Transcription
that were negative about Justin Baldoni. And the evidence shows that Justin was trying to protect the film and himself from those negative stories.
So, the narrative that Blake Lively is trying to create, that she was the victim and that Justin was orchestrating a smear campaign against her, is not supported by the facts. In fact, the evidence suggests the opposite.
The texts show that Justin was concerned about the impact of negative press on the film and on Blake's reputation. He was not the one trying to destroy her; rather, he was trying to protect both of them.
And as for the allegations of sexual harassment, they seem to be based on misunderstandings or misinterpretations of events. For example, the claim that Justin entered her trailer while she was breastfeeding is taken out of context. There were discussions about boundaries, and Justin was willing to respect those boundaries.
The reality is that this film was about serious issues, including domestic violence, and both actors had to navigate those themes. The fact that Blake wanted to take control of the editing and marketing of the film raises questions about her motivations.
In the end, this situation is complex, and the public deserves to see all the evidence to understand what really happened. That's why we're committed to making everything available for public scrutiny.
So, while Blake Lively may present herself as the victim, the evidence tells a different story. It's crucial for the truth to come out, and that's what we're fighting for.
And hit pieces about just, uh, in the Daily Mail and in TMZ. We have texts with the actual reporters that show that this is exactly what's going on.
The reporters at the Daily Mail, I saw the texts between the Daily Mail and you and some others in there. The Daily Mail reporter is saying that this Melissa Nathan, who was at the heart of it for Justin, she was the crisis PR person they brought in, did not bash Blake Lively to him and was not doing that.
You've got Blake's person saying, "I know it was Melissa," and you've got the Daily Mail saying, "Actually, no, Melissa is not doing it." That's exactly right.
Then you have Blake's person actually in an exchange with the Daily Mail reporter changing a story completely to go from "Was Blake Lively difficult on the set?" to "Does the cast and crew all hate Justin?" I mean, that's when you start to talk about a smear campaign. You start to look at it from that standpoint.
For the New York Times not to have looked at those text messages, not to have caught them, not to have bothered to ask questions about them, is just reckless disregard for the truth.
She does deny that. I should point out to the audience that in Blake's complaint, they deny that they have any sort of campaign hurting or hitting Justin. They say that explicitly, that they haven't. I realize you contest that, but that's a point of dispute.
I did find the Justin Baldoni text to which I was referring earlier. Let me just read it. It's him, um, let's see, expressing concerns that the PR people's written plan was insufficiently aggressive to, quote, "protect him." That's what Blake Lively's alleging.
They include a screen grab of a text in which he says to said team, "Morning, not in love with the document they sent. Not sure I'm feeling the protection I felt on the call."
Then it's this next text exchange that's made all the papers. In response, the two PR ladies start discussing that message from Justin, which was to one of them.
So Jennifer Abel says to Melissa Nathan, the crisis gal, "Okay, blah blah blah, I'm going to confidentially send you something he's texting me and Jamie on the side just to arm you before this call. I think you guys need to be tough and show the strength of what you guys can do in these scenarios. He wants to feel like she can be buried."
Then Melissa responds to Jennifer, "Of course, but you know when we send over documents, we can't send over the work we would or could do because that could get us in a lot of trouble. We can't write it down to him. We can't write, 'We will destroy her. We will go to this. We will do this. We will do that.' It has to look, he has to look at it as an information document for us to be armed with. That's all. Imagine if a document saying all the things that he wants ends up in the wrong hands. You know we can bury anyone, but I can't write that to him. I will be very tough."
Then, on top of that, they submit in the next paragraph a text from Justin to the PR team, Miss Abel, with a screen grab of Blake Lively. I'm sorry, not Bieber, Hailey Bieber.
It's an article about Hailey Bieber allegedly bullying women, and he writes to the team, "This is what we would need." So their allegation is everybody's talking about how he needs to feel better. "We will bury. We are totally capable of burying her. We're prepared to do that."
Then you got him saying, "Here's an example of what I would need," you know, dismissing her as a bully.
So, you know, you and I in other contexts might say all this is circumstantial evidence that supports the plan, though the execution of the plan, the actual articles we may not have in hand, but there's a supposition that they closed the deal.
But let's actually break it down because what you and I would do, because you're a great lawyer, and if you weren't amazing at what you do, you would be the best lawyer in town, that's for sure.
So let's break it down. The first thing they say, and you went over it, was this: the plan wasn't sufficiently aggressive for him. You'll find the word aggressive in the complaint. What you won't find is the word aggressive in the text message because he never wants something that's aggressive.
He wants something that's protective, and there's a big difference. Aggressive means you're going to go out and attack. Protective means if something comes out, I want to make sure I'm protected.
So he says the plan doesn't look sufficiently protective to me, meaning that you've got all these attack things in the plan. I don't want to attack anyone, right? I just want to make sure there's not attacks on us.
Everything in his words is protection, not planting stories, not doing anything offensive, not doing anything with bots or anything like that.
As you walk through that text message string, it's so taken out of context because what they're saying is we can't put this in writing to him, right? They can't put it in writing to him because he's expressed over and over and over again he doesn't want to go on the offensive.
He doesn't want to start, you know, attacking anyone. He wants to actually protect her. He actually wants to protect the film, and he wants to protect himself from negative press. That's exactly what he wants to do.
He wants to be protective. That's all through there. They realize that if they give him a plan that's an attacking plan or saying we're going to bury her or anything like that, he's going to say we're not hiring you. We don't want anything to do with this.
That's what they're talking about. This is all taken out of context, and if they would have included other text messages, you would have seen that to be the clear intention.
It's easy to pluck and hand and cherry-pick certain text messages that say certain things, but this is nothing of the sort.
Let's talk about the Hailey Bieber text, right? What he's talking about is this is what we need. We don't need to do this. We need actually people to come out and say she's a bully if that's what happens, right?
Like people will come out naturally, organically, and say that. Nobody planted the Hailey Bieber story. That was from a fan who put that out there.
What he's saying is what we need as a protective plan is that people come out and tell the truth. If Blake Lively is a bully, then they're going to come out and say that. That's what he wants as a plan, not to plant stories or anything else.
As a matter of fact, that's belied by all of the texts that he writes.
This goes back to my early-on question, which is, is it retaliation if somebody who's accused you of sexual harassment or, you know, acts that she finds unacceptable on a set?
If you deny them but say, "Okay, I'll implement your reforms," and then she, through a PR person, later comes out and starts hitting you publicly in the press, is it retaliation as a legal matter for you directly or through your PR agents to say she's a bully, this is a bad person?
I'm just not sure it is. If you are doing it to punish somebody for the sexual harassment allegations, that's one thing. But if you are in the position of denying, it's been settled, the person's admitted that everything's been okay since then, and then you have creative differences, she's trying to wrest control of the film and all that, and she's trying to undermine you publicly, then you kind of say you're kind of an... I don't know that that's even legally retaliatory.
It's actually not retaliatory. It's actually called providing a defense. It's called, like, the United States of America. Apparently, some people think they can just make any allegation they want, and you can't say, "No, that's not true," and you can't say, "No, that's not what happened."
But there's no public allegation at that time that he's engaged in any type of sexual harassment or anything like that.
So this whole idea of the smear campaign has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the protection from whatever she is going to say about him.
In fact, she used all of this to take over the film, and what he's complaining about, frankly, is sitting there having, as a director, having a film taken away from him, having editors who are real human beings, right, who have lives, you know, not being able to see the actual film.
You know, at the premiere, even at the premiere, they're going to see the film they edited for the first time because she took over the editing.
These are the things that are being complained about, right? And is he allowed to deny that he sexually harassed her? Absolutely. It's the United States of America. You can deny it.
There's not a smear campaign going on because she made those allegations. There's a protective campaign that's in existence if needed in case she starts to say things like, "Oh, well, he was a terrible director," or "Everybody hated him on set," or "He shouldn't have never been in the position he was in," or "He did a terrible job," anything that was negative like that, or "The film wasn't proper or appropriate," or even "Bring your florals."
You know, bring your friends. Like, we're going to a domestic violence movie, and she wants to turn it into a Barbie set.
So, like, those are the things that he wants to protect. He wants to protect her, frankly, even from her own, you know, kind of lack of social graces in knowing what this film is about and not turning it into a sideshow.
There's a message here. He always cared about the message. He wanted to protect the domestic violence victims and that community, and that's who he is as a person, and that's who he is as a filmmaker.
At the end of the day, he was willing to give up all of these rights to her because of her threats and because he thought the message was more important than his own, you know, than his own, frankly, his own career.
The timeline of discussions between Justin and the editors does show a guy who had ceded a lot to Blake Lively. He writes in February or March timeframe 2024, "I let her in. What's best for the movie is that I suck it up and I let her in."
They point out in this text exchange, one of the editors, that she's been getting what she wants for this entire movie. That's what Justin responds. The editor says, "I want Blake to feel like she's getting what she wants so we can move on from this need of hers."
He responds, "She's been getting what she wants the entire movie."
There's him acknowledging that Blake has approval over specific scenes. She redid the so-called nudity rider to get approval of what happens to the young version of her character, which isn't even played by Blake.
They lament in this text exchange, again posted at MeganKelly.com, that the editors and the director are not allowed to look at the actress's cut.
"Okay, we'll continue taking the high road," and the editors talking about how they have not seen the movie before it's about to be shown at Book Bonanza.
Her cut, Justin saying they were supposed to show ours, and then I was uninvited. The whole thing's pretty cruel and intense now.
This is, you know, this is the other side of the story. I want the audience to understand this is not, we're not taking a position here on who's right and who's wrong and what's out there.
But all you've been hearing is what a cad this guy is. He's been canceled, dumped by his agents, agents are disgusting at William Morris Endeavor. He had some award taken away from him, you know, that acknowledged his fight in the past for women, and he's doing a domestic violence movie.
Every single newspaper has got him out there as like a Harvey Weinstein type, for God's sake. This is the other side of the story, and there's more to it.
Up next, we're going to talk about what did happen in the press with respect to Blake Lively over the summer, and was his team behind any of it?
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Brian, on behalf of Justin, has filed a lawsuit against the New York Times for what he says is their irresponsible false reporting, where they just took Blake Lively's allegations, he says, and put them in their paper without context and without checking to see whether they were in fact true and accurate.
By the way, are you going to sue Justin Bieber, or are you going to sue Blake Lively too into oblivion?
Megan, wait till you see this lawsuit. Oh boy, for what?
I'm just going to tell you, you're going to have to wait and see. It's coming up soon, but it's all going to be based on evidence.
It's not going to be just a lawsuit. It's going to be the kind of lawsuit that is full of evidence, admissions, documents, which prove exactly what she did and how she bullied her way through the process to take over the movie and used her PR people to try and destroy Justin.
That's what it's going to be, you know, essentially about. But there will be a number of causes of action. There are a number of different defendants here.
Stephanie Jones will be all over this complaint. That is the PR agent who was supposed to be working for Justin Baldoni. There's, you know, Leslie Sloan, who's another PR agent, will be part of this lawsuit.
Blake Lively will be sued, and you know, we're carefully considering other people that will be sued also, and some as a surprise, Ryan Reynolds for sure.
Oh wow, he was involved in this to some extent. There was a meeting at their apartment at which, um, you allege that there were some senior production people who witnessed him allegedly berate Justin Baldoni to the point where these third parties felt upset that they didn't do more to stand up for Justin.
They thought Ryan Reynolds was so abusive. I think he would say, "I was standing up for my wife who'd been sexually harassed by this guy," and so on.
But what role did he have in all of this?
Well, you know, arguably, you know, for the first time at the premiere, you find out that Blake Lively tells people that all of a sudden he wrote a scene in the movie.
I mean, you know, shocking everybody, shocking Sony, shocking the production staff. It's the first time they're hearing it, and you know, Justin handles that really, really well and doesn't want to say she's a liar or doesn't want to say that's inappropriate or doesn't want to say that's part of someone else's job.
He treats her very well about that.
But you know what Ryan Reynolds, you know, has seemingly done, right, has used his power and influence to not only help Blake Lively take over this movie, but you know, he's used it, you know, on Deadpool and to make fun of Justin Baldoni.
Do you think, do you think that's what he... We have a clip where his character Deadpool, which is a very popular movie, acts more like the Justin Baldoni that I said turned me off with the, like, "I'm against toxic masculinity."
There's a question about whether he was taking a shot at Justin. Here's the clip.
Sorry about that. Come here, here, girl. Who are you? Well, I'm Deadpool, and I guess you're Deadpool too, but in here, everybody calls me Nice Pool.
Oh my goodness, wait till you see Lady Pool. She is gorgeous. She just had a baby too and can't even tell.
I don't think you're supposed to say that. That's okay. I identify as a feminist.
Right. What do you make of that?
What I make of that is that if your wife is sexually harassed, you don't make fun of Justin Baldoni. You don't make fun of the situation. You take it very seriously. You file HR complaints, you raise the issue, and you follow a legal process.
What you don't do is mock the person and turn it into a joke. There's no question it relates to Justin, and anybody that can watch that, watch that, the hair bun, you know, the comment about the pregnancy.
I mean, it's pretty obvious what's being done. But again, like, if somebody is seriously sexually harassed, you don't make fun of it. It's a serious issue.
The press for Blake did get bad in the summer of 2024, this past summer, and the one clip that went everywhere involved a young reporter who was interviewing, what I understand is Blake. You can't totally see it in this clip, was about eight months pregnant.
The reporter remarked on Blake's baby bump, and then Blake, I'm going to play it, but she snaps back about the reporter's alleged baby bump. The reporter did not have a baby bump. She wasn't pregnant and apparently had a history of difficulty in getting pregnant, which is why generally you just stay far away from something like that in an exchange.
But it went very, very viral, and people were saying Blake Lively was inappropriate and a bully, and it wasn't the first time.
Then we saw a bunch of videos. Here it is, uh, with reporter Kirsty Flaw.
"First of all, congrats on your little bump."
"Congrats on your little bump. Did you guys love wearing those kind of clothes?"
"Yeah, yeah, and you know, working in..."
"Wants to talk about the clothes, but I wonder if they would ask the men about the clothes."
"I would, yeah. It's not just the women that have the clothes get the conversation."
So there she was upset about being asked about the clothing. But here's Blake Lively in a different interview with People magazine talking about her clothing in this particular movie.
That exchange with Kirsty was not about this particular movie, but here she is totally fine with talking about wardrobe.
"I just really loved those patchwork-like jeans that you have, Magnolia Pearl."
"Oh yeah, those are my real-life jeans."
"Yeah, a lot of that is like your stuff. The boots were mine. I have a few of my husband's shirts and socks randomly in the movie. I have some of Gigi Hadid's sweaters in the movie. Yeah, I don't know, there's a lot of my stuff."
So the reason I'm showing this to the audience is that people started noticing that Blake seemed sort of bully-ish to this person who has far less power and stature in the industry than Blake does.
And why did she do that? It was when a woman's eight months pregnant. It is not abnormal to acknowledge it in an interview in a fun way, but she didn't seem to take well to it.
Flaw responded afterwards, saying that this whole thing got, you know, publicized. Your lawsuit saying she is in no way connected to any attempt to smear Blake Lively.
She doesn't know the PR people involved in this, and she said as follows: "I'm a journalist. This is what I do for a living. I would never accept money to jeopardize my integrity. I posted the video after I saw the movie, which I didn't like. I had a bad experience with Blake Lively at the time. I kind of had enough of Hollywood. I wasn't afraid of being canceled anymore, so I posted the video."
So that one, which I think is the most famous example, Brian, the journalist herself is saying she had absolutely no connection to Justin Baldoni or these PR agents that we've been discussing.
Is that basically your point? That would you say the vast majority, most all of the negative press generated about Blake in the summer did not actually originate with this PR team?
I would say all of it did not generate with this PR team. I mean, you know, since I've been involved in this case, I've gotten 50 either texts or emails or, you know, things to my firm's website, you know, more than 50 actually about this was my experience with Blake Lively.
We weren't allowed to talk to her on the set. We weren't allowed to ask for an autograph. We were, you know, instructed, you know, this way or that. We were treated like this.
I mean, and you know, these things aren't coming because we're doing an investigation. These are completely organic. These are based on people's real-life experiences.
In fact, you know, we've come across evidence that shows that even her own representatives knew that she was threatening and mean and tough and wanted to get her way.
This is not something that we wanted out there. It's not something that Justin wanted out there. In fact, it hurts the movie. It doesn't help the movie, and Justin knew that.
And Justin's, you know, this was about, you know, domestic violence and getting the message across.
I mean, I'll just, you know, give you, you know, a couple of examples. You know, in April and May of 2024, you know, when Blake Lively got her own cut of the movie, Justin said, you know, in a text message to his editors, "The editors and director isn't allowed to look at an actress's cut."
Got it? Well, here we go. We will keep taking the high road.
Even when Justin Baldoni's version, his cut, I'll call it, scored significantly higher than Blake Lively's cut, and still Blake Lively's cut was the one that was chosen.
He still didn't do anything publicly about that, and that was the one chosen, you know, because of the threats made by Blake Lively.
In fact, you know, we have a source that tells us that some of the cut that she had has some of Baldoni's version in it.
I mean, in June of 2024, Blake Lively took over the marketing for the film. Again, there's nothing in you, you know, nothing negative in the press or anything else like that.
And Justin just wants to take the high road.
In June of 2024, Blake's cut is chosen to be shown at Book Bonanza, and Justin and his editing team haven't even seen it.
I mean, they haven't even seen it, and that's in a text message that they're not allowed to.
Justin is shut out. He's giving notes as a director, as a studio, not as a director. He has not seen the locked cut of the film in July of 2024.
And in August 5th of 2024, Justin invites the editors to the premiere, but they can't be in the same room with Blake.
Justin replies, "We won't be in the same room. I was asked not to even come to the premiere."
The editors say it would be very hard for them to sit and watch the final film for the first time at the premiere, and Justin replies, "Okay, yeah, I haven't seen it either."
And you know, that's when you get to, you know, the voice note.
Even in September of 2024, without criticizing Blake at all, he says to the editors, "One day we'll finish our cut together. I would, of course, love to show the world the beautiful version we did."
He says in September of 2024, "The purpose of the movie, the amount of women who feel seen, that's why we did this, and it worked."
There are statistical scores on the movie showing that Justin's version, the Baldoni cut, scored higher than Blake Lively's cut with the under 35-year-old female demo.
Yes, and notwithstanding, you know, because of her threats that she wouldn't market the film, that she wouldn't do publicity, that's why her cut was released.
She had some problems in promoting the film. She now says that they were told they agreed with a marketing plan that would not lean into the sadness of domestic violence, that they would lean more into the female empowerment nature of overcoming it, and that therefore she didn't promote it in any way that was not on brand for what they had settled on.
When she promoted it, she also generated a new round of bad publicity for herself, and it's discussed amongst the PR agents saying this wasn't us, this was her.
Here's an example of Blake Lively being a bit too perhaps light-hearted in promoting a film about a very serious subject matter.
"In theaters now, so grab your friends, wear your florals, and head out to see it."
So if someone understands the themes of this movie, comes across you in public, and they want to really talk to you about this, how would you recommend they go about it?
Like asking to, like, my address or my phone number or like my location share?
I could just location share you, and then we could, uh, so we're making the hot chocolate cookies that Atlas makes for young Lily in our movie.
It ends with you guys. We talked about our movie not at all. Thanks for joining us in theaters August 9th.
Yeah, that's a wrap, guys. We got it.
So this is what, this is your point, Brian, that when she was out there talking about it, she seemed a bit too glib.
She was flippant. I mean, the public's not stupid, right? They see this, and you know, everybody is their own investigative journalist, and everybody has their own point of view.
The domestic violence community, I feel like, was outraged over it. And again, you know, this wasn't something that Justin pointed to like it was something Justin wanted to help with, but he couldn't help with it because she had already taken over the marketing campaign.
It was her marketing campaign at that point.
Going back to sort of the underlying dispute between the two of them, because I think a lot of people may be wondering why would Blake Lively work so hard to wrest control of this film away from him?
Like she's a rich person. She's going to get other movies. Like why would she have done this? Isn't it more plausible that she just didn't like him because of the 17 points she raised?
There's quite a bit in there. I'll read just a couple so people know what we're talking about.
It turned into a 30-point document that they got promises from Justin he would rectify. I'll just give a couple of examples, but this is what she was saying she was subjected to.
When in order to come back to work in January, she said there can be no more showing nude videos or images of women, including producers' wives, to break Blake Lively or her employees.
No more mention of Mr. Baldoni or Heath's previous pornography addiction or Blake Lively's lack of porn consumption.
No more discussions to Blake Lively and her employees about personal experiences with sex, including as it relates to spouses.
No more mentions to Blake Lively or her employees of personal times that physical consent was not given in sexual acts.
No more descriptions of their own genitalia to Blake Lively.
Right? So like all these are so ugly that it definitely leaves the reader thinking these guys are a bunch of jerks. No wonder she hated them.
So let's be really clear about what this 30-point list was. This 30-point list was never provided to Justin or Jamie or anyone else.
Never. And I challenge anyone to find an email or a text message where it was provided to them at all.
As a matter of fact, they categorize it. It's written in such a way it says no more, no more, like presuming that it happened already.
The only thing that was provided to them in writing was the 17-point list, which included things that they wouldn't do anyway.
If this 30-point list was important and that they had never seen or heard before, frankly, that showed up for the first time in writing in the complaint of all things.
If that was so important, why didn't they say, "No, unless you sign the 30-point list, we're not coming back?"
The 17-point list were natural, normal things that they wouldn't do anyway.
The 17-point list is a ruse, putting things in there like "no more" presupposes it happened before.
This is part of just the absolute misrepresentation of what the truth is. It's just not true that 30-point list was never shown to them.
Let me ask you about some specifics in here because, and I'm just going to go to the place that hurts.
I'll read you the ones that jumped out at me as not good, not good.
Page 48 of her complaint, on another occasion, Mr. Baldoni and Miss Lively were filming a slow dance scene for a montage in which no sound was recorded.
Mr. Baldoni chose to let the camera roll and have them perform the scene but did not act in character as Riley, which was the name of his character.
Instead, he spoke to Miss Lively out of character as himself. At one point, he leaned forward and slowly dragged his lips from her ear and down her neck as he said, "It smells so good."
None of this was remotely in character or based on any dialogue in the script, and nothing needed to be said because, again, there was no sound.
Mr. Baldoni was caressing Miss Lively with his mouth in a way that had nothing to do with their roles.
When Miss Lively later objected to this behavior, Mr. Baldoni's response was, "I'm not even attracted to you."
You want to take that one on?
Love to take that one on. You know what? Documents don't lie. People do.
So let's go to the footage. Let's take a look at the footage and let's see exactly what it shows.
And you know, let's talk about the, like, we're not making, you know, Bugs Bunny here, right?
Like this is a film about domestic violence. This is a film about sexual scenes. This is a film, you know, and if Blake Lively, you know, had objected to that, you know, why didn't she stop in that moment and say, "That's enough. That's it. I'm not doing this."
She doesn't need the money. She doesn't need any of that.
I mean, this is so taken out of context, and there's footage on all of this.
So, you know, you'll be able to see how Blake Lively reacted to it, what she said as a result of it, how she reacted after that scene, you know, as she was walking away from that scene.
There is footage of all of that, so you know all of this will come out.
You know, this is lawyers writing things in such a way that, you know, is as salacious as possible to try to have someone, you know, make up for their own, you know, problem with their own reputation, and she wants an excuse.
She wants to blame him for that.
Let's go to paragraph 52. There's a birth scene in the movie. When the birth scene, she's the mother.
When the birth scene was filmed, the set was chaotic, crowded, and utterly lacking in standard industry protections for filming nude scenes, such as choreographing the scene with an intimacy coordinator, having assigned nudity rider, or simply turning off the monitors so the scene was not broadcast to all crew on set and on their personal phones and iPads.
Mr. Heath and Mr. Baldoni also failed to close the set, allowing non-essential crew to pass through while Miss Lively was mostly nude with her legs spread wide in stirrups and only a small piece of fabric covering her genitalia.
Among the non-essential persons present that day was Wayfarer co-chairman Mr. Sarowitz, who flew in for one of his few set visits.
Miss Lively was not provided with anything to cover herself between takes until after she had made multiple requests.
She became even more alarmed when Mr. Baldoni introduced his quote, "best friend" to play the role of the OBGYN, when ordinarily a small role of this nature would be filled by a local actor.
She felt the selection of Mr. Baldoni's friend for this intimate role, in which the actor's face and hands were in close proximity to her nearly nude genitalia for a birth scene, was invasive and humiliating.
Here's my note, Brian. I circled it, and this is what my note reads: bad, bad.
So, Megan, when was this? Was this after the 17-point list was agreed to?
I don't know. I don't remember.
Well, let's put it this way. If it was, and her complaint says everything was fine moving forward, you have a little bit of a discrepancy in the document itself.
But again, you know, the greatest part of these complaints about onset behavior is this is all filmed.
This is, you know, there's no surprises here. This is all going to be on tape, and the truth is all going to come out of exactly what happened.
Miss Lively does not strike me as someone, you know, who's not in a position of power, right?
She is controlling her own destiny, and trust me, she's not someone who was taking advantage of any step of this project.
Well, that's one of the weirdnesses of this. She had more power than he did for sure. There's no question she had more power than he did.
So the thought of her just sitting there like, "Oh, poor me, my genitals are exposed," I mean, it just doesn't seem characteristic.
Even those interviews, you can see she's a very strong personality.
Now she wants us to believe she was this shrinking violet on the set, being exploited by all these mean guys like Justin Baldoni.
I don't know, Brian. I'm not sure whether this will be bought.
The other thing is that I do think we should spend a minute on is, you know, you referenced it in passing, but there are allegations in here that are already falling apart.
Like the thing about the breastfeeding on the set and how allegedly Justin and his partner Heath were barging into her trailer and like watching her breastfeed and looking at her naked breasts without her consent, which would be outrageous if true.
But you include in your complaint the following text exchange between Blake Lively and Justin, where he's acknowledging that she and her baby are sick in some way.
"I'm sorry, that's the last thing you needed right now. I pray it comes and goes with mild symptoms. I'm here for you anytime. Would love to check in. I know this week was a lot. I'm committed to making things run smoother."
She responds, "Our mistake. Molly did get the new pages at 11 last night. She didn't realize they were new, but you can always send them to me as well, please."
Then she adds, "I'm just pumping in my trailer if you want to work out our lines."
And he responds, "Copy, eating with crew, and we'll head that way."
She says, "Take your time." Then he says, "I'm here. I'll meet you in hair and makeup."
She says, "Okay, I'm sorry, just seeing this."
So she seems to be the one saying, "I'm pumping. If you want to come over, we can work out our lines."
Then the other thing is that nude birth scene, which I do think we should talk about because I was creeped out by this allegation too.
She alleges in her lawsuit that the partner Heath wanted to talk porn with her, and she felt very uncomfortable, and she was doing this birth scene, and he whipped out a picture or a video of a birth scene with his wife nude, and she felt like this is really inappropriate and uncomfortable.
You write in your complaint against the Times that this article, based on Lively's internal complaint, sensationally alleges that Mr. Heath had shown Lively a video of his naked wife, even labeling the footage she did as pornography.
This is patently absurd. The video in question was a non-pornographic recording of Heath's wife and baby during a home birth, a deeply personal one with no sexual overtone.
To distort the benign event into an act of sexual misconduct is outrageous and emblematic of the lengths to which Lively and her collaborators are willing to go to defame plaintiffs.
You include a screen grab from the video, which I have to say not only looks absolutely wholesome but made me wish I had had a home birth of my own kids in a bathtub in my husband's arms.
The way that, like, my point is simply, I'm starting to glean that this is not a truth-teller on the other side.
There is a complaint filed with the Civil Rights Division that is signed under penalty of perjury as a representative of Blake Lively that this is true and correct, and that complaint says this was Jamie Heath showing her pornography.
That take, I mean, I wish we could show the picture, but, you know, that's not pornography.
And it's part of the artistic creativity of a birth scene that they're talking about.
And it's not like he even played the video for her. It's the screenshot of the first screen.
It's anything but pornography.
So to swear under penalty of perjury that everything's true and correct and to call that pornography is going to really be an interesting deposition, isn't it?
Well, I think it's not going to go as well as the one between you and yours truly went.
Then there's the notion of her saying that Justin Baldoni called her sexy, called somebody else on the set sexy, and you've got in your complaint against the Times a text exchange between Blake and Justin in which Blake Lively raises the issue of how they can make her character look sexier.
She writes, "We'll show you both ways. It's something about a hat, but beanie is much sexier. It's the look feel TV without..."
And then goes on, "Especially with a crop top in the snow, it justifies the rest of the skin."
Your point is simply it's one thing for her in her lawsuit to say, "Oh my God, he's like calling her sexy," and then you see they were discussing what would make the character look sexy.
So it's like there really are some contexts to the discussions that have been blasted all over the New York Times and this lawsuit.
And I mean, my own feeling in seeing all this, Brian, is just like withhold judgment.
You know, we've been doing trial by media for years now, for years, and it doesn't work well.
It really doesn't. No one takes the time to go through a responsive document like the one you filed.
Most lawyers don't file a responsive document like you filed. They don't fight the PR war, and then they lose it.
So what's your prediction of where things go from here?
I mean, you know, my prediction is that this is going to get worse and worse for Blake Lively, and the reason it's going to get worse and worse is people are going to be more comfortable telling the truth.
What this is about is really the truth, and she's put Jamie Heath and Justin Baldoni in this position of being called sexual predators, sexual harassers.
They have no choice but to go all the way. No choice.
So, you know, we're going to go all the way, and the unique thing again in this case is going to be we're going to put every single text message out there.
We're going to put every email out there. We're going to put every document out there that's relevant to the case, not something that's disrespectful or otherwise would embarrass Miss Lively because that's not what we want to do.
But we want to make sure that people have the facts, and people can make their own determinations as to what happened.
Sure, could people have felt comfortable during filming? Absolutely. It's an uncomfortable situation at times when you have sex scenes and when you have domestic violence issues.
That's what you're talking about. But Justin is the kind of person that takes responsibility for it, that if he knows about something that someone feels uncomfortable with, he's willing to change.
He's willing to take responsibility for it. That's who he's about, right?
He's not a sexual predator, not even close.
For her to weaponize that and use that to take over this film makes me question what's really going on.
This power couple and this power dynamic are using that power to be able to try and really destroy someone's life.
You know, both Jamie and, you know, Justin are married. They have lives. You know, Justin has children.
You know, they have to listen and read about this. It's terrible. It's terrible for their careers. Their careers are over unless we fight back, and we will fight back like no one has ever fought back.
Do you think Ryan Reynolds was responsible for WME, which I think is his agency that he's represented by, dumping Justin?
I don't know because I don't know the facts of whether he's responsible or not, but certainly coincidence is an indicator of truth.
Finally, her lawsuit claims that she suffered too, claims that her hair company got attacked online unfairly by bots with no followers disparaging it.
She's got a line of hair care products that her booze company, she doesn't drink apparently, but she's got a booze company saying that she has been in bed unable to function for periods of time, that her children, her children, that Ryan Reynolds too has suffered, that they have suffered mightily as a result of this alleged smear campaign against them.
In response to what you say, I think they're suffering because they filed the lawsuit that is slowly being shown to be a fabrication.
I think that's where they're suffering, and I think that had they not filed the lawsuit, they wouldn't be suffering.
It's only going to get worse because as we unearth every single document and we put it out there for the public to see the truth, that's where the real suffering is.
They had no business trying to destroy people's lives, but when you back someone in a corner, give them no option, and call someone a sexual predator and make up that there's a smear campaign, what do you expect?
People aren't just going to cower to them because they're a power couple.
We will continue to watch it. Brian Freedman, so great to have you. Thank you so much for sharing so much with us.
Thank you, and so good to see you. I really appreciate you as a person and just love you so much, truly.
Likewise, we've been through quite a battle together, and I think we both emerged the better for it.
I am in your debt, as you know.
Well, the one and only Brian Freedman. He did not disappoint, right? He's a brilliant lawyer. You can see why I have him on retainer just in case anyone messes with me.
And I'd love to know your thoughts on this, right? I don't really know these characters. This is not my world, Hollywood.
But I remember seeing the videos of her last summer thinking, "Yeah, she sounds annoying."
When I read the Times article outing, you know, his alleged bad, I've never heard his name before. I have not seen the film.
All the thing that stood out to me was I don't understand this because she's the one in the power position here. It's Blake Lively and some guy who pretty much nobody knows, and she's on the set.
She's the star. How is it that she got so, you know, bullied and taken advantage of?
Then they're talking about how they had meetings with Ryan Reynolds. Like, again, he's way more powerful than any of the... What is Justin Baldoni's interest in alienating, picking on, harassing Blake Lively and alienating her husband, Ryan Reynolds?
Like, why would he do that?
Now, maybe he did, you know, maybe he did. Maybe there's something wrong with him.
There's a text in his messages where he talks about how we should talk about the fact that I'm neurodivergent, so maybe he is making excuses for bad behavior there.
Or maybe she is especially sensitive and prone to playing the victim and wanted things just exactly the way she wanted them and decided that she wasn't treated in the way she wanted to be, and she was going to make this guy pay.
Because you see him almost in the fetal position in these texts over and over, like, "Let's give her what she wants. Let's not upset her. Just let it happen."
Like, he's afraid of her. You can see in these texts, even with his text with the PR people, he is scared of her.
He knows what she can do to him.
And the question here is, what did he do to protect himself?
He definitely talked with PR agents about protecting him, and the question is, what exactly did those PR agents do?
They talked a big game. They did talk like big swagger and cowboys who could destroy her.
Did they actually do it? That I don't see in her allegations.
I see swagger, but I don't see the substance of it, other than some minor things which you would expect where they, you know, tried to get good PR going for Justin or do nice, you know, sort of messaging around the film.
All that's fair game.
Anyway, look, this is what I did. This is, I'm, as you know, I'm not feeling well. I was up till 2 a.m.
This is her complaint. Look at all my notes.
Okay, then this is Justin's complaint, and these are all my notes that I just went through, many of them with Brian.
This is the timeline of all the text messaging between Justin and those two editors, his so-called dream team, which we're posting on MeganKelly.com, and you can look through them all yourself.
Articles, packets, I'm neck deep in this weird industry that I really want nothing to do with, but it's the case everyone's been talking about.
As you know, I love Brian Freedman, so let me know what you think, Megan at MeganKelly.com, M-E-G-Y-N, MeganKelly.com.
We are back tomorrow with the fifth. See you then.