Amber Heard sees some similarities between her story and Blake Lively’s.
Lively, 37, filed a lawsuit against her former It Ends With Us costar Justin Baldoni on Friday, December 20, accusing him of sexual harassment and orchestrating a smear campaign to damage her reputation. One of Baldoni’s publicists Melissa Nathan — who represented Johnny Depp during his and Heard’s 2022 defamation trial — is also named in the suit.
Heard, 38, reacted to the legal filing in a statement shared with NBC News on Monday, December 23.
“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. “I saw this firsthand and up close. It’s as horrifying as it is destructive.”
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Depp, 61, took legal action against Heard after she identified herself as a victim of domestic violence in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed. Although Heard did not mention Depp by name in the article, he claimed that her allegations of violence damaged his reputation and career. The former couple were married from 2015 to 2017.
A jury sided with Depp in June 2022, awarding him $15 million in damages. Heard has previously spoken out about how social media coverage of the highly-publicized trial impacted public opinion of her.
“Even somebody who is sure I’m deserving of all this hate and vitriol, even if you think that I’m lying, you still couldn’t tell me — look me in the eye and tell me — that you think on social media there’s been a fair representation,” she said during a June 2022 interview with Today’s Savannah Guthrie. “You cannot tell me that you think that this has been fair.”
Lively claimed in her legal filing that Baldoni, 40, hired a crisis communications team that included Nathan to orchestrate a “social manipulation” campaign to damage her reputation amid reports of drama between the pair on the set of It Ends With Us, which hit theaters in August.
Blake Lively Claims Justin Baldoni Texted About Ruining Her Reputation
Per The New York Times, the lawsuit included “thousands of pages of text messages and emails” which Lively obtained through a subpoena. In one message allegedly sent on August 2, a publicist working with Baldoni wrote to a crisis management expert, “He wants to feel like she can be buried.”
The text messages allegedly show that the crisis PR team worked to prevent stories about Baldoni’s behavior and boost negative stories about Lively. Per the NYT, Jed Wallace’s digital strategy amplified social media posts that supported their narrative.
“We are crushing it on Reddit,” Wallace allegedly texted.
Lively also alleged in the legal filing that a meeting was held to address her claims that there was a “hostile work environment” on the set of It Ends With Us. Some of her demands for the meeting 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.”
In a statement to the NYT Lively said of the lawsuit, “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.”
Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman slammed Lively’s “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious” accusations in a statement shared with Us Weekly, claiming that the actress filed the lawsuit to “fix her negative reputation” and “rehash a narrative” about the film’s production.
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Freedman further claimed that Lively made “multiple demands and threats” while filming It Ends With Us, including “threatening to not show up to set, threatening to not promote the film, ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met.”
In the wake of the bombshell lawsuit, several of Lively’s collaborators have voiced their support for her. A Simple Favor director Paul Feig shared a statement via X on Sunday, December 22.
“I’ve now made two movies with Blake and all I can say is she’s one of the most professional, creative, collaborative, talented and kind people I’ve ever worked with,” he wrote. “She truly did not deserve any of this smear campaign against her. I think it’s awful she was put through this.”
Colleen Hoover, who penned the novel of the same name that inspired It Ends With Us, has also stood by Lively.
“Blake Lively you have been nothing but honest, kind, supportive and patient since the day we met,” Hoover, 45, wrote via Instagram on Saturday, December 21. “Thank you for being exactly the human that you are. Never change. Never wilt.”
