Amber Heard has shown her support for Blake Lively after the actress filed a sexual harassment complaint against her It Ends With Us, co-star and director Justin Baldoni.
In an undated legal complaint filed with the California Civil Rights Department, Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment during the movie’s production.
Highlights
- Amber Heard released a statement after Blake Lively filed a sexual harassment complaint against Justin Baldoni.
- “I saw this firsthand and up close. It’s as horrifying as it is destructive,” Heard said in reference to Lively’s complaint.
- Lively had accused her 'It Ends with Us' co-star and director Baldoni of creating a “hostile work environment.”
- Text messages allegedly exchanged between Baldoni and his team show them discussing their social media strategies.
She further accused the director of orchestrating a retaliatory social media campaign to tarnish her reputation.
“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,” Lively said in a statement to the New York Times.
Amber Heard expressed support after Blake Lively filed a sexual harassment complaint against her co-star Justin Baldoni
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Heard, who moved to Spain after her high-profile defamation trial against ex-husband Johnny Depp, said the complaints listed by the Gossip Girl alum are somewhat familiar to her.
“Social media is the absolute personification of the classic saying ‘A lie travels halfway around the world before truth can get its boots on,’” Heard said in a statement provided to NBC News.
“I saw this firsthand and up close. It’s as horrifying as it is destructive,” she added.
Her comments sparked backlash online, with one social media user saying, “You’re not helping her case.”
“Amber is the LAST person you want backing you up,” read a second comment while a third said, “Ummm, probably not the endorsement Blake wanted.”
The defamation case that Depp brought against his ex-wife turned into a highly publicized media spectacle in 2022. It concluded with a seven-person jury unanimously ruling in favor of the Pirates of the Caribbean actor.
“I saw this firsthand and up close. It’s as horrifying as it is destructive,” Heard said in reference to Lively's complaint
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He was awarded $5 million in punitive damages and $10 million in compensatory damages, while Heard was awarded $2 million in compensatory damages.
The jury’s decision “sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated,” Heard said at the time.
The battle in court was the result of an op-ed Heard wrote for The Washington Post in 2018.
Depp had claimed that three of her statements in the op-ed were false and defamatory.
“I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture's wrath. That has to change,” read one of the statements, while another said, “Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out.”
A seven-person jury had unanimously ruled in favor of Johnny Depp, thus concluded the 2022 trial involving his ex-wife
Image credits: Samir Hussein/WireImage
“I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real-time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse” was her third statement that was deemed defamatory.
Furthermore, the same crisis PR team—PR expert Melissa Nathan and her company, The Agency Group (TAG PR)—that handled Depp’s case during the trial was hired by Baldoni for the now-unraveling scandal.
The company has a clientele that not only includes Depp but also Drake, Travis Scott, and Logan Paul.
In her complaint, Lively accused Baldoni of hiring TAG PR’s crisis communication team to launch a “retaliatory social manipulation campaign” during the promotion of It Ends with Us to damage her reputation.
The actress claimed that Nathan formulated a plan consisting of “proactive fan posting” and “social manipulations” to “help change” the “narrative” against her.
The Gossip Girl alum accused Baldoni of creating a “hostile work environment” and treating her like an “object”
Image credits: Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
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Text messages, allegedly exchanged between Baldoni and Jennifer Abel of PR firm RWA Communications, show the Jane the Virgin star asking, “what is the TikTok strategy.”
“I’d like you guys to start posting me ONLY talking about domestic violence and clips and why this movie is so important,” he messaged Abel.
A text message exchange between Abel and Nathan also allegedly showed the former saying she was “having reckless thoughts of wanting to plant pieces this week of how horrible Blake is to work with.”
To handle the controversy, Baldoni hired the same crisis communication team that took care of Depp's trial
Image credits: Cindy Ord/Getty Images
Bryan Freedman, the lawyer representing Baldoni, responded to the claims against his client on formulating a smear campaign.
“TAG PR must be the most powerful group of publicists the world has ever seen for it to be able to completely change the perception of both Amber Heard and Blake Lively,” he told The Independent.
“The only correlation between both individuals was that for decades every move they have made has been out there for everyone to see, widely filmed and documented for the public to make up their own minds - which they did, organically,” the lawyer said.
Text messages allegedly exchanged between Baldoni and his team show them discussing their social media strategies
Image credits: Kjersti Flaa
“All you have to do is watch the interviews that still remain if they have not already been scrubbed by their crisis PR teams (which is apparently their crisis team's next move since that’s what crisis teams do; they protect their clients),” he went on to say.
Bryan, who called Lively’s complaint “categorically false,” also said his client hired TAG PR because Lively had allegedly threatened not to show up for the filming of It Ends with Us or its promotions.
In her lawsuit, Lively accused Baldoni of creating a “hostile work environment” during the making of the film and would let his “friends” watch her film intimate scenes. She also alleged that he treated her as a “sex object” and entered her trailer while she was naked on one occasion.
Bryan Freedman, the lawyer representing Baldoni, called Lively's complaints “categorically false”
Image credits: Sony Pictures Entertainment
She also accused him of constantly focusing on her weight and physical appearance, finding “back channel ways of criticizing her body and weight.”
“On the second day of filming, for example, Mr. Baldoni made the rest of the cast and crew wait for hours while he cried in Ms. Lively's dressing room, claiming social media commentators were saying that Ms. Lively looked old and unattractive based on paparazzi photos from the set,” according to the filing.
As per Lively’s complaint, she raised her concerns with the production team in a meeting attended by herself, her husband Ryan Reynolds, Baldoni, their lawyers, and others.
Baldoni claimed “social media commentators were saying that Ms. Lively looked old and unattractive,” the complaint stated
Image credits: Lia Toby/Getty Images
She mentioned her requirements during the meeting, which 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,” according to the lawsuit.
“No more adding of sex scenes, oral sex or on camera climaxing by BL outside the scope of the script BL approved when signing onto the project” were also part of the requirements.
In addition to Heard, several others have also expressed support for Lively, including author Colleen Hoover, whose book was adapted into the movie It Ends with Us.
Colleen Hoover, America Ferrera, Amber Tamblyn and Alexis Bledel also expressed support for Lively after the complaint was filed
Image credits: Sony Pictures Entertainment
“You have been nothing but honest, kind, supportive and patient since the day we met,” she wrote on social media. “Thank you for being exactly the human that you are. Never change. Never wilt.”
Lively’s co-stars from Sister of the Traveling Pants—America Ferrera, Amber Tamblyn and Alexis Bledel—shared a joint statement and said, “As Blake’s friends and sisters for over 20 years, we stand with her in solidarity as she fights back against the reported campaign waged to destroy her reputation.”
“Throughout the filming of It Ends with Us, we saw her summon the courage to ask for a safe workplace for herself and colleagues on set, and we are appalled to read the evidence of a premeditated and vindictive effort that ensued to discredit her voice,” continued the statement.
“Most upsetting is the unabashed exploitation of domestic violence survivors’ stories to silence a woman who asked for safety,” they added. “The hypocrisy is astounding.”
“I find this really sad,” one social media user. “Both of their actions have tainted the movie and what it was supposed to represent”
