In Blake Lively ’s bombshell sexual harassment complaint against Justin Baldoni , the fixers are now part of the problem. On top of the laundry list of accused misconduct on the set of the film “ It Ends with Us ,” Lively’s surprise weekend filing against her director and costar Baldoni lays bare a show business process that’s meant to operate in the shadows – the hiring of expensive crisis communications experts to sway opinion and uplift clients. Attorneys for Lively obtained numerous text messages between Baldoni’s personal rep Jennifer Abel and the crisis team he retained this summer, led by Melissa Nathan.
Documents and texts said Baldoni did so to prepare for a scenario where Lively would come forward with accusations from the set, as well as narratives that key cast members were distancing themselves from Baldoni during the promotion of the Sony Pictures release. The exchanges reveal candid – or “cringeworthy,” as one competing crisis expert told Variety – efforts to counter Lively by enlisting friendly journalists and allegedly hiring a digital whiz to fabricate and amplify unflattering content about her. Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman blasted the claims and supporting documents, like text messages and a multi-page strategy, as “cherry-picked” to build a narrative that forgoes crucial context and, in what would be important for Baldoni in this case, inaction in coming after Lively.
While the complaint is under investigation by Freedman, .