind a lot
Speaker 4: of what we believe right on social media. So all
Speaker 4: those tiktoks and stories that we talked about at the
Speaker 4: beginning that were being shared and reshared as facts that
Speaker 4: Lively was a mean girl, that Lively tried to hijack
Speaker 4: the movie, that Lively just wanted to promote a hair
Speaker 4: care brand. What's alleged in this document is there was
Speaker 4: nothing organic about those stories, and that the PR firm
Speaker 4: hired by Baldoni when he realized that Reynolds had blocked
Speaker 4: him on Instagram, Baldonian, his producing partner, hired this firm
Speaker 4: who were expert in the dark arts of smearing, starting rumors,
Speaker 4: and fanning the flames of negativity. Some of the tactics
Speaker 4: that are alleged to have happened are that the PR
Speaker 4: team would boost negative stories about Lively, branding her as
Speaker 4: difficult and tone death. That contractors were allegedly hired to
Speaker 4: dominate social media with untraceable tactics like social manipulation and
Speaker 4: proactive fan posting. A hired gun helped amplify negative narrative online,
Speaker 4: including on platforms like TikTok and Reddit, and basically all
Speaker 4: these threads of theories started being sown and then amplified.
Speaker 4: Now it's actually impossible, even by the investigative journalists at
Speaker 4: The New York Times and actually by the legal team
Speaker 4: to be able to absolutely identify exactly what the amplification did.
Speaker 4: As we know, the Internet is sprawling and enormous. But
Speaker 4: the negative stories that were planted were planted very deliberately
Speaker 4: and then encouraged. So this tells you everything about how
Speaker 4: we the public were manipulated in this story.
Speaker 5: In August, there were two things we talked about. The
Speaker 5: first was something that we've referred to as the dig,
Speaker 5: which is what happens when someone is in the process
Speaker 5: of cancelation, and we were saying that it's again back
Speaker 5: to it being disproportionate. Is that people started yelling about
Speaker 5: her plantation wedding, about how Reynolds cheated on scullet Jo
Speaker 5: Hansen with Lively. She's always been rude. Everyone on Gossip
Speaker 5: Girl hated her. There were weird videos of people gifting
Speaker 5: her a bracelet on a red carpet and she would
Speaker 5: not accept it, or something like.
Speaker 3: The one that got the most traction was and I
Speaker 3: remember thinking at the time, this is weird. Without wanting
Speaker 3: to we definitely had our doubts and we spoke about
Speaker 3: this on the show, as did others. That interview with
Speaker 3: a Swedish journalist entertainment journalist called Christie Flaher which came
Speaker 3: out where it showed her interviewing Blake Lively for a
Speaker 3: different movie I think back in twenty fifteen, and it
Speaker 3: showed Blake being a little bit rude, and for some
Speaker 3: reason she posted that with the headline the interview that
Speaker 3: made me want to quit my job. That was in
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen. That interview happened, and yet it came out.
Speaker 3: Now why did it come out? Well, you could say
Speaker 3: that organically that journalist was just trying to ride the
Speaker 3: wave of hate against Blake Lively. But what was revealed
Speaker 3: in this is that this journalist had worked with the
Speaker 3: PR company before because they'd also represented Johnny Depp in
Speaker 3: his trial against Amber Heard. And we know that some
Speaker 3: really dodgy things happened then in terms of how Amber
Speaker 3: Heard was trolled and the volume of internet hate towards her,
Speaker 3: so much of which was seen to be manufactured. So
Speaker 3: again it wasn't organic. And there's a word called astroturfing,
Speaker 3: which I learned, which is basically means you think something
Speaker 3: is organic it looks like natural grass, but when you.
Speaker 1: Look closer you see that it's artificial.
Speaker 3: And what that means is that these things are planted
Speaker 3: and then amplified, either by bots or by these agencies.
Speaker 3: That's what they do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so in terms of being planted, I think that's
Speaker 5: an important point because in the investigation it sort of
Speaker 5: said this isn't bots. I always imagined it was bots.
Speaker 5: But at the time, I was posting on TikTok about
Speaker 5: the Blake Lively thing, and I was noticing that every
Speaker 5: time I posted something that was defensive, it got no reach.
Speaker 5: So I remember talking about this on the show, only
Speaker 5: a few hundred views, and then I posted one thing
Speaker 5: that was cheeky that had something about Blake Lively's cancelation.
Speaker 5: It actually went against it, but all the metadata would
Speaker 5: have suggested that I was about to go her blew up,
Speaker 5: and it seemed that if you were being critical of
Speaker 5: Blake Lively, your content was on steroids. As someone who
Speaker 5: consumes a lot of social media content, it is not
Speaker 5: often that you get a unanimous view on anything. But
Speaker 5: you went onto these media platforms and all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: it was like wall to wall. Everyone hated her. And
Speaker 5: let's be clear, if you saw someone pop up and
Speaker 5: have a go at Blake Lively, that was probably legitimate.
Speaker 5: But where they were getting the information, how their brain
Speaker 5: had been marinating in content kind of contributed to that.
Speaker 1: Well, it creates a lens.
Speaker 3: And I should say, Christy Flower has come out and
Speaker 3: said she has nothing to do with the alleged smear campaign,
Speaker 3: but she was exactly what you were talking about, Jesse.
Speaker 3: She was being opportunistic. So we live in the attention
Speaker 3: economy and if you wanted to go viral, everybody looks
Speaker 3: at the numbers who makes content and in the media,
Speaker 3: so you knew that if you did something that was
Speaker 3: against Blake Lively, it would go off. So it's important
Speaker 3: to understand how something can be both organic and manipulated
Speaker 3: because people will say, but.
Speaker 1: Hang on, Blake Lively.
Speaker 3: They didn't make her try and promote her hair care line,
Speaker 3: they didn't make her reference alcohol, they didn't make her
Speaker 3: wear florals. But the thing is that it's the volume,
Speaker 3: So you can start to believe, oh, everybody hates Blake Lively,
Speaker 3: and when you hear enough of that, it does impact
Speaker 3: on how you view someone.
Speaker 5: And there was also I remember looking at interviews where
Speaker 5: she seemed really insensitive about the subject matter of the film,
Speaker 5: but it was so purposefully cut, and if you watch
Speaker 5: the whole interview, that's not how it seemed. And then
Speaker 5: you were getting Justin Baldoni with these incredible cuts of
Speaker 5: him saying something really eloquent about domestic violence. So it
Speaker 5: did seem that, yeah, I suppose that that is allegedly
Speaker 5: part of the smearing.
Speaker 4: This is where we can bury anyone. Headline comes in
Speaker 4: because in the New York Times investigation, there are literal
Speaker 4: screenshots of text messages between Baldoni's people and the PR
Speaker 4: people saying exactly that that they can bury anybody with
Speaker 4: enough ammunition, and that they needed to do it to
Speaker 4: get Baldoni's story across. We're going to be back in
Speaker 4: a minute, but first a little break.
Speaker 3: I want to talk about the effect of how cancelation
Speaker 3: works and how it can be manipulated, because having experienced
Speaker 3: it a number of times organically, certainly not to my knowledge,
Speaker 3: with a calculated or paid smear campaign by a publicist,
Speaker 3: things gained traction, and then everybody wants to be part
Speaker 3: of a pylon, right, That's why it's called a dogpile
Speaker 3: or a pylon, and there becomes status in reinforcing the
Speaker 3: accepted narrative, which in this case was that Justin Baldoni
Speaker 3: was a hero and cared about domestic violence victims, and
Speaker 3: Blake Lively was an entitled diva who cared about nothing
Speaker 3: other than her hair and looking pretty.
Speaker 4: And because of that that sort of narrative about who
Speaker 4: Blake Lively was, she's a prime candidate for this, right,
Speaker 4: because the thing that's very depressing about this story is
Speaker 4: that we're all being manipulated all the time right on
Speaker 4: social media, and we think we're having our own thoughts
Speaker 4: about things and going, yes, I see, But what this
Speaker 4: shows very clearly is that we're being As Lively said
Speaker 4: in her statement about it, she said she wanted to
Speaker 4: show behind the curtain of how these things start. But
Speaker 4: one of the things that we've got to ask ourselves
Speaker 4: is why are we so invested in thinking awful things
Speaker 4: about women and women like Lively? You know, she in particular,
Speaker 4: I guess she is blonde and beautiful, married to a
Speaker 4: rich man. She is a striver We've talked about on
Speaker 4: this show lots of times. Is the worst thing you
Speaker 4: can be. She has her own businesses, she tries really hard,
Speaker 4: like she promoted the shit out of that movie, and
Speaker 4: it's almost like the world was dying to believe this
Speaker 4: about her, which is one of the things I find
Speaker 4: deeply depressing about it.
Speaker 5: And that's what the crisis pr person behind all of
Speaker 5: this actually said in one of the And the reason
Speaker 5: we have these texts, I should say, is because they
Speaker 5: were subpoened. So it's the genius of Blake Lively in
Speaker 5: all of this is to go, I'm going to get
Speaker 5: all the evidence I need to show what really happened,
Speaker 5: which is that you have Melissa Nathan saying basically, I
Speaker 5: can't believe how quickly people just want to hate a woman.
Speaker 5: I'm seeing all this positive justin Baldoni's stuff, and I
Speaker 5: don't even agree with half of it. So it was
Speaker 5: like they lit the fire and then when it blew up,
Speaker 5: they didn't need to do a thing because people.
Speaker 2: Want to hate a woman.
Speaker 5: And the irony of this entire story is that it's
Speaker 5: an allegory for domestic violence in the context of a
Speaker 5: film about domestic violence, which is that people were so
Speaker 5: ready to jump on a woman who maybe didn't use
Speaker 5: the right words, or was profiting or something. And except
Speaker 5: that this man was a feminist ally. It's almost Shakespearean
Speaker 5: in that in order to defend his image it's a
Speaker 5: feminist ally, he had to bury a female co star.
Speaker 5: And we were so happy to follow him there and
Speaker 5: to go not only follow him there, like we didn't
Speaker 5: look at all the facts, which is that none of
Speaker 5: the cast were on speaking terms with him anymore, Colleen
Speaker 5: who all on her side, yes, And we were so
Speaker 5: happy to follow him there. And I think that there's
Speaker 5: a difference between doing something and expressing the doing of something.
Speaker 2: This speaks to something that.
Speaker 5: Feels very very true, which is that there are people
Speaker 5: who use the right words, who have the right link
Speaker 5: in their Instagram bio. But that is not the same
Speaker 5: as being the thing you're purporting to being, which is
Speaker 5: that he's saying he supports women and that this story
Speaker 5: was really important to him. It's just an incredible, like,
Speaker 5: look at potential if it's true hypocrisy.
Speaker 2: I think this story has many places to go.
Speaker 4: And today one of the pr Wizards involved in this.
Speaker 4: Jennifer Abel has some messages that are allegedly her who's
Speaker 4: saying that those messages that we were just talking about,
Speaker 4: Jesse were cherry picked and that you didn't see others.
Speaker 4: And I'm sure that's true. So there's are many more
Speaker 4: places to go. But your point, Jesse is so spot on,
Speaker 4: because I remember at the time a lot of people
Speaker 4: have a lot of love for Baldoni and he was
Speaker 4: seen to be doing all the right things. But I'll
Speaker 4: just listened to the interview with him that he did
Speaker 4: on How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, and the guy,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I'm just going to say it is insufferable,
Speaker 4: like he is insufferable. He doesn't obviously go to lively
Speaker 4: in that interview, and it happened before the legal letter,
Speaker 4: but he described the filming as devastatingly difficult for a
Speaker 4: number of reasons. He made very clear on the record
Speaker 4: that he thought there should have been a trigger warning,
Speaker 4: like it was very clear. But the whole feeling about it,
Speaker 4: Elizabeth Day barely gets a word in, is that he
Speaker 4: was lecturing about victimhood and we are always saying that
Speaker 4: we want men to talk about domestic violence, and we do.
Speaker 4: But we want men to talk to men about domestic violence.
Speaker 4: We don't want them to lecture women about it. And
Speaker 4: I know people have problems with the movie, and people
Speaker 4: have problems with the source material of the book, but
Speaker 4: this movie was aimed at women. The book was aimed
Speaker 4: at women, right. It's the way that they chose to
Speaker 4: promote it that Baldoni then flipped in order to virtue
Speaker 4: signal because he knew basically that he was going to
Speaker 4: be taken down. What's also interested in all this is
Speaker 4: that Ryan Reynold and Blake Lively and the power that
Speaker 4: they wield in Hollywood is probably always going to come
Speaker 4: for him, right, So he knew that was coming, so
Speaker 4: he wanted to position himself as the perfect allocate ally
Speaker 4: and advocate, and he's there lecturing women about victimhood and violence.
Speaker 4: That's not what we want from the guys. I mean,
Speaker 4: I can't speak for all women, but.
Speaker 3: Can we talk about timing for a second, because it's
Speaker 3: pretty sobering to go online and look at some of
Speaker 3: the reactions to this, where people are just they want
Speaker 3: to twist it and still make it about Blake and
Speaker 3: they're not interested in facts or perspectives.
Speaker 2: Why now?
Speaker 1: Why now?
Speaker 3: It's pre Christmas. Some people have said, well, it's just
Speaker 3: come out on Netflix. It's a calculated move. She wants
Speaker 3: to just try and salvage the damage to her reputation.
Speaker 3: But she didn't say anything back then like this. Everyone
Speaker 3: had forgotten about it. Essentially, she'd come back.
Speaker 5: Why now, it would have been totally lost. If she
Speaker 5: said something back then, she would have sounded And this
Speaker 5: is also such a great example of gas lighting. She
Speaker 5: would have been told she was crazy. If she said
Speaker 5: at the time that there is a manufactured effort to
Speaker 5: bury me, people would have gone, you are grasping, how embarrassing,
Speaker 5: blah blah.
Speaker 3: Blah, and that she was making it all about her
Speaker 3: instead of centering the centering victims.
Speaker 5: It's about to come out on Netflix. I'm not sure
Speaker 5: if that's just in the US or if that's here too.
Speaker 5: And just in the last week I started seeing stories
Speaker 5: about Blake Lively pop up again. I saw a story
Speaker 5: about something Ryan Reynolds had said about how he and
Speaker 5: Blake grew up working class, and then people were going
Speaker 5: into Blake Lively's childhood and going, that's not working class,
Speaker 5: how embarrassing? Yeah, were they anticipating another wave, that's the question.
Speaker 5: And the other reason why I think it's now is
Speaker 5: because of how long this takes. In order to do
Speaker 5: this properly in order to get lawyers do the research subpoena.
Speaker 5: Those text messages prove it, they needed to buide their time.
Speaker 5: And it's important to remember Blake Lively is worth about
Speaker 5: thirty million dollars. She's rich, but she's not like the
Speaker 5: richest person in Hollywood, Ryan Reynolds, is worth more than
Speaker 5: three hundred million, because he hasn't had these business ventures.
Speaker 4: Right and also intensely well connected.
Speaker 5: Yes, so I think it took because you can look
Speaker 5: at this case and go, what does Blake Lively want?
Speaker 2: This isn't going to be about damages.
Speaker 5: This isn't about sending Justin Baldoni to jail, like, nothing
Speaker 5: about that.
Speaker 1: It's not criminal.
Speaker 5: She wants to correct the record, and in order you
Speaker 5: need to have power and you need to have the
Speaker 5: financial means, and she does. And I think that's why
Speaker 5: she's doing it because imagine how many actresses have been
Speaker 5: buried and have never been able to tell their story.
Speaker 3: Well, that's the rule of cancelation, isn't it. You can't
Speaker 3: defend yourself, well it's happening, otherwise it makes it worse.
Speaker 3: But the other thing to note is that there's a
Speaker 3: civil complaint. But then there's also the New York Times investigation.
Speaker 3: The lead journalist on this was the same journalists that
Speaker 3: exposed Harvey Weinstein, Megan Towey. And they don't just publish
Speaker 3: what someone else wants them to publish. They go and
Speaker 3: corroborate everything. They do their own extensive reporting out, making
Speaker 3: sure that all the sources can be confirmed. So in
Speaker 3: many ways, the timing was more about what The New
Speaker 3: York Times was going to do. But the other thing
Speaker 3: to remember, when we're talking about power and money, the
Speaker 3: guy who is the financial backer of Wayfarer, which is
Speaker 3: the studio that Jamie Heath and Justin Baldonia partners in,
Speaker 3: is like a billionaire, so he's also got unlimited funds.
Speaker 3: He has a lot more money than Ryan Randalls and
Speaker 3: Blake Lively put together. So it's not a case of
Speaker 3: Blake Lively punching down the complexity of power. Dynamics on
Speaker 3: both the set and in Hollywood aren't just about who's
Speaker 3: the most famous in the Daily Mail.
Speaker 4: You know what, though, And this is A more pragmatic
Speaker 4: reason too, is they let the movie do its thing.
Speaker 4: That movie was really successful. Yeah, you know, so she
Speaker 4: would have been contractually obliged to promote that movie. Also,
Speaker 4: she clearly wanted to, and she didn't want to promote
Speaker 4: it with him, which is again very unusual. But she
Speaker 4: promoted the shit out of that movie while all this
Speaker 4: was going on. It was very successful, It's had its
Speaker 4: period of box office time, and now you can sit
Speaker 4: there and reflect on that that was all happening in
Speaker 4: real time to her. It does seem extraordinary to me,
Speaker 4: though I know that Baldoni has very powerful backer their
Speaker 4: met of course, but that he ever thought that they
Speaker 4: weren't going to do this Because Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively
Speaker 4: Reynolds is one of the most powerful men in Hollywood.
Speaker 4: Deadpool was the second biggest movie of the year. He
Speaker 4: makes a lot of people a lot of money. They
Speaker 4: are intensely powerful. He would be furious. Imagine sitting in
Speaker 4: that meeting that he sat in with his wife and
Speaker 4: all those people and literally listening to that list being
Speaker 4: read out about them walking in on her when she's
Speaker 4: half naked and breastfeeding in her trailer Revenge is a
Speaker 4: dish best served cold. Right, those guys have gone and
Speaker 4: got their ducks in a row in a very professional,
Speaker 4: very organized manner, and now they're coming for them. And
Speaker 4: fair enough, if indeed everything that's in that legal letter
Speaker 4: is true, absolutely fair enough.
Speaker 3: So what are our takeaways before we wrap up and
Speaker 3: actually go on holidays?
Speaker 5: I think the reason why people are so fascinated by
Speaker 5: this is because it's an exercise in perspective, but also
Speaker 5: we were used as audiences and consumers of media. We
Speaker 5: were played. And the other thing is that I am
Speaker 5: now looking at other examples of cancelation. I'm sorry, but well,
Speaker 5: actually there are some examples of men. But what's confusing
Speaker 5: about them are I don't know who benefited. So it's
Speaker 5: really important when you look at a cancelation like this
Speaker 5: to see who the winners are. But it makes me
Speaker 5: think very differently about Megan Markle. I just wonder when
Speaker 5: you see Walter all and wheneverone walks around and they
Speaker 5: go I just have a sense of something. I have
Speaker 5: a sense that they're not very nice or something.
Speaker 1: It's a great point.
Speaker 5: It just makes me go, how much of this is
Speaker 5: all manufactured? And how difficult is it to prove when
Speaker 5: these social media wizards are so much smarter than us.
Speaker 3: So out loud As, we will be returning to our
Speaker 3: scheduled programming of hot Pods summer, where we are going
Speaker 3: to be giving you all sorts of delicious things to
Speaker 3: listen to over summer.
Speaker 1: If only you could see us.
Speaker 3: Now, it's early in the morning, we are all at home,
Speaker 3: but we really wanted to bring this to you because
Speaker 3: we just thought that it was an important story to cover.
Speaker 5: It was one of those stories that in terms of
Speaker 5: the group chat, it was just going off.
Speaker 2: Look, chances are in two.
Speaker 5: Days there'll be another story that blows up our group
Speaker 5: chat and we're like, let's jump on. But this time
Speaker 5: of year, I think we all tend to fall into
Speaker 5: some rabbit holes, and it appears that we were.
Speaker 2: Victims of that.
Speaker 4: If this conversation has brought anything up for you, help
Speaker 4: is available. We're going to put links to resources that
Speaker 4: can help in the show notes.
Speaker 3: Take care, I'm going outside to touch some grass.
Speaker 1: We love you out Louders. We will be in your
Speaker 1: ears shortly.
Speaker 3: Bye bye bye