Justin Baldoni’s crisis management team mentioned Taylor Swift in their alleged plan to take down Blake Lively.
Lively, 37, filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Baldoni, 40, on Friday, December 20, and her allegations against him including creating a “hostile work environment” and causing the actress “severe emotional distress.”
Exhibits attached to the complaint showed a crisis management expert working for Baldoni wrote in an August 6 email “we have seen the most innocuous issues turn giant due to socials or the hugest crises have no effect on social whatsoever. You just cannot tell at this stage. But, BL does have some of the same TS fanbase so we will be taking it extremely seriously.”
A separate “scenario planning” document from Baldoni’s side also notes “our team can also explore planting stories about the weaponization of feminism and how people like Taylor Swift, have been accused of utilizing these tactics to ‘bully’ into getting what they want.” (Lively and Swift, 35, have long been close and have documented their friendship over the years.)
Us Weekly has reached out to Lively’s rep for comment. Us reached out to Swift’s rep for comment as well.
Baldoni also appeared to use a social media post of Hailey Bieber as an example in an astroturfing plan against Lively. Text exchanges reviewed in a legal complaint obtained by Us on Saturday, December 21, showed Baldoni had sent a screenshot of an X thread that unpacked “Hailey Bieber’s history of bullying women,” according to the text, writing, “This is what we would need.”
Lively’s December complaint states that “millions of people (including many reporters and influencers) who saw these planted stories, social media posts, and other online content” were the “unwitting consumers of a crisis PR, astroturfing, and digital retaliation campaign” allegedly orchestrated by Baldoni against Lively.
Lively filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Baldoni on Friday, which claimed a meeting was held during production of It Ends With Us in January 2024 to address Lively’s claims against her costar. Per the lawsuit, Lively’s demands included “no more showing nude videos or images of women to Blake, no more mention of Baldoni’s alleged previous ‘pornography addiction,’ no more discussions about sexual conquests in front of Blake and others, no further mentions of cast and crew’s genitalia, no more inquiries about Blake’s weight, and no further mention of Blake’s dead father.”
Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman addressed Lively’s “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious” allegations in a statement to Us. He claimed Lively filed the lawsuit to “fix her negative reputation” and “rehash a narrative” regarding the production of the film.
He further alleged the actress made “multiple demands and threats” during filming, including “threatening to not show up to set, threatening to not promote the film, ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met.”
In a statement to The New York Times in December, Lively said, “I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted.”
The actress denied spreading negative information about Baldoni.
