A former publicist for actor Justin Baldoni alleges that his present publicity workforce conspired to hurt her and steal her purchasers, together with their efforts to allegedly launch a “smear marketing campaign” towards his “It Ends With Us” co-star, Blake Lively.
In a lawsuit filed in New York Supreme Court on Tuesday, Stephanie Jones and her company Jonesworks accuse Baldoni’s publicist Jennifer Abel of breach of contract, claiming she violated her employment phrases by organising a competing agency and stealing paperwork and purchasers out from beneath Jones. It additionally accuses Abel of defamation, based on a duplicate of the suit.
Jones’ swimsuit, which was first reported by The New York Times, comes days after a separate complaint filed by Lively with the California Civil Rights Department towards a few of the similar defendants, alleging Baldoni sexually harassed her on set after which engaged in a retaliatory marketing campaign facilitated by Abel and disaster communications consultant Melissa Nathan. Nathan can also be named as a defendant in Jones’ grievance, together with Baldoni and his firm, Wayfarer Studios.
Lively’s allegations have sent shock waves throughout the trade. Her grievance has additionally put the position that disaster PR corporations play within the highlight, with many on-line reexamining a few of the adverse headlines surrounding Lively throughout the promotional tour for “It Ends With Us.”
Jones represented Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios from 2017 to August of this yr. Abel labored for Jonesworks from 2020 to August. Several of Abel’s textual content messages and emails, which the swimsuit mentioned had been obtained by way of a subpoena of Jonesworks, had been cited closely in Lively’s grievance.
The movie “It Ends With Us,” an adaptation of the favored Colleen Hoover novel, was launched in theaters in August. Lively portrays heroine Lily Bloom, whereas Baldoni performs her abusive romantic companion, Ryle Kincaid. Baldoni additionally tailored and directed the venture.
According to Jones’ swimsuit, in August Baldoni “started to concern that the elevated consideration being paid to him and the Film would trigger reviews of allegations about his on-set misbehavior to come back out.” Nathan and Abel subsequently started “to formulate a no-holds-barred technique to discredit and suppress any potential revelations about Baldoni’s on-set conduct” with out Jones’ data or approval, the swimsuit alleges.
“Behind Jones’s again, they secretly coordinated with Baldoni and Wayfarer to implement an aggressive media smear marketing campaign towards Baldoni’s movie co-star, after which used the disaster as a chance to drive a wedge between Jones and Baldoni, and to publicly pin blame for this smear marketing campaign on Jones — when Jones had no data or involvement in it,” the lawsuit states.
Abel and Nathan “leveraged their groups to create and perpetuate adverse content material about Lively on social media platforms reminiscent of Reddit and TikTok,” based on the swimsuit.
“At the identical time as Abel and Nathan had been working to guard Baldoni from adverse press consideration, they had been actively working their media contacts to plant adverse tales about Jones and Jonesworks,” Jones’ swimsuit states. They used “greater than a dozen faux social media accounts and darkish net accounts that defamed Jones and Jonesworks.”
Bryan Freedman, a lawyer representing Baldoni, Wayfarer, Abel and Nathan, didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark about Jones’ swimsuit on Tuesday.
In a earlier response to Lively’s grievance, Freedman wrote that Nathan’s firm, The Agency Group PR, “operated as any disaster administration agency would when employed by a shopper experiencing threats by two extraordinarily highly effective individuals with limitless assets,” referring to Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds. Freedman additionally referred to Lively’s claims as “utterly false, outrageous and deliberately salacious.”
In her swimsuit, Jones cited some textual content messages she mentioned she obtained from Abel’s work telephone after terminating Abel in August. Some of the texts Jones included in her personal swimsuit had been beforehand unpublished, together with one allegedly despatched by Abel that referred to as Baldoni “unlikeable and unrealistic as a number one man.”
“I can’t stand him. He’s so pompous. A males’s retreat throughout launch, is he loopy?!” one of many texts from Abel’s telephone mentioned. “He doesn’t want a retreat. He must be humbled.”
In the wake of on-set calls for from Lively asking Baldoni and Wayfarer CEO Jamey Heath to cease certain behaviors, together with getting into her trailer whereas she was in a state of undress and including unscripted sexual scenes into the movie, Jones alleged that she had initially deliberate to counter the rising media narrative round tensions between the celebs with “a constructive press technique.”
Instead, Jones alleges that Abel and Nathan applied “an aggressive media smear marketing campaign” towards her and Lively on the similar time on behalf of Baldoni and Wayfarer, amid their very own plans to determine a competing PR enterprise.
Jones’ “lawsuit seeks to lastly put a cease to their continued misconduct and to compensate Jones and Jonesworks for the injury Defendants’ conduct and scheme has inflicted,” it states. She is requesting a jury trial.
In the times since Lively’s grievance was filed, many in Hollywood — together with the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA and Sony Pictures Entertainment, the studio behind “It Ends With Us” — have issued their support for Lively.
Baldoni was dropped by his expertise company WME. He has not publicly addressed Lively’s grievance or Jones’ lawsuit.
