It Allegedly Costs $175,000 to Buy An Online Smear Campaign

Blake Lively alleges Justin Baldoni sexually harassed her and then launched an online harassment campaign to cover it up.

Blake Lively attends the LACMA Art+Film Gala on November 2, 2024. (Photo: Etienne Lauren / AFP via Getty Images)

In August, as rumors swirled around the release of It Ends With Us, the Colleen Hoover adaptation starring Blake Lively, a Vulture reporter interviewed a crisis management expert about how to diffuse the gossip that was emerging from the press tour. Lively had hired an editor to re-cut the movie to her liking, and Sony had opted to release that version over the one submitted by its director, and Lively’s co-star, Justin Baldoni. Was she bossy, or was he incompetent? Why did the movie’s cast unfollow Baldoni en masse? Why was the director doing press without anyone else in the cast? The messaging around the movie was weird: Lively presented it as an uplifting girls’ night watch. Baldoni somberly said he made it for domestic violence survivors.

But then Baldoni hired a crisis management expert, one known for working with Johnny Depp in his defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard. What would a crisis-management team be doing for Justin Baldoni right now? Vulture asked its source. “In this instance, she would figure out what the truth is — talk to production and see what really occurred and then see if your client actually has an issue or if it’s just production mismanagement,” the expert, Holly Baird, said. “I think a lot of the issues back in the Weinstein era could have been diffused if there was somebody on set for the actors and the staff to talk to.” (Baird cautioned against going all-in on seeing this as a David-Goliath situation, a low-key director versus a big bad movie star. “I’ve never heard of anything like this; that’s why I’m a bit taken aback,” she said. “I don’t think we know the full story, and we shouldn’t jump to conclusions too quickly.”)

That turned out to be a roseate version of events. On Saturday, The New York Times published a deeply reported story about Baldoni, Lively, and the promotional cycle for It Ends With Us. Instead of “figuring out what the truth is,” Baldoni and his team were allegedly figuring out how to conceal it. The Times’ reporting includes information and correspondence Lively obtained through a subpoena.