The Legal Battle Riveting Hollywood
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From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitro-Eff. This is The Daily.
The legal battle we've been paying a close eye on, this is between former co-stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.
Over the last few weeks, two Hollywood stars, Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, have gone to battle over exactly what happened during the making and promotion of their latest film.
Blake Lively has filed a federal lawsuit claiming her It Ends With Us co-star Justin Baldoni sexually harassed her.
Justin Baldoni is now suing his former co-star Blake Lively and...
It's a dispute that's pulled back the curtain on an alleged smear campaign and the new set of tools that celebrities can use to defend themselves and redefine their enemies in the court of public opinion.
The tea is piping hot. I mean, there's just so much currently being said about it ends with us.
Today, my colleague Megan Toohey on the legal complaint that started it all.
It's a mess, so let's get into it.
It's Tuesday, January 28th. Megan, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me. So you have broken and covered some of the biggest stories of sexual harassment in Hollywood, but your latest article has generated an extraordinary amount of attention, even for you. And I have to confess to being pretty read in on this one. It has been difficult to avoid the online conversation around it. And it all began with this story that you wrote.
Tell me how you came to that story. So in December, Blake Lively, the movie star, filed a legal complaint. It was made with the California Civil Rights Agency. And it is a formal complaint against Justin Baldoni, her co-star and the director of the latest hit movie that she just made. It ends with us. Yeah. Who she says sexually harassed her. And what's particularly interesting to us was the information that forms the foundation of the filing, which are excerpts from thousands of pages of text messages and emails that Lively's team acquired through a subpoena. In them, in these documents, Baldoni and his publicists orchestrated what Lively describes as a modern-day smear campaign, what she said was a coordinated push to tank her reputation out of fear that her allegations may come to light. And what really interested me and my colleagues Mike McIntyre and Julie Tate in this complaint and in what it purported to show is not just how to protect someone's reputation, but how to harm someone else's.
That's the alleged smear campaign.
Yes.
Okay, let's talk about the campaign as described in the filing. Where does that story start?
It starts with the filming of It Ends With Us. What is this place going to be?
A flower shop.
And the movie is about this young woman chasing her dream of opening a flower shop who falls in love with this seemingly perfect guy. What do you do for a living?
Neurosurgeon.
I'm terrible. I'm sorry. I thought you were a crypto-pro.
But as the relationship progresses, he becomes physically abusive.
Can you just listen to me, please? You promised me, Lily. I didn't know he was coming. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.
The film was based on a novel by Colleen Hoover, one of the most popular novelists today.
Yes, I know her. I think I've seen her books like a million times at the airport, for example.
Yeah, yeah, of course. And, you know, there was actually huge anticipation for the movie rights because of how many Hoover fans there are out there. And a studio called Wayfarer eventually gained the rights. And Baldoni, who is also co-chair and co-founder of the studio, called it an act of providence for him to get to direct the film.
So this is something he's really excited about.
Yes. It was right up his alley. He had gotten his start as an actor on the show Jane the Virgin. But in recent years, he'd become like a very vocal critic of toxic masculinity. Are you confident enough?
to listen to the women in your life and actually believe them, even if what they're saying is against you. He hosted a TED Talk. Where you actually stand up and do something so that one day we don't have to live in a world where a woman has to risk everything and come forward to say the words, me too.
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