0:00

What does Tiffany Trump need a crisis

0:02

PR person for? Well.

0:09

Year"] Hello, hello, and welcome

0:11

back to A Bit

0:13

Fruity. I am Matt Bernstein.

0:16

I'm so happy that you're here. Happy

0:18

New Year. We are recording this

0:20

on New Year's Day, which I do

0:22

just want a little bit of

0:24

recognition for because I think that's commitment

0:26

to the craft. Thank you very

0:28

much. So I was home for the

0:30

holidays I was with my parents

0:32

and I was like, did you guys

0:34

hear about the Blake Lively Justin

0:36

Baldoni situation? And my parents are pretty

0:38

checked out from pop culture and

0:40

they were like, We're pretty checked

0:42

out from pop culture. We don't really care

0:44

about this. They're two celebrities.

0:46

My dad was like, I think

0:48

I might have seen something in

0:51

the New York post. Unfortunately, Unfortunately,

0:53

he does read the post. It's

0:55

something we're working on as a

0:57

family unit. And so I was

0:59

trying to explain to them why

1:01

the Blake Lively Justin Baldoni lawsuit

1:03

battle situation, which we will explain

1:06

to you in full as this

1:08

podcast continues, is what I think

1:10

is much bigger than a celebrity

1:12

drama. It's much bigger than rich

1:14

movie stars warring, even though that

1:16

is technically what it is. think

1:18

the implications are much bigger.

1:20

I think it hearkens back to

1:22

conversations we've had on this

1:24

podcast sexual abuse about Heard,

1:27

about celebrity PR campaigns, about

1:29

the Me Too movement,

1:31

and that is why I

1:33

wanted to sit down

1:35

and make an episode about

1:37

it. It's also perhaps

1:40

the most requested episode. I've

1:42

ever gotten. And so

1:44

I called up the only person that

1:46

I could imagine calling up to

1:48

do such an episode. Kat 10 barge

1:50

is back here, not just on

1:52

the podcast, but in my living room

1:55

recording with me in person, which

1:57

is so special. Cat is a journalist

1:59

at NBC. News. who does a

2:01

lot of coverage around these cases.

2:03

is brilliant. Cat, also also is

2:05

the is the first guest

2:07

I ever recorded with. The

2:09

first episode I recorded for

2:11

this podcast, which was the

2:14

second episode to ever go

2:16

up. Amber Heard and Amber perfect of

2:18

the Perfect Victim. was that was also

2:20

the first time and I I ever

2:22

met. And now she is one

2:24

of my... closest closest

2:26

friends closest friends. you

2:28

so much for being here. I

2:30

know that you have spent at this

2:32

point like hundreds of hours pouring over

2:34

the details of everything we're going

2:36

to talk about today. going an honor

2:38

to be here. I was so excited

2:40

when you asked me to talk about

2:43

this because I had so many thoughts this

2:45

because I did not have a venue

2:47

to express them, but this is the

2:49

perfect one. Oh vocal fry disclaimer

2:51

this is the perfect We're going to

2:53

do a vocal fry

2:55

disclaimer. Oh. We're going to do a

2:57

vocal fried disclaimer. In past episodes

2:59

with Cat, people have

3:02

left some really unnecessarily brutal

3:04

and cruel comments about

3:06

specifically Cat's vocal fry. And we we just

3:08

wanted to address this top of

3:10

the episode. If If you have

3:12

an issue with vocal fry

3:14

on this podcast. We don't care! We

3:16

don't care! We don't care! Do

3:18

you have any like don't

3:20

care. Do you have any

3:22

and on vocal fry and misogyny? It

3:25

is a it is a thing.

3:27

It is a known phenomenon that

3:29

people hate women's voices vocal fry is

3:31

the reason. fry is the reason. I

3:33

first is a real thing. I mean,

3:35

basically as I mean, basically as

3:37

long as I've been a public

3:39

figure, people have been coming

3:42

at me and saying that they

3:44

hate my voice and that

3:46

I have vocal fry. and that I

3:48

I actually did like a session

3:50

with with a therapist, but like

3:52

a vocal trainer. He was

3:54

like, was like You do have vocal

3:56

fry, fry but it's not something

3:58

that you can necessarily... fix? So there

4:01

is a link between vocal fry and

4:03

misogyny where people are more likely to

4:05

pick up on it in women, people

4:07

are more likely to use it as

4:10

an excuse to not listen to women,

4:12

but I also like I mean if

4:14

you really hate it so much then

4:17

I guess I get it because there

4:19

are just some things that people are

4:21

more sensitive to than others. Sure. But

4:24

I don't know. I think it's kind

4:26

of silly. We don't care. We don't

4:28

care. We don't care. We have real

4:30

things to talk about and when we're

4:33

going to talk about them. Oh, also

4:35

the vocal trainer or whatever it's called.

4:37

He said that the best way to

4:40

do something about it is to have

4:42

more confidence in what you're saying. And

4:44

I thought that was really interesting because

4:47

it almost makes it like more of

4:49

a psychological thing. And of course women

4:51

might be more likely to have vocal

4:53

pride because women are of course more

4:56

likely to be less confident in what

4:58

they're saying. But I feel like that

5:00

doesn't always apply to me because I'm

5:03

often very confident in what I'm saying.

5:05

I was going to say. And that

5:07

was when I was like, oh, we

5:10

can't fix this. Well, I want to

5:12

start this episode by saying that I

5:14

have never had great interest in Blake

5:16

Lively as a public figure. I didn't

5:19

watch Gossip Girl. If you have feelings

5:21

about that, feel free to express them.

5:23

I can take it. But Blake Lively

5:26

to me was someone who I knew

5:28

I knew best. for her Metgala appearances.

5:30

I think Anna Winter always places her

5:32

sort of towards the end of the

5:35

red carpet arrival schedule, because she always

5:37

has like the biggest most extravagant dresses,

5:39

and she's, of course, she's very beautiful,

5:42

extremely successful actress. That's kind of the

5:44

extent of my Blake Lively knowledge. And

5:46

then all of a sudden, this past

5:49

August, my social media feeds on Instagram,

5:51

on Twitter, you know, even though I

5:53

don't use it all that much. were

5:55

just filled with all of this anti-

5:58

Blake Lively content. You know, she is...

6:00

apparently work with work with on set.

6:02

She is a fake a fake feminist. mean

6:04

She was mean to an interviewer

6:06

in 2016, and it was just

6:09

like hit hit Lively. I hit on get away

6:11

I couldn't get away from it,

6:13

and I am who pays who pays

6:15

attention to this woman. and I And

6:17

I was very confused. And I feel

6:19

like maybe that's where this should begin.

6:21

Yeah, I mean I mean, I similarly

6:23

not watch Gossip Girl and

6:26

I think and I Lively in

6:28

my mind was always someone

6:30

I associated with Taylor Swift with

6:32

they're good friends. they're

6:34

she was part of the, Oh,

6:36

she was part of the squad. she's one

6:38

of the people in Taylor

6:40

Swift's inner circle who has

6:42

remained there the longest the longest.

6:44

And like Taylor Swift has a

6:46

song the where the characters

6:48

in the songs are the names of

6:50

Blake children. So they are really are really close.

6:53

me a That didn't give me a

6:55

particularly or or negative view of

6:57

her. She was just someone who existed. And

6:59

similarly over the summer, I I did

7:01

not care about the Hoover Hoover I

7:03

did not care about the movie. the

7:05

These are things outside my own pop

7:08

culture purview. It's like a different demographic.

7:10

But But to what to what

7:13

happened in 2022, the

7:15

social media feeds start getting

7:17

filled toward this this woman, point to the

7:19

point where I actually, in conversation with

7:21

a friend, she brought up like, oh,

7:23

I guess like a like a horrible person.

7:25

that made that made like, the the hairs on

7:27

the back of my neck stand up,

7:30

because whenever whenever a woman a woman. who is

7:32

facing this type of scrutiny and there's not

7:34

like a clear reason why she's a

7:36

bad person, it's just all of a

7:38

sudden a is saying that they don't

7:40

like this woman. don't like this woman me is

7:42

always a red flag red flag something weird

7:44

is happening. is You're right, it was right it

7:46

was a lot of know all of a sudden

7:49

you get called a mean girl called a

7:51

there's this sort of like political morally

7:53

righteous posturing to why you don't like

7:55

some famous woman it kind it kind of

7:57

comes out of thin air a lot

7:59

of time and when the volume of content

8:01

that's being put out, it's like

8:04

it reaches you by osmosis. It's

8:06

like maybe you didn't like Blake

8:08

Lively before, and maybe you aren't

8:10

even paying attention closely enough to

8:12

any of this content to really

8:14

pinpoint why you don't like her,

8:16

but suddenly the vibe has soured.

8:18

And there were certain things that

8:20

I picked up on about this

8:22

discourse as I was seeing it,

8:24

and I was not choosing to

8:26

engage with it, but when you're

8:28

on social media all the time,

8:30

you are fed things. And so

8:32

whether you want to engage with

8:34

them or not, they are entering

8:36

your field of vision and you

8:38

are thinking about them, and you're

8:40

reading and hearing what people have

8:42

to say. So some of the

8:44

things that stuck out to me

8:46

about reasons why people were mad

8:49

at Blake Lively and didn't like

8:51

Blake Lively, there were a couple

8:53

things that I previously knew about

8:55

her. There were some new reasons

8:57

why people didn't like her. that

8:59

struck me as a red flag

9:01

because they were the types of

9:03

rhetoric that I had encountered in

9:05

the past around other celebrity women

9:07

in really well-documented cases where there's

9:09

something more nefarious going on under

9:11

the surface. So the things that

9:13

I already knew about Blake Lively

9:15

were that she and Ryan Reynolds

9:17

got married on a plantation back

9:19

in 2012. Awful. Awful. And this

9:21

is something that Ryan Reynolds had

9:23

apologized for in 2020. and they

9:25

had acknowledged it. And so we

9:27

all kind of knew that that

9:29

was out there and pretty universally

9:31

people were like, this is a

9:33

bad look. Yeah, white people, we

9:36

got to stop with the plantation

9:38

weddings. Enough. And there were also

9:40

other things kind of being dredged

9:42

up from that time that I

9:44

didn't know about, like that Blake

9:46

Lively had a blog that romanticized

9:48

the antebellum. Okay. Not good. And

9:50

so these were things that. I

9:52

think we're already out there, but

9:54

we're sort of being resurfaced and

9:56

recommented on at this time, but

9:58

they were like Subplots to

10:00

what the biggest issues

10:02

were which was that Blake is a mean

10:04

girl Is that I mean that I

10:06

mean that felt like felt like broad

10:09

strokes the consensus was. That was like

10:11

crime. It wasn't any of

10:13

the racist the which is reprehensible. It

10:15

was definitely more broad

10:17

characterizations of her as

10:20

someone unlikable, which is

10:22

is speaking a pretty

10:24

gendered characterization because when

10:26

we talk about people

10:28

being mean, people girl is

10:30

the characterization for a

10:33

reason. We don't have

10:35

an equal characterization for

10:37

men. It's because she's a

10:39

she's a woman. also It's also

10:41

questionable because what does that even

10:43

really mean? Who was she

10:46

mean to? here you so here you

10:48

start to see things coming

10:50

out more specifically. You

10:52

start to see resurfaced clips from

10:54

interviews from seven, eight years

10:56

ago, where she's having sort of

10:58

tense back and forth forth journalists.

11:01

And you start to see things that

11:03

she said on the promotional tour, tour,

11:05

it ends with with people took issue

11:08

with. issue with. And ends with us was

11:10

the inciting factor that led to

11:12

all of this backlash. backlash. Exactly. This of of

11:14

like mania of anti Blake lively content is

11:16

all contextualized within this movie that came

11:18

out at the time It Ends With

11:20

Us, which is, I'm I'm going to tell

11:23

you everything I know about It

11:25

Ends With Us. This is going to

11:27

be a very quick segment be a

11:29

it's not that much, because it's it's But it's

11:31

a book. a movie So okay, it's a

11:33

movie adapted from the book by

11:35

Colleen Hoover. a book It is a book

11:37

about a violent, a domestically violent it

11:39

into a movie. they made it into a

11:42

movie. have And some people have Hoover books as

11:44

Hoover books as romanticizing domestic violence.

11:46

That's kind of the extent of

11:48

my knowledge. of my knowledge. Yes. I am

11:50

not the type of person who would

11:52

read a a calling Hoover book, but again, I

11:54

I was aware of them because

11:56

they were such a popular phenomenon online. you

11:59

characterize what? that means though for

12:01

both me and anyone listening who's unfamiliar

12:03

with Colleen Hoover's books? The genre of

12:05

these books it's like I think it's

12:08

something that traditionally has been known as

12:10

like a beach read which is to

12:12

say there are books that are aimed

12:14

toward women and they are books that

12:17

are supposed to be really engaging like

12:19

really mainstream open to a mainstream body

12:21

of readers they're not like super intellectual

12:23

books they're just like fun, light, quick

12:26

reads, which is kind of weird with

12:28

the topic of this book. Sure. Because

12:30

it is a book about domestic violence,

12:32

but I think that's part of why

12:35

people took issue with it is like

12:37

there's something very unserious about the way

12:39

that domestic violence is being framed within

12:41

this material. So I did watch the

12:44

movie like a week ago, and I

12:46

thought it was interesting from the way

12:48

that I had heard people describe it.

12:50

I was really unsure of how domestic

12:53

violence was going to be portrayed. And

12:55

I do think that there are some

12:57

things about the portrayal of it within

12:59

the source material that seem to me

13:02

realistic. And then there are other things

13:04

about the portrayal that I think are

13:06

really unrealistic. And I think that's what

13:08

people took issue with is it has

13:11

like this sort of happy ending where

13:13

the character who is being abused in

13:15

this relationship when she comes forward to

13:17

the sister of her abuser who is

13:20

her best friend, she's met with so

13:22

much support and validation. And when she

13:24

comes forward to her family and friends,

13:27

she receives all this support and validation,

13:29

she gets kind of rescued by a

13:31

former partner, and at the end, it's

13:33

like a happy ending where the abuser

13:36

just kind of is like leaving her

13:38

alone and she and the baby get

13:40

to go on and like... have their

13:42

fairy tale ending. And I think that

13:45

that sequence of events is unrealistic for

13:47

a lot of people who experience domestic

13:49

violence. That's why I think people took

13:51

issue with the source material and it's

13:54

deeply ironic. that this

13:56

is the text real

13:58

all of these real

14:00

life events are

14:03

being juxtaposed with this

14:05

story about domestic

14:07

violence that's been heavily

14:09

criticized. Yeah, a little a

14:11

little bit of foreshadowing, you know,

14:14

and I promise we'll keep this

14:16

moving. You guys know brevity is

14:18

not my strength, nor is it not

14:20

We can yap forever, but can yap

14:22

that people, a particular piece of

14:24

piece of anti-blank lively, anti -Blake

14:26

Lively content that's circulated

14:28

heavily. On the cover

14:30

of the book, it ends with us. are

14:33

There are flowers. as a Flowers

14:35

were a visual motif were heavily

14:37

integrated into the marketing campaign

14:39

around the movie. Oppenheimer, pink, black. Oppenheimer, is

14:41

now trying to be this movie is now

14:43

trying to be this now of

14:46

in -person event now that you

14:48

do with your friends and

14:50

you dress up it's themed. I don't think that

14:52

don't think that that marketing

14:54

tactic should have ever been applied

14:56

to this movie. movie, but nonetheless.

14:58

it was. was there was

15:01

an interview where Blake is

15:03

doing promotion and she

15:05

is like, get get your florals

15:07

on and come on down

15:09

to the movies. to the And people

15:11

were like, why are you

15:13

talking about a movie this this

15:15

subject matter that way? way? And on And

15:18

on its face, I I was

15:20

like, yeah, I mean, mean, it's pretty

15:22

tasteless, but also as with

15:24

everything, the criticism went criticism far. too

15:26

far. was really weird to

15:28

me to me because this extreme criticism

15:30

of of Blake Lively in regards to to

15:32

whole situation struck me as

15:35

really as really odd really targeted

15:37

because I feel like compared

15:39

to how people talk about

15:41

and react to other press

15:43

cycles for other movies that

15:45

discuss sensitive topics, I was I

15:47

was like, why is everyone

15:50

focusing and hyper fixating on

15:52

this one thing that this

15:54

woman said about this movie movie?

15:56

Like, have been. been tons of

15:58

of popular movies. that deal

16:00

with issues of domestic violence, maybe

16:02

not as heavily as this one.

16:04

But like, for example, I remember

16:06

the movie Hit Ann, which like

16:09

came out also last year and

16:11

was super popular and had Glenn

16:13

Powell. The main female character in

16:15

that movie is also experiencing an

16:17

abusive relationship. And similarly, like, everyone

16:19

loves Glenn Powell and they, you

16:21

know, joked about not that necessarily,

16:23

but like the press tour for

16:25

the movie was super fun and

16:27

light-hearted and people didn't. to my

16:30

knowledge, take issue with that. So

16:32

it just struck me as weird

16:34

that people were choosing to be

16:36

so critical about this movie and

16:38

Blake Lily specifically, and it was

16:40

just like, why do people care

16:42

so much about this? The other

16:44

thing that struck me as weird

16:46

is I think that sensitivity around

16:48

domestic violence is really important, but

16:51

it's not something that I've come

16:53

to expect from the internet or

16:55

from people in general. Generally speaking,

16:57

people are not sensitive around topics

16:59

of domestic violence. So it was

17:01

almost like this wasn't an opinion

17:03

that people would normally have unless

17:05

they were seeing it everywhere and

17:07

just kind of parroting what they

17:09

were seeing online. Like it did

17:12

not feel that organic to me

17:14

because if people really cared so

17:16

much about sensitivity around domestic violence,

17:18

you would expect that to be

17:20

consistent. around other topics revolving around

17:22

domestic violence. And it's not. It's

17:24

like consistently the opposite. And so

17:26

I was like, what is it

17:28

that is really driving all of

17:30

this hatred toward Blake Lively? Because

17:33

the tick talk that I know

17:35

is not a space where people

17:37

are respectful. around narratives and stories

17:39

and cases involving domestic violence. So

17:41

I was like, there has to

17:43

be something else, and maybe it's

17:45

just the fact that this is

17:47

so viral, that when viral things

17:49

happen, like, virality begets virality. If

17:51

there's a trending topic, people online

17:54

are gonna talk about it, and

17:56

they're gonna parrot what the most

17:58

popular. opinion is. it

18:00

And it becomes

18:02

a cascade of

18:04

the same opinion, the same the same

18:06

opinion, the same outrage and over

18:08

and over and over again. was And

18:10

that was from the beginning, sort

18:12

of my take on this whole

18:14

thing thing, was like, like, is more

18:16

about just repeating the narrative online

18:18

than it is about having a

18:20

real conversation around around sensitivity and

18:23

domestic violence. violence. you and you of

18:25

organic of inorganic, and and organic... as

18:27

it turns out, this was

18:29

not. was a was a very

18:31

good The New York New York Times

18:33

publishes a lengthy report about

18:35

how Blake Lively has filed

18:37

a complaint against Justin

18:39

the studio the studio that he

18:42

owns, which produced this movie called

18:44

Wayfarer Studios, his

18:46

PR basically basically alleging that

18:48

not only was there all

18:50

sorts of sexual misconduct

18:52

and harassment. by Justin and his

18:54

producer on set, set. but

18:56

also that there was a

18:58

coordinated smear campaign against

19:00

Blake Blake Justin and his

19:02

producer bought and paid for.

19:04

for and put into action that

19:07

resulted in so much of this

19:09

viral content taking up so much

19:11

space up even the most unsuspecting

19:13

internet the mind. unsuspecting internet

19:15

I was like, suddenly I was like, that's why

19:17

I why I saw all this

19:19

stuff that I didn't care about,

19:21

to be honest. be honest. Also, I just

19:23

feel this way so many times

19:25

when I see when I over a

19:27

celebrity's a I don't care if Blake

19:29

Lively is a mean girl. care if I don't know

19:31

if Flake is is a mean girl know if

19:33

mean girl even entails, but if Flake

19:35

Lively is not a nice person. but if Blake

19:37

care is not a nice don't

19:39

i care. I don't, I don't, just

19:41

just... Maybe this is a bad tangent. I'm gonna

19:44

cut this tangent. this thing that

19:46

I think about, which I think

19:48

is super relevant I it gets

19:50

brought up all the time, because

19:52

the gets loves how Robert Pattinson

19:54

how particular in interviews for press

19:56

for movies. The The loves this

19:58

idea that Robert Pattinson would bash Twilight

20:00

and that he would make fun

20:03

of Twilight and the internet loves

20:05

that he would like tell these

20:07

like tall tales to reporters and

20:09

then later he came out and

20:11

said that he made it all

20:13

up because he felt that the

20:15

interview questions were so vacuous and

20:17

he was like disassociating things that

20:19

like quite frankly are rude but

20:21

funny. And when a man like

20:23

Robert Patinson conducts himself like this

20:25

in interviews, people love it. They

20:28

respond so positively to it. But

20:30

if a woman were to do

20:32

the same thing, then she's called

20:34

a mean girl. And that to

20:36

me gets at the heart of

20:38

this issue, which is that it

20:40

is a gender double standard that

20:42

un-like disproportionately penalizes women for behavior

20:44

that is rewarded in men. Yeah,

20:46

Rachel Ziegler comes to mind. Yes.

20:48

She criticized the source material of

20:50

Snow White. you're ungrateful and by

20:52

the way you're not even white

20:55

it gets off the rails really

20:57

fucking quickly it happens to female

20:59

celebrities all the time it happened

21:01

to Anne Hathaway like it happens

21:03

to Jennifer Lawrence over and over

21:05

again female celebrities are just held

21:07

to a completely different expectation that

21:09

is totally outsized from the reality

21:11

of what's happening which is that

21:13

as you were saying It doesn't

21:15

really matter how Blake Lively conducts

21:17

herself in these press interviews. It's

21:20

not that important of a subject,

21:22

but people choose to endlessly scrutinize

21:24

the way that celebrity women conduct

21:26

themselves. And it's like, people have

21:28

said this, but they're taking their

21:30

cherry picking examples from a really

21:32

long career, and they're looking at

21:34

encounters where they're like... pulling out

21:36

examples of the worst behavior they

21:38

can find. And I find that

21:40

that practice in itself tends to

21:42

disproportionately affect women, because in her

21:45

decade-plus long career, of course there

21:47

are going to be times when

21:49

she's not perfect. Of course there

21:51

are going to be times when

21:53

she's responding in a way that

21:55

people can take issue with. She's

21:57

a human being, but she's held

21:59

to this inhuman standard. of respectability.

22:02

I would like to like to break quick

22:04

break show to the show out give a

22:06

shout out to this

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you.com over to

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rocketmoney.com let's get back to

23:40

the episode. Should we talk about

23:42

the we talk about the complaint? Yeah.

23:44

So the complaint is 80 pages long,

23:46

and Kat and I both read

23:48

it. We are more inclined to

23:50

reading things like this than the

23:52

source material by Colleen Hoover. That's

23:55

just where our interests lie. our Lucky

23:57

for you, we are both steeped

23:59

in... in... Complaint information. Before we

24:01

talk about the complaint, I want

24:03

to introduce to you the cast

24:05

of characters so that you're familiar

24:08

with them. Kat, tell me if

24:10

I have this right. Blake

24:12

Lively, female lead in this movie.

24:14

Justin Baldoni, her co -star and

24:16

male lead in the movie. Jamie

24:18

Heath, who is the producer of

24:20

the movie and a close sort

24:22

of longtime collaborator of Justin

24:24

Baldoni's. They have a podcast together

24:26

called Man Enough where they preach

24:28

about healthy masculinity, which the

24:30

irony of these things will soon

24:32

collapse. Jennifer Abel, who is Justin

24:35

Baldoni's publicist and Melissa Nathan

24:37

and her PR firm, Tag. Blake,

24:39

Justin and Jamie all have like

24:41

kind of varying degrees of

24:43

ownership over the movie because Justin

24:45

Baldoni is the male lead in

24:47

the movie. He plays the role

24:49

of the abusive character, but

24:51

he's also the director of the

24:53

movie. And he owns his production

24:55

company Wayfarer, which bought the

24:57

rights to the book to make

24:59

the movie in the first place.

25:02

So he's kind of the

25:04

driving force behind this entire production.

25:06

And he has one of the

25:08

biggest leadership roles on the set.

25:10

And he's in this position

25:12

of power that is outsized compared

25:14

to Blake Lively. She also I

25:16

believe has a producer credit

25:18

on the film, but she isn't

25:20

the director. She isn't the person

25:22

who has the rights to

25:24

the book. And I think that

25:26

a lot of people have sort

25:28

of put them on like

25:31

similar playing field when they consider

25:33

this movie. But Justin Baldoni has

25:35

all of these different hats that

25:37

he's wearing throughout this production.

25:39

Yeah. And some people actually I

25:41

would argue even place Blake on

25:43

a higher pedestal because she's

25:45

more famous and rich. But it's

25:47

important to note that Justin Baldoni

25:49

owns the studio that's putting

25:51

this on. And as far as

25:53

I'm aware is accountable to nobody.

25:55

He also has really wealthy backers

25:58

like there is is this

26:00

character who will come into play

26:02

later who has, I I believe like billion

26:04

dollars who is is like funding Justin Maldoni.

26:06

So Yes, like like Blake Lively and

26:08

Ryan Reynolds have like a a lot

26:10

of wealth and a lot of

26:12

power. but But when it comes

26:14

into play, has the most power

26:16

on this set? Blake Lively

26:18

is arguing that Justin Baldoni is

26:20

the one who has the power.

26:22

who has the power. filming process for

26:25

this movie this basically happens in

26:27

two parts, which are pre

26:29

and post and post writers and The

26:31

first part of the filming

26:33

happens in 2023, before the

26:35

strikes occur and shut down

26:37

production. And while they

26:39

are taking a break from filming

26:41

and while the strikes are going

26:43

on, Blake Blake and Ryan raise all

26:45

of these concerns about behavior on set. sexual

26:48

misconduct. and his Justin and

26:50

his producer, calls Heath. Blake calls for

26:52

a meeting she they all reconvene where

26:54

she makes a list of all

26:56

of these things that have been happening

26:58

on set. just And it's not just

27:00

like, you know, no sexual harassment like

27:02

she makes makes a bullet point of very

27:04

specific things that have happened have she

27:06

says says. happen again. and And, you

27:09

know, basically puts all of these guardrails

27:11

in place for when they return

27:13

to filming, you know, say the second

27:15

half of the film or however

27:17

they filmed it. This list is in

27:19

the the complaint and things things on, let

27:21

me pull it up, me pull it up. No

27:23

more showing nude images or

27:25

images of women, including producer's wife

27:27

to Blake Lively to Blake her

27:30

employees. or her employees. Two no more No

27:32

more mention of Baldoni's or

27:34

Mr. Heath's previous quote pornography

27:36

addiction or Blake Lively's

27:38

lack of pornography consumption to

27:40

Blake Lively or to other crew

27:42

members. other crew members. Three, no more discussions

27:44

to Blake Lively Lively and or her

27:46

employees about personal experiences with

27:48

sex, including as it relates

27:50

to spouses or others. or But

27:52

no more inquiries by by Mr.

27:54

to Blake Lively's trainer without

27:56

her knowledge or consent to

27:58

disclose her weight. her weight. Some of

28:00

them get extremely specific. Number eight

28:02

is no more mentions by Mr.

28:04

Baldoni of him, quote unquote, speaking

28:07

to Blake Lively's dead father. There

28:09

was one that was basically like

28:11

no more hours long meltdowns from

28:13

Justin in Blake's trailer, which just

28:15

felt like extremely pointed. Yeah. So

28:17

this meeting convenes and they get

28:20

back to filming. They finish filming

28:22

the movie in early 2024. The

28:24

movie comes out. in the summer

28:26

of 2024, and really the second

28:28

part of this complaint is about

28:30

how she alleges that Justin Baldoni,

28:32

Jamie Heath, and their studio hired

28:35

the same PR firm that Johnny

28:37

Depp hired when he was in

28:39

litigation with Amber Hurd to create

28:41

a smear campaign against Blake Lively

28:43

out of fear that she would

28:45

make public her allegations against him

28:47

and the way that he behaved

28:50

on set. And within this sort

28:52

of like list of cease this

28:54

behavior that's included in the complaint,

28:56

it also includes you won't retaliate

28:58

against Blake Lively for bringing any

29:00

of these issues to your attention.

29:02

And in the complaint, they have

29:05

a copy of this that has

29:07

Jamie Heath's signature on it. Now,

29:09

later down the line, the lawyer

29:11

representing Baldoni has suggested that this

29:13

list isn't exactly what they saw

29:15

during the meeting or that there

29:18

has been some sort of like

29:20

different characterization of some of this

29:22

stuff, but Everyone agrees both parties

29:24

agree that a meeting did take

29:26

place that concerns were raised and

29:28

that afterward Blake has said like

29:30

things on set cooled down and

29:33

everything was fine afterwards Indicating that

29:35

in her view things weren't fine

29:37

before this meeting to me while

29:39

I was reading this You have

29:41

like the documentation that's attached and

29:43

then within the complaint you have

29:45

sort of like a narrative retelling

29:48

of some of the allegations from

29:50

on set and some of them

29:52

really stood out to me at

29:54

like shocking. For example Blake alleges

29:56

that during the filming of a

29:58

scene where her character is giving

30:01

birth she says that initially the

30:03

character was supposed to be wearing

30:05

clothes as one typically does and

30:07

that while they're filming Justin who

30:09

is the director and Jamie who

30:11

is one of the producers are

30:13

like actually we want your character

30:16

to be naked while she's giving

30:18

birth and Blake says that she

30:20

was uncomfortable with this. So According

30:22

to the complaint and this is

30:24

corroborated by Justin and Jamie, Jamie

30:26

Heath like pulls out a video

30:28

of his wife giving birth and

30:31

like shows it to her and

30:33

is like, no, look, my wife

30:35

was naked when she gave birth

30:37

to our child, so it's totally

30:39

fine. And then Blake. compromises by

30:41

having clothes on like under her

30:43

chest. She's like nude in this

30:46

scene. And she alleges in the

30:48

complaint that Justin had one of

30:50

his friends come onto the set

30:52

and play the OBGYN during this

30:54

delivery scene. Crazy. And also she

30:56

alleges that it wasn't a closed

30:59

set. During the scene so while

31:01

she just has like a tiny

31:03

strip of material covering like her

31:05

genitalia There are all kinds of

31:07

people walking in and out of

31:09

the background She's like totally visible

31:11

and that they had live feeds

31:14

of what was happening on screen

31:16

Going to crew members iPads so

31:18

people are able to like there's

31:20

just so much access to this

31:22

scene that's kind of been thrust

31:24

upon her where she wasn't prepared

31:26

to be basically like partially nude.

31:29

And also she alleges that this

31:31

billionaire who backs Justin financially is

31:33

flown in that day to come

31:35

watch this scene. So some of

31:37

the stuff that's being alleged in

31:39

this complaint, I think, is it's

31:42

shocking. And I think that like

31:44

it undergirds this idea of sexual

31:46

harassment taking place on set. And

31:48

it's something that is really lost

31:50

in a lot of the discourse

31:52

around. Well, was Blake lively like

31:54

being nice to interviewers like seven

31:57

years ago? And then you find

31:59

out that this is the type

32:01

of stuff that's being alleged juxtaposed

32:03

with what people were taking issue

32:05

with Blake for. It paints a

32:07

much darker picture. Yeah, absolutely. I

32:09

mean, another one that I pulled

32:12

here, this is from a complaint.

32:14

They were talking about how. Justin

32:16

Baldoni wanted to add sort of

32:18

gratuitous sex scenes that weren't part

32:20

of the script. The complaint says,

32:22

when Miss Lively objected to these

32:24

additions, Mr. Baldoni insisted he had

32:27

added them because he was making

32:29

the film, quote, through the female

32:31

gaze. Although he agreed to remove

32:33

the scenes, he made a last-ditch

32:35

attempt to keep one in which

32:37

the couple orgasm together on their

32:40

wedding night, which he said was

32:42

important to him because he and

32:44

his partner climbed simultaneously during intercourse.

32:46

Mr. Baldoni then intrusively asked Miss

32:48

Lively whether she and her husband

32:50

climbed simultaneously during intercourse, which Miss

32:52

Lively found invasive and refused to

32:55

discuss. Here's another. Mr. Baldoni also

32:57

routinely degraded Miss Lively by finding

32:59

back channel ways of criticizing her

33:01

body and weight. A few weeks

33:03

before filming began and less than

33:05

four months after Miss Lively had

33:07

given birth to her fourth child,

33:10

Miss Lively was humiliated to learn

33:12

that Mr. Baldoni secretly called her

33:14

fitness trainer without her knowledge or

33:16

permission and implied that he wanted

33:18

her to lose weight in two

33:20

weeks. Mr. Baldoni told the trainer

33:22

that he had asked because he

33:25

was concerned about having to pick

33:27

Miss Lively up in a scene

33:29

for the movie, but there was

33:31

no such scene. We could spend

33:33

hours just reading the complaint. But

33:35

one thing that is notable, fast

33:38

forward, last night, at like three

33:40

in the morning I got home

33:42

from my New Year's party and

33:44

I was like scrolling Twitter drunk

33:46

in bed and I saw that.

33:48

Justin Baldoni has now sued the

33:50

New York Times for $250 million

33:53

for publishing this. And I think

33:55

that what's important to note is

33:57

that he never refutes anything

33:59

that New York

34:01

Times published. Times find

34:03

that one of the most

34:05

fascinating aspects of how this

34:08

is all playing out playing in

34:10

the way that publicists and

34:12

lawyers sort of frame things,

34:14

because when Blake when

34:16

Blake Lively filed this complaint,

34:18

Justin Baldoni's lawyer lawyer a

34:21

broad denial, which is typical.

34:23

You see this in, I

34:25

would say, most cases involving

34:27

celebrity allegations. And then And then

34:29

night, when Justin and all the

34:31

all the other people in the

34:33

case, are who are all represented

34:35

by by same lawyer, Brian When they

34:37

file their suit against the New

34:39

York Times, they they go into explicit

34:41

detail about some of the things

34:44

that are alleged, and they're kind

34:46

of saying like, oh, well, this well, this

34:48

conversation happened, but it wasn't really

34:50

inappropriate. Like they're kind of acknowledging Some

34:52

of this happened, but it's being

34:54

framed incorrectly. And so And so there's a

34:56

lot of really interesting, I I think,

34:58

back and forth in how these

35:00

legal documents and these statements to the

35:02

public. to the serving as a meta

35:04

narrative that in in itself is like

35:07

a form of publicity designed

35:09

to make you think, okay, Justin Baldoni. didn't

35:11

do anything wrong, he denies everything. But

35:13

if you are like us and you

35:15

like read for fun, then you're like, you're

35:17

this is actually different. This is more

35:19

nuanced. They're sort of acknowledging that some

35:21

of this happened. They're just trying to

35:23

sort of reclassify it. to sort of So

35:25

the first half of the complaint

35:27

really focuses on all of the bad

35:29

bad on set. on And the second

35:32

half is about the smear campaign, which

35:34

ensued. you Would you like to take

35:36

the here I feel like this is

35:38

your bread and butter. bread and is

35:40

a really fascinating kind of peek

35:42

under the hood of what

35:44

happens in the world of Hollywood

35:46

of Hollywood PR it's stuff that we

35:48

normally would not be privy

35:50

to be privy behind the scenes scenes

35:52

from from the The sexual harassment that

35:54

Blake lively alleged you had kind

35:56

of like a war of

35:59

the of the PR happening where Justin Baldoni's

36:01

initial publicist, who is a woman

36:03

by the name of Stephanie Jones,

36:05

who runs her own really successful

36:07

PR firm called Jones Works, she

36:09

represented Justin and Wayfair, his studio,

36:11

for years. Now earlier this year,

36:14

one of the women who worked

36:16

for her Jennifer Abel, who is

36:18

Justin's current publicist, she previously worked

36:20

for Stephanie Jones, but she left

36:22

and formed her own sort of

36:25

PR firm. Stephanie Jones alleged in

36:27

a separate lawsuit that was filed

36:29

after Blake's complaint that Jennifer committed

36:31

like contract violations and was stealing

36:33

clients out from under her and

36:36

one of those clients is Justin

36:38

Baldoni. There's a lot of lawsuits

36:40

here and I hope you're taking

36:42

notes because there will be a

36:44

test. It's really complicated and it's

36:46

so interesting because I think that

36:49

normally the assumption is like oh

36:51

the public wouldn't care about this

36:53

type of stuff but this case

36:55

is really showing that people are

36:57

just as interested in the behind-the-scenes

37:00

publicists as they are in some

37:02

of these like minor celebrity figures.

37:04

Well, because I think that people

37:06

are realizing, and for me the

37:08

moment that I realize this was

37:10

the amber herd trial, how much

37:13

public opinion first about celebrities, but

37:15

also perhaps about bigger things, perhaps

37:17

about politics. can be shaped by

37:19

these teams of PR people who

37:21

are run by people who we

37:24

don't know. I didn't know who

37:26

Jennifer Abel was two weeks ago.

37:28

Right. I didn't know who Melissa

37:30

Nathan was two weeks ago. And

37:32

yet millions of people online have

37:35

formed opinions and made viral content

37:37

based off of these opinions that

37:39

have been shaped by a group

37:41

of people who are just in

37:43

a slack channel with each other

37:45

deciding how they're going to shape

37:48

a public narrative. As a journalist

37:50

who has covered entertainment topics throughout

37:52

my career, I feel like I'm

37:54

more privy to sort of the

37:56

machinations of how Hollywood PR and

37:59

PR in general works than members.

38:01

of the general public and I

38:03

think that there's kind of like

38:05

an unintended byproduct of all of

38:07

this where I think that it's

38:10

good that people are able to

38:12

see how some of this stuff

38:14

works behind the scenes, because a

38:16

lot of how it works is

38:18

you have publicists reaching out to

38:20

journalists and feeding them information off

38:23

the record or on background that

38:25

then informs articles in places like

38:27

T.M.Z. and the Daily Mail and

38:29

the New York Times, and then

38:31

the audience reads that stuff, but

38:34

they don't really see how the

38:36

sausage gets made. And through this,

38:38

we're able to kind of see

38:40

how it starts with Justin Baldoni's

38:42

publicist. and then it becomes like

38:44

an article in page six. Where

38:47

my dad picks it up. Yes,

38:49

literally. The reason why we have

38:51

sort of this unprecedented access to

38:53

this, and a lot of what's

38:55

been going on, going viral online

38:58

around this are these screenshots of

39:00

text messages that Justin Baldoni's PR

39:02

team are sending each other. And

39:04

the reason we have these text

39:06

messages, the reason that they're in

39:09

the complaint, is because Stephanie Jones

39:11

complied with a subpoena, where she,

39:13

former boss of Jennifer Abel, confiscates

39:15

work phone, Stephanie, like, you know,

39:17

Jennifer. We're talking about like

39:20

the third subplot lawsuit and cats

39:22

like the most excited she's ever

39:24

been about anything. So, trumping at

39:26

the bit. It's so crazy and

39:28

I could go so deep into

39:30

it but I won't because we're

39:32

limited in the amount of time

39:34

we have. I mean, well, ish.

39:36

So Jennifer Abel, while she's leaving

39:38

Stephanie Jones' PR firm to start

39:41

her own competing PR firm, her

39:43

phone basically gets seized. And because

39:45

of a subpoena process that is

39:47

like a quid pro quo between

39:49

Blake Lively and Stephanie Jones, they

39:51

get these text messages and they're

39:53

able to put them in this

39:55

complaint that's released to the public.

39:57

I've talked a little bit about

39:59

this complaint and the ensuing lawsuits

40:01

on Instagram and I did get

40:04

a number of comments from people

40:06

who I would imagine did not

40:08

want this all to be true.

40:10

Who were like, well, those text

40:12

screenshots could have easily been fabricated.

40:14

I get why people think that,

40:16

but what you have to understand

40:18

is this isn't like influencer drama,

40:20

where people aren't beholden to any

40:22

sort of ethical standards or standard

40:25

of proof or accuracy. When you're

40:27

talking about a legal venue, The

40:29

lawyers who submitted this complaint on

40:31

behalf of Blake Lively, if they

40:33

fabricated text messages, they could lose

40:35

their legal licenses. It would be

40:37

really unlikely for a separate lawyer

40:39

who was hired to do something

40:41

that would put their entire credential

40:43

in jeopardy. And we now know,

40:45

because we have responses, that these

40:48

aren't... fabricated text messages. They are

40:50

real. Now, Justin's lawyer, who's also

40:52

representing his publicists, they argue that

40:54

these are cherry-picked, that they're taken

40:56

out of context, that they don't

40:58

include emogies or tap back reactions

41:00

or preceding text messages that maybe

41:02

changed the context around them. But

41:04

we know that these are real

41:06

text messages, and they don't contest

41:09

all of them. Like, there are

41:11

a few of them where they're

41:13

like, oh, well, you didn't add

41:15

this emoji. You cut the emoji

41:17

out. But they don't say that

41:19

about all of them. There's a

41:21

lot of text messages that they're

41:23

not contesting, that reveal how articles

41:25

were shaped. Do you want to

41:27

explain basically how he hires? Like,

41:30

first of all, what is tag

41:32

and how he hires them? And

41:34

like, why? Am I putting too

41:36

much on you? No, no, no.

41:38

So Jennifer Abel, like I said,

41:40

she used to work for Stephanie

41:42

Jones and over the course of

41:44

this summer she forms her own

41:46

separate PR agency and pulls Justin

41:48

over as a client. Now Jennifer

41:50

Abel separately is working with another

41:53

public company. assist named Melissa

41:55

Nathan. Melissa Nathan

41:57

is the owner

41:59

and the founder

42:01

of is group,

42:03

which is is the

42:05

And Melissa Nathan

42:07

is the person

42:09

who's previously represented previously

42:11

She's previously represented

42:14

Drake. She's previously

42:16

represented a number of people

42:18

involved in the Trump administration

42:20

and the Trump family. She

42:22

previously represented like Tiffany Trump.

42:24

Trump. you just explain like on

42:26

the highest level for someone who's

42:28

really tapped out of all of

42:30

this? Like out the job of a

42:32

PR person job of a PR is? like

42:34

there are a lot of different

42:36

types of PR, is public relations. which

42:38

is Melissa Nathan is a Melissa publicist.

42:40

so this is interesting because even

42:42

within the world of crisis communications,

42:44

there are different types of crisis

42:46

of crisis professionals. What need a

42:49

Trump need person? PR person for?

42:51

Well, I guess. Cats like, how much time do

42:53

you have? You know, I went to how

42:55

much time do you have? and

42:57

in my You know, I went to

42:59

school for journalism of different my

43:01

journalism school and in a lot of

43:03

different journalism schools, or you can study

43:05

journalism Like, you can study PR. separate Like there

43:08

are two separate tracks. from And they

43:10

come from like a similar place

43:12

where it's you're communicating information to the

43:14

public. That's your job. job. As a As

43:16

a journalist, you ideally beholden are not

43:18

beholden to anyone's have You don't have

43:20

conflicts of interests. You're speaking for the

43:22

greater public and you're speaking for

43:24

the greater good. for As a PR

43:26

person, you are beholden to a specific

43:28

interest which is the person who

43:30

hired you or the company or the

43:32

entity. And so so who is a

43:35

public figure and increasingly and figures too.

43:37

will employ PR people to

43:39

help shape narratives and convey

43:41

information to the public and

43:43

other kinds of stakeholders. kinds of

43:46

And crisis work is sort

43:48

of based in the idea

43:50

that if you have a

43:52

negative public reputation or something

43:54

happens happens puts your business or

43:56

your reputation or the narrative around

43:58

you in Jeopardy! then you hire someone

44:01

like this to help you course correct

44:03

and change how the public or stakeholders

44:05

view you. And so crisis and PR

44:08

are not inherently bad. There are tons

44:10

of cases where people are employed to

44:12

do things like PR. It's not something

44:14

that you would think of as nefarious.

44:17

And similar to journalism, people have, you

44:19

know, like a growing distrust and growing

44:21

sort of negative view of this entire

44:23

industry, which I think a lot of

44:26

people who work in this industry would

44:28

say is like really unfair. But when

44:30

you have stuff like this happen, it

44:32

paints sort of a broader brush over

44:35

what crisis PR is. And so... over

44:37

the past week, I've talked to some

44:39

of the crisis professionals who I've used

44:41

as sources in previous articles, and they've

44:44

talked about how like crisis PR itself

44:46

also isn't inherently nefarious. A lot of

44:48

times, if you own like a major

44:50

company or if you're a politician or

44:53

if you're a relative of a politician,

44:55

you might hire a crisis publicist before

44:57

anything bad happens. Like you might hire

44:59

a crisis strategist to help you plan.

45:02

for if someone goes online and spreads

45:04

some nasty made up rumor about you,

45:06

how are you going to respond to

45:08

that? That's what a crisis PR person

45:11

would help you with. Crisis publicity in

45:13

Hollywood is kind of a different beast

45:15

because Hollywood, which also now encapsulates things

45:18

like influencers, the narrative oftentimes is the

45:20

product. If you're an influencer, your whole

45:22

job is how the world perceives you.

45:24

And it increasingly as any type of

45:27

celebrity. your whole product is yourself and

45:29

how the world around you people on

45:31

social media perceive you. And so crisis

45:33

publicity is something that is commonly referred

45:36

to a lot of times as spin,

45:38

which is like if there's stories out

45:40

there, how do we change those stories

45:42

or how do we put stories out

45:45

there in a way that makes our

45:47

client look good? Or in this case,

45:49

how do we put stories out there

45:51

that makes someone our client? had an

45:54

altercation with, looked bad. So Justin hires

45:56

this PR team, led by Melissa Nathan,

45:58

and long story short, not that short,

46:00

I know we've been recording for an

46:03

hour already, but it's incredibly successful. They

46:05

see the backlash that Blake Lively is

46:07

getting for promoting the movie in this

46:09

light-hearted way, right, telling people to go

46:12

wear florals. Meanwhile, the public is not

46:14

made aware until recently that promoting this

46:16

movie in a light-hearted way was in

46:18

the marketing materials provided by the distributor

46:21

of the movie. So Blake Lively was

46:23

contractually obligated to maintain that tone in

46:25

her promotional interviews, but never mind that.

46:27

Justin Baldoni and his PR team are

46:30

like, well, if the public is responding

46:32

so badly to that, We are going

46:34

to focus our social media content, just

46:37

in social media and content, entirely on

46:39

the seriousness of domestic violence. So much

46:41

so that there's a text in here

46:43

that Justin sends to his PR team.

46:46

He proposes the idea, and I thought

46:48

this was fucking crazy, he proposes the

46:50

idea of collecting DMs that his followers

46:52

can send to him, survivors of domestic

46:55

violence, that he can then publish to

46:57

promote the movie. Even his own team

46:59

are like Justin you're doing way too

47:01

much. This is this is not a

47:04

good idea So they didn't follow through

47:06

with that one, but they Seed all

47:08

of these articles in different publications like

47:10

the New York Post where Melissa Nathan

47:13

the head of this PR firm has

47:15

a sister who is an editor there

47:17

which was also crazy. Yeah, there are

47:19

price negotiations between Justin Baljoni's camp and

47:22

Tag, and I think it looks like

47:24

they paid somewhere between $75,000 and $175,000

47:26

for this treatment, which, to be honest,

47:28

given how huge this got, doesn't sound

47:31

like a lot of money to me.

47:33

Like I would have thought it was

47:35

like millions. So Tag. and Justin Baldoni

47:37

and Jamie Heath and

47:40

Jennifer Abel, They're all

47:42

extremely successful in

47:44

this effort, and there

47:46

are these texts these

47:49

Justin Justin the PR

47:51

people that are

47:53

published in Blake in Blake

47:56

Lively's one where Melissa

47:58

Nathan says, Nathan doesn't

48:00

realize how lucky

48:02

he is right now.

48:05

right We need to

48:07

press on him

48:09

just how how lucky

48:11

he is. And here,

48:14

I I believe she's

48:16

referring to the

48:18

allegations Blake made against

48:20

him, the whispering

48:23

in the ear, the

48:25

sexual connotations, like

48:27

Jesus fucking Christ. fucking Christ,

48:29

other the crew the feeling uncomfortable

48:31

watching it, I mean, there is

48:34

just so much. In other In

48:36

she writes, she the socials are

48:38

really, really ramping up. ramping

48:40

actually sad because it just shows you

48:42

how people really want to hate

48:44

on women. hate on women. And I thought

48:46

that was sad. sad. Yeah. This is This

48:48

is PR person, a PR person, a

48:51

woman, weaponizing people against another

48:53

woman. her job and it's her job. to

48:55

other women communicating to other women

48:57

that she's doing this with. so

48:59

about how sad it is that they're

49:02

so successful in this effort, so I don't

49:04

know. There's so much here. And could be three

49:06

episode could be three million hours we're the

49:08

rate we're going, might be. But I really was wondering with

49:10

really was wondering Melissa where Melissa says says

49:12

it just goes to show you how willing

49:14

people are to hate women. I was I

49:16

was like, like is it like to the pillow

49:19

your head on the pillow every night and

49:21

know that this is your job? I think it's

49:23

really I think it's really interesting

49:25

that in the response from the

49:27

lawyer who represents Melissa Nathan and

49:29

Justin Abel, and Jennifer Abel, they are

49:31

really harping on the fact well,

49:33

like, oh, well, they didn't actually

49:35

do all of this bad stuff

49:37

to shift the narrative. The The narrative

49:39

just organically developed because of misogyny.

49:41

They say that like, oh well brought

49:43

all of this on herself. It

49:45

was all organically responding to things

49:48

that Blake did. to things fault. did, it's

49:50

yada, yada. fault, I do think that

49:52

there is think be said something

49:54

the fact that over and

49:56

over and over again on

49:58

social media media, people willingly do engage

50:00

in these sort of misogynistic slants.

50:02

Like Justin's lawyer argues that the

50:05

stories they discuss in these text

50:07

messages weren't actually always a result

50:09

of their efforts. We do know

50:11

that like they're being paid sums

50:14

of money to have conversations with

50:16

journalists who work for outlets like

50:18

the Daily Mail, who work for

50:20

outlets like TMZ. And if you

50:23

read these outlets or if you

50:25

know about these outlets, they traffic.

50:27

in negative, salacious stories about celebrity

50:29

women. But the online social media

50:31

response is so much bigger than

50:34

that. And I think a lot

50:36

of it is authentically fueled by

50:38

people's underlying double standards and expectations

50:40

for women. Yeah, it's like this

50:43

inorganic calculated strategy to dog pile

50:45

on a woman plays well into

50:47

the hands of organic. yes misogyny

50:49

that is already taking place online

50:52

especially fueled by page six in

50:54

the daily mail but also tick-talk

50:56

comments yes like I was revisiting

50:58

some of the tick talks about

51:00

this and it's like a lot

51:03

of tick-talkers have responded to this

51:05

and a lot of content creators

51:07

have responded to all of this

51:09

by saying I didn't make negative

51:12

content about Blake Lively, nor did

51:14

I hold a negative opinion of

51:16

her because anyone told me to,

51:18

or anyone paid me to. I

51:21

just felt that way about her.

51:23

And I think multiple things can

51:25

be true at once. For example,

51:27

I was watching this one Tiktok

51:29

from over the summer, I don't

51:32

know if I can say this,

51:34

so stop me if I can't

51:36

say this. This woman called Blake

51:38

Lively, a Kantosaurus, a Kantosaurus. And

51:41

I'm like, well, yeah. I think

51:43

you can say it. It's not

51:45

a real word. Right. I'm like,

51:48

well, yeah, no one told you

51:50

to say that. But the fact

51:52

that you would use that word

51:54

as a descriptor at all is

51:56

indicative that we have this invented

51:58

language. Like we're constantly inventing new

52:01

ways to negatively. characterize women. Not

52:03

a condescore. I was like, what?

52:05

And it's funny because I saw

52:07

separately someone referred to Justin Baldoni.

52:09

I can't remember what word they

52:11

used, but they used like a

52:14

negative word to describe him in

52:16

a readic comment. And someone responded

52:18

in was like, do you really

52:20

think it's fair to like characterize

52:22

him in this negative way when

52:24

we don't know all the facts?

52:27

No one in the comments of

52:29

that Tik talk. was like, is

52:31

it really fair to use this

52:33

language about like lively? People were

52:35

eating it up. There's this culture

52:37

of mass participation in dog piling

52:39

of women specifically, where the very

52:42

criticism of Blake Lively as being

52:44

like a mean girl or a

52:46

negative person is so reflected in

52:48

the way that people are actually

52:50

responding to her. Like the language

52:52

and the excitement and everyone piling

52:55

onto her is the exact behavior

52:57

that they're purporting to criticize in

52:59

her, but it's actually the behavior

53:01

of the mob. And just to

53:03

be clear, all of this is

53:05

happening, this whole coordinated campaign. This

53:08

is not because they were like,

53:10

we should pay $100,000 to make

53:12

people hate Blake lively a little

53:14

bit for fun. It is because

53:16

they are afraid that she will

53:18

make public her allegations against him

53:21

and the way that he behaved

53:23

on set. And their goal in

53:25

all of this is discrediting her

53:27

in the public eye and making

53:29

her so unlikable to the point

53:31

where... it would be useless for

53:34

her to try to come forward.

53:36

There's this phenomenon when we look

53:38

at gender violence where when someone

53:40

is victimized, before they even come

53:42

forward, before they even express to

53:44

anyone that they feel as though

53:47

they were victimized in a situation,

53:49

perpetrators will seek to undermine their

53:51

character publicly. to discredit them before

53:53

an allegation even comes out. We

53:55

see this in cases ranging from

53:57

campus sexual assault to cases involving

53:59

cultural moments. It's a tried and

54:02

true tactic that perpetrators use to

54:04

discredit preemptively so that nobody believes

54:06

the allegations by the time they

54:08

finally reach the public, if they

54:10

ever do. When I read this

54:12

New York Times article and then

54:15

the complaint in full, I have

54:17

basically the same thought, which was

54:19

like he and his people spent

54:21

$100,000 to do what is so

54:23

commonly done for free on a

54:25

much smaller community-based level by abusive

54:28

people to discredit, right? Spreading rumors,

54:30

making someone out to be an

54:32

uncredible person so that you can

54:34

get off the hook. And that's

54:36

one of the many reasons why

54:38

I was like, no, this is

54:41

not just a celebrity story, because

54:43

when we buy into the smear

54:45

campaign, which Again, I think this

54:47

can happen on a college campus.

54:49

You don't need page six. You

54:51

don't need Melissa Nathan. And when

54:54

we participate in these smear campaigns

54:56

and we don't think critically... about

54:58

what we're consuming, it's a disservice

55:00

to anyone's ability to ever come

55:02

forward. This is something that we've

55:04

talked about before on this podcast

55:07

that I think is a really

55:09

useful framework for understanding a wide

55:11

variety of sort of rhetoric that

55:13

we encounter, and it's called Darvo.

55:15

So Darvo stands for Deny Attack,

55:17

reverse victim offender, and it's a...

55:20

pattern that was coined by a

55:22

woman who studied domestic violence to

55:24

explain some of the behaviors that

55:26

perpetrators of violence use to discredit

55:28

and further harm their victims. And

55:30

once I learned about Darvo, I

55:32

kind of started to see this

55:35

pattern everywhere. not just in interpersonal

55:37

relationships, but also more widely in

55:39

sort of cultural responses to people

55:41

who more are disproportionately victimized. So

55:43

frequently when we have celebrity men

55:45

and women, I see these like

55:48

Darvo patterns emerge somewhat. organically because

55:50

it becomes a cultural script that

55:52

people fall into and follow without

55:54

even consciously realizing it. And so

55:56

the denial stage is sort of

55:58

this idea that even if we

56:01

don't know that someone has been

56:03

victimized, that a woman has been

56:05

victimized or sort of immediately discrediting

56:07

the idea that something bad could

56:09

have happened to her. We're sort

56:11

of not even considering it as

56:14

a possibility in our mind. We're

56:16

immediately moving to the next phase,

56:18

which is to attack, and the

56:20

attacks come in a wide variety

56:22

of ways. But with Blake Lively,

56:24

we see constantly this gendered rhetoric

56:27

in terms of how her character

56:29

is being painted, and it's a

56:31

way that women in particular, and

56:33

especially women who fall along different

56:35

categories of marginalization, are attacked by

56:37

the public, even if it's for

56:40

things that aren't actually bad, like

56:42

being too ambitious or taking too

56:44

much ownership over a product or

56:46

being viewed as bossy or being

56:48

viewed as too much, with the

56:50

reverse victim and offender, you see

56:52

this too, where it's like... Even

56:55

before these allegations were made public,

56:57

the way that Justin Baldoni was

56:59

being framed by the public at

57:01

large was he was being framed

57:03

as this sort of victim before

57:05

we even really had any idea

57:08

of what was going on on

57:10

the set. I remember this whole

57:12

idea of body shaming. Blake Lively

57:14

kind of reached the public over

57:16

the summer. And I remember seeing

57:18

a lot of women feeling bad

57:21

for Justin Baldoni online saying that

57:23

like, oh my gosh, he had

57:25

a bad back. And so it

57:27

was really important that he know

57:29

how much Blake Lively weighed because

57:31

he's like the victim in this

57:34

situation where a woman possesses gravity.

57:36

And it's like you see this

57:38

inclination over and over again to

57:40

sort of view people who have

57:42

structural power as victims and to

57:44

view people who lack forms of

57:47

structural power as

57:49

aggressors and as

57:51

perpetrators, if even

57:53

if logically it

57:55

doesn't make any

57:57

sense. we And we

58:00

talked about this

58:02

at the beginning,

58:04

but it's like,

58:06

it's like because is

58:08

viewed as more

58:10

famous famous wealthier than

58:12

Justin people imagine her

58:15

as having all the power

58:17

in the situation, but when

58:19

you actually examine the circumstances

58:21

more closely, it's like, well,

58:23

Justin Baldoni was the director,

58:25

he was her boss in

58:27

this setting. structurally, no structurally, no

58:29

matter how a wealthy or famous

58:31

a woman is, she's still a

58:33

woman, so she still experiences

58:35

the consequences of structural misogyny, regardless

58:37

of how much money she

58:39

has, or regardless of how beautiful

58:41

and wealthy and famous she

58:43

is. I do think sometimes that's

58:45

missing left's understanding understanding of these cases, especially

58:48

as it pertains to rich and

58:50

famous women, because I think sometimes people

58:52

on the left, you know, especially

58:54

men you the left, will think that

58:56

a wealthy woman can escape the bounds

58:58

of misogyny and gender -based violence through

59:00

her wealth, and that's not true. violence

59:03

through her wealth, and that's like

59:05

to take a quick break

59:07

from the show to thank the

59:10

sponsor of today's episode of today's episode,

59:12

Blue with my supporters over on

59:14

over on it possible for me

59:16

to spend me to hours a day

59:18

going down down... right wing online rabbit holes.

59:20

you know you know what? I put When I put

59:22

it that way. we should all we should

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all stop enabling this behavior. Maybe we need

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because it looks like they do. they do.

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But actually, they they leave hundreds of

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Land for sponsoring this show. And now,

1:01:12

let's get back to it. Speaking

1:01:15

of how people are being portrayed

1:01:17

and received by the public throughout

1:01:20

this entire story, Justin Baldoni is

1:01:22

not just another guy, he's not

1:01:25

just another, you know, movie actor,

1:01:27

A-list, B-list, whatever you want to

1:01:29

call him, Justin Baldoni has spent

1:01:32

years crafting an image of himself

1:01:34

as a sort of professional male

1:01:36

feminist. And I alluded to that...

1:01:39

at the beginning of this They

1:01:41

have this podcast called Man Enough

1:01:43

where they preach about healthy masculinity,

1:01:46

men holding men accountable. Justin Baldoni

1:01:48

has done a lot, a lot

1:01:51

of personal branding, I would say

1:01:53

especially in the wake of me

1:01:55

too, of like how can I

1:01:58

be a model for other men,

1:02:00

which on its face, I don't

1:02:02

think is a bad thing. I

1:02:05

actually think, especially for like a

1:02:07

hot, rich, straight guy is potentially

1:02:09

a very good thing. So he

1:02:12

has this very popular podcast. He

1:02:14

gave a TED Talk called Why

1:02:17

I'm Done Trying to Be Man

1:02:19

Enough. I was looking at these

1:02:21

books and the reviews. This is

1:02:24

such a random video. Man Enough

1:02:26

by Justin Baldoni has an endorsement

1:02:28

from Sean Mendez, who wrote, Man

1:02:31

Enough filled my heart with courage

1:02:33

to do and be better, oozing

1:02:35

truth and love this book was

1:02:38

absolutely necessary for me to read.

1:02:40

If you're like me and searching

1:02:43

for a push in the right

1:02:45

direction, you've found it. So Sean

1:02:47

Mendez loved the book and the

1:02:50

2023 book geared to teenage boys

1:02:52

called Boys Will Be Human, a

1:02:54

get real gut check guide to

1:02:57

becoming the strongest, kindest, bravest person

1:02:59

you can be, and on the

1:03:01

Amazon description of this book, particularly

1:03:04

poorly aged, the book is advertised

1:03:06

as, warning, this might be the

1:03:09

most honest book you've ever read.

1:03:11

Which is just kind of rough.

1:03:13

I read reviews from people of

1:03:16

all genders, frankly, on his podcast

1:03:18

and his different videos and stuff

1:03:20

and his books, from people who,

1:03:23

like Sean Mendez, felt like it

1:03:25

helped them. And I don't want

1:03:27

to have a black and white

1:03:30

conversation about men who make work

1:03:32

like this or Justin's work in

1:03:35

and of itself. And I also

1:03:37

don't want to fall into the

1:03:39

trap of becoming so cynical that

1:03:42

you start to believe that anyone

1:03:44

who loudly professes their belief in

1:03:46

something. is, you know, doing so

1:03:49

inauthentically, I've met people who have

1:03:51

adopted that worldview, and I think

1:03:53

oftentimes it's a worldview that leads

1:03:56

to just total apathy poisoning, and

1:03:58

for what it's worth, like cat

1:04:01

and I are both people who

1:04:03

loudly profess what we believe in

1:04:05

all the time. And yet, when

1:04:08

Blake's complaint broke, there were many,

1:04:10

many women familiar with Justin's work

1:04:12

over the years who had a

1:04:15

really similar reaction, which was that

1:04:17

I never trust men like this.

1:04:19

And this is why we can't

1:04:22

trust men who are really preachy

1:04:24

about how good of men they

1:04:27

are. And I feel like this

1:04:29

is this is part of the

1:04:31

story. Like I think this was

1:04:34

really well encapsulated by this one

1:04:36

Reddit post where someone wrote, a

1:04:38

guy whose entire brand was dedicated

1:04:41

to being a progressive male feminist

1:04:43

turns out to be a creep.

1:04:45

Surprise, surprise, surprise. I'm really glad

1:04:48

that you brought this up because

1:04:50

it's definitely a sentiment that I've

1:04:53

seen expressed by a lot of

1:04:55

people, including like I think a

1:04:57

male guardian columnist wrote this whole

1:05:00

thing where he was like, I

1:05:02

almost puked when I saw how

1:05:04

big of a male feminist Justin

1:05:07

Valdoni was. And although I understand

1:05:09

that kind of knee-jerk reaction, I

1:05:11

also think that it's flawed, particularly

1:05:14

because over the past several years

1:05:16

as I've written and studied abuse

1:05:19

dynamics, I've encountered a lot of

1:05:21

men, not a lot, but I've

1:05:23

encountered several men who have much,

1:05:26

much, much smaller platforms than Justin

1:05:28

Baldoni, who do actually dedicate themselves

1:05:30

to doing this kind of work,

1:05:33

both in understanding abuse and researching

1:05:35

and spreading awareness about abuse, and

1:05:37

also I've encountered men who aim

1:05:40

to educate other men as a

1:05:42

way of you know preventing these

1:05:45

types of situations from happening in

1:05:47

the first place. And I think

1:05:49

that it would be doing a

1:05:52

disservice to this field to paint

1:05:54

all of these men as inauthentic

1:05:56

and all of these men as

1:05:59

having like you you know, a

1:06:01

covert reason why they're doing this

1:06:03

that isn't actually in line with

1:06:05

practicing what they preach. what they I

1:06:07

think that when it comes to

1:06:09

stuff like this, what really matters

1:06:11

is looking at the substance of

1:06:13

what people are saying and doing, rather

1:06:15

rather than just having like a surface

1:06:17

level reaction to any man who

1:06:19

talks about is interested in feminism. Because

1:06:22

something that I noticed when I was

1:06:24

reading some of the things that Justin

1:06:26

the has written and listening to some

1:06:28

of the things that he listening to that the

1:06:30

things that to me that lot of it

1:06:32

was really surface of it was to

1:06:34

the men who I've seen

1:06:36

who have much smaller platforms doing

1:06:38

this type of work. It's

1:06:40

much more research of work, analytical, looking

1:06:42

at statistics, looking at data,

1:06:44

looking at theory and psychology theory and

1:06:46

psychology and politics. And I think

1:06:48

that it really matters what

1:06:50

the actual substance of what they're

1:06:52

saying and doing is I I

1:06:54

think that we have to

1:06:56

actually critically interrogate things instead of

1:06:58

just look at them at face value and

1:07:00

like draw emotional based

1:07:02

responses from things. You tell tell me

1:07:04

what you think but I feel

1:07:07

like part of the reason why so

1:07:09

many many, women had this response to

1:07:11

the news about him I feel

1:07:13

like part of it is that when

1:07:15

you are when some degree steeped in

1:07:17

the language of of and of progressive

1:07:19

causes like causes, like has been for

1:07:21

years for years. You know how to talk about

1:07:23

it in the right way, how to and

1:07:25

you know how to sort of skirt around

1:07:28

your own creepy behavior by cloaking it

1:07:30

in this sort of like progressive lingo, like

1:07:32

you know how to talk the talk. talk

1:07:34

the talk. think that this is

1:07:36

is. absolutely 100% a a real phenomenon

1:07:38

people people language, language, specifically the

1:07:40

language around social justice has

1:07:43

been popularized on the

1:07:45

internet and in the media over

1:07:47

like the past decade or

1:07:49

so. so. Like repeatedly seen people

1:07:51

do this they they learn the

1:07:53

language of a community of a

1:07:56

a specific progressive stance

1:07:58

and they use this language.

1:08:00

while simultaneously, privately exhibiting behavior that is

1:08:02

the very same thing that they're

1:08:04

preaching against. So it's not to

1:08:06

say that this isn't like a

1:08:08

well- explored phenomenon at this point,

1:08:10

but rather just to say that

1:08:12

I think people need to be

1:08:14

critical. We were talking about this

1:08:16

earlier. There's like a really funny

1:08:18

tweet that went viral recently, and

1:08:20

I'm not going to say it

1:08:22

verbatim. Oh, no, wait. No, I'm

1:08:24

pulling up the tweet. Yeah. It's

1:08:26

like one of those internet parables.

1:08:28

People be saying things so definitively,

1:08:30

like man, I think it depends.

1:08:32

And that's it. Yeah, yeah. Anyone

1:08:34

can say like, I'm a feminist

1:08:36

and then talk about how much

1:08:38

they love their wife. But you

1:08:40

have to actually look at the

1:08:42

words that they're saying and evaluate

1:08:44

like, is this substantive? Is this

1:08:47

meaningful? Is this actually aligned with

1:08:49

feminist thought? Are you specifically referencing

1:08:51

the 2015 open letter that Justin

1:08:53

Baljoni wrote to his wife or

1:08:55

he? thanks her for giving him

1:08:57

a child and then encourages other

1:08:59

men to like love their wives

1:09:01

more. Yes! Not the deep

1:09:03

cut. I mean, it's just what I

1:09:05

have to say about that letter. Not

1:09:08

only is it not unusual for men

1:09:10

to feel this way about their lives

1:09:12

after they are pregnant and give birth

1:09:15

to their children, but it's also not

1:09:17

like an inherently feminist position to hold.

1:09:19

You can actually argue that like glorifying

1:09:22

pregnancy and giving birth to children is

1:09:24

like not in line with feminist thought.

1:09:26

Feminism is also like extremely complicated and

1:09:29

people within feminism have really differing views

1:09:31

on like what is feminist and what

1:09:33

is not. So it's really easy to

1:09:36

just be like I'm a feminist and

1:09:38

therefore everything that I say is feminist.

1:09:40

People don't even agree on what being

1:09:43

feminist necessarily means. I think I think

1:09:45

among the most jarring texts that were

1:09:47

revealed in the complaint sent by Justin

1:09:50

Baldoni and there were a number up

1:09:52

there. was Justin Baldoni saying in preparation.

1:09:54

for Blake coming forward with her allegations.

1:09:57

He planned to deploy the neuro divergent

1:09:59

angle where he was like, actually I

1:10:01

was just misreading Q's and everything that

1:10:04

I did to her was a result

1:10:06

of my neuro divergence. That was up

1:10:08

there. But the real one that is

1:10:11

just so jarring to me when considering

1:10:13

all of his quote unquote feminist work

1:10:15

was right when he hired the PR

1:10:17

team, he sent a screenshot to them

1:10:20

in a group chat with his publicists.

1:10:22

of a viral thread from Twitter, where

1:10:24

it was all the times Haley Bieber

1:10:27

has exposed herself as a mean girl.

1:10:29

And he said in this group shot

1:10:31

with his publicist, this is what we

1:10:34

need. This is what we need to

1:10:36

do to Blake Lively. We need viral

1:10:38

pop-grave threads about all the times Blake

1:10:41

Lively has been a piece of shit

1:10:43

to her coworkers or whatever. You were

1:10:45

mentioning there are different definitions of feminism,

1:10:48

but there is no world where... sending

1:10:50

a screenshot of a viral hate thread

1:10:52

about a woman and suggesting that you

1:10:55

need to recreate that about another woman

1:10:57

fits into any of these visions of

1:10:59

feminism. Yeah, I thought that was really

1:11:02

telling and it's super fascinating to me

1:11:04

going through these complaints and looking at

1:11:06

the various examples from like Stan Twitter

1:11:09

and Influencer and TikTok that are being

1:11:11

pulled out. One thing I think that's

1:11:13

like really... stood out to me about

1:11:16

this is like these celebrities are actively

1:11:18

consuming the same viral content on the

1:11:20

same internet that we're all on and

1:11:23

they're picking up what like stay on

1:11:25

Twitter is doing and the effect that

1:11:27

it has. It showed me something that

1:11:30

I already knew which was how consequential

1:11:32

what all of us choose to do

1:11:34

on the internet is, especially in an

1:11:37

age of social media where everyone has

1:11:39

the potential to go viral, regardless of

1:11:41

your credentials and regardless of like the

1:11:44

substantive quality of what you're doing and

1:11:46

saying. is seeing the way that all

1:11:48

of us react and respond to like

1:11:51

pop-crave tweets about a celebrity mishap and

1:11:53

like the PR group chats are ready

1:11:55

to deploy those yes as it suits

1:11:58

their own narratives like I was reading

1:12:00

different takes about this whole Justin Baldoni

1:12:02

feminism conundrum And I found one that

1:12:05

I'm going to read an excerpt of

1:12:07

by a writer called Shea Orant for

1:12:09

Impact Boston. She wrote, I am also

1:12:12

reminded of the man I met in

1:12:14

my first few weeks of college who

1:12:16

made a performance of stopping to check

1:12:19

on a drunk girl who was making

1:12:21

out with someone as I left the

1:12:23

party with him and who signed on

1:12:26

his dorm room door said consent is

1:12:28

sexy. He tried to close that door.

1:12:30

I got a bad feeling and let

1:12:33

him back outside where he promptly ditched

1:12:35

me. He would later become known on

1:12:37

campus as someone who coerced and assaulted

1:12:40

many of my peers. What I find

1:12:42

most disheartening is this. I want men

1:12:44

to be allies. And of course there

1:12:47

are men who genuinely are. But it

1:12:49

seems the louder their allyship is, the

1:12:51

less we can trust it. Which sucks,

1:12:53

but there are a lot of very

1:12:56

loud male voices on social media, sending

1:12:58

messages to young men and boys. that

1:13:00

recruit them to be part of the

1:13:03

problem, to cut themselves off from their

1:13:05

capacity to grow and empathize, to lean

1:13:07

into anger and entitlement, and to hate

1:13:10

women, whereas there are a few adult

1:13:12

male role models who are having public

1:13:14

conversations about healthy masculinity. Baldoni makes it

1:13:17

less possible for real men to do

1:13:19

that work. Men like him do have

1:13:21

a tell, though. It's how they treat

1:13:24

women. Take their words and their politics

1:13:26

with a grain of salt. Set a

1:13:28

boundary with them and see what happens.

1:13:31

Because ultimately, this is how we know

1:13:33

whose feminism is genuine and whose isn't,

1:13:35

by listening to women. Men can give

1:13:38

all the speeches they want, but the

1:13:40

women in their home and their social

1:13:42

circle and their workplace know who they

1:13:45

are. And when those women tell the

1:13:47

rest of us, they are doing us

1:13:49

a huge favor, often at a great

1:13:52

risk to themselves. Men like Baldoni have

1:13:54

made it impossible for men who say

1:13:56

the right thing in public to be

1:13:59

trusted. In the end, the only thing

1:14:01

he said that was worth our time

1:14:03

was this, listen to women. I think

1:14:06

that's a really well-written way of phrasing

1:14:08

what I think is one of my

1:14:10

big takeaways from this, which is that

1:14:13

if we actually want to combat abuse

1:14:15

and misogyny, it requires a group effort

1:14:17

from everybody, not just women, also men.

1:14:20

But we also have to be aware

1:14:22

of the fact that people can weaponize

1:14:24

the idea that they are a part

1:14:27

of the solution to hide that they

1:14:29

are actually perpetuating the problem. So we

1:14:31

have to be aware of that, but

1:14:34

we also can't lose sight of the

1:14:36

fact that there is no moving forward

1:14:38

unless people actually believe in these things.

1:14:41

And I think another thing that really

1:14:43

struck me about this case, which is

1:14:45

so similar with other hate campaigns against

1:14:48

celebrity women, is that one of the...

1:14:50

big driving forces was other women online.

1:14:52

Like when you look at the controversy

1:14:55

around Blake Lively, when you go on

1:14:57

social media, when you look at who's

1:14:59

making content about this, when you look

1:15:02

at who's in the comments, it's a

1:15:04

ton of women, which speaks to the

1:15:06

fact that for women who are relying

1:15:09

on internalized misogyny, you can also claim

1:15:11

to be a feminist while not practicing

1:15:13

what you preach. As we sort of

1:15:16

zoom out here a little bit into

1:15:18

the bigger picture and fit this into

1:15:20

other things that you and I have

1:15:23

talked about, when I posted about the

1:15:25

Blake Lively Justin Baldoni case on Instagram,

1:15:27

I put it in direct comparison to

1:15:29

that of Amber Hurd and Johnny Depp.

1:15:32

And yes, the most surface level way

1:15:34

to do that is to highlight the

1:15:36

fact that Justin Baldoni and Johnny Depp

1:15:39

hire the same PR people to smear

1:15:41

women. But I think it's similar in

1:15:43

a lot of ways. I wrote about

1:15:46

that, and it was the single thing

1:15:48

that drew the most comments on my

1:15:50

Instagram post about this. People said repeatedly,

1:15:53

you're undermining your own argument in favor

1:15:55

of Blake Lively by including Amber Hurt

1:15:57

in this. It's interesting because public...

1:16:00

public support Blake Lively has

1:16:02

been relatively high. there's this

1:16:04

there's this pervasive idea.

1:16:07

nothing like the Amber was nothing like the

1:16:09

Amber I don't think that's true And I don't think that's

1:16:11

true. you And I don't think you do

1:16:13

either, but I want you to make the

1:16:15

case because you could better than I can. than

1:16:17

I can. Not only do I think

1:16:19

that there are a lot of

1:16:21

parallels between what happened to Amber to

1:16:24

and what happened to Blake Lively,

1:16:26

to but they're essentially the exact

1:16:28

same story. the And I think if

1:16:30

people fail to recognize that, then

1:16:32

they're not really comprehending what happened

1:16:34

to Blake Lively what so much

1:16:36

of it follows the exact same

1:16:38

pattern. Both Blake Lively and Amber

1:16:40

Hurd alleged abuse at the hands

1:16:42

of a man in Hollywood. And what

1:16:44

happened to both of them after

1:16:46

that followed the exact pattern. First

1:16:48

of all, First of all, what I

1:16:51

think people tend to forget

1:16:53

about Amber Hurd what they tend

1:16:55

to remake into a sort of

1:16:57

revisionist history about Amber Heard Amber

1:16:59

this idea that she had

1:17:01

a majority of public support from

1:17:03

the very beginning that only

1:17:05

flipped after the 2022 2022 trial.

1:17:07

And we both know that that's

1:17:09

not at all the case. at

1:17:11

all From the very second that

1:17:13

Amber Heard's allegations against Johnny

1:17:15

Depp became public, people already started

1:17:17

hurling abuse at her questioning and

1:17:19

undermining the validity of her allegations.

1:17:22

allegations. literally video of her of her

1:17:24

out of of she got the

1:17:26

restraining order, where people are

1:17:28

screaming at her that she's a

1:17:30

liar. But even before that,

1:17:32

Amber Heard was a target because

1:17:34

she was in a relationship

1:17:36

with Johnny Depp. There was already

1:17:38

online attacks aimed at her at

1:17:40

had a misogynistic viewpoint that

1:17:42

belittled her and attacked her her

1:17:45

for daring to be in a

1:17:47

relationship with a man of of

1:17:49

the Hollywood as as Johnny

1:17:51

Depp. Similarly, in the Blake Lively

1:17:53

case, case, there were reasons that

1:17:55

people didn't like Blake Lively well

1:17:58

before it ends with us. us. Before

1:18:00

these lawsuits became public, we were

1:18:02

all there, we all saw it,

1:18:04

the social media misogyny storm was

1:18:06

fomented in the months before these

1:18:09

allegations came out. So in both

1:18:11

cases, you have this Darvo process

1:18:13

already kicking into gear before the

1:18:15

public is aware of the specifics

1:18:17

of the abuse allegations that are

1:18:19

the true heart of both cases.

1:18:21

In addition to these cases following

1:18:24

the same patterns in terms of

1:18:26

what actually happened, yes, it is

1:18:28

crucial that both Johnny Depp and

1:18:30

Justin Baldoni employed the same PR

1:18:32

person because we saw the same

1:18:34

tactics that are detailed in these

1:18:36

text messages and in their own

1:18:39

defense outlined in both cases. We

1:18:41

know that it's Melissa Nathan's job

1:18:43

to interface with journalists at publications

1:18:45

that covered both of these women

1:18:47

in very similar ways. In both

1:18:49

cases, mainstream media coverage inspired and

1:18:51

influenced these massive online reactions. Very

1:18:54

similarly, both of these took place

1:18:56

in sort of a visual format

1:18:58

on social media platforms like TikTok

1:19:00

and YouTube. And on these social

1:19:02

media platforms. Misogeny is monetized. It

1:19:04

is profitable and popular to tear

1:19:07

down female celebrities, exponentially more so

1:19:09

than it is to uplift them

1:19:11

or defend them. And so you

1:19:13

have a lot of different factors

1:19:15

coming into play with both Blake

1:19:17

Lively and Amber Hurd, but they're

1:19:19

the exact same factors. I feel

1:19:22

like it's really important for people

1:19:24

to understand, and I was actually

1:19:26

talking about this with my dad

1:19:28

of all people, my dad who

1:19:30

is exceptionally reasonable. and willing to

1:19:32

take in new information and adjust

1:19:34

his opinion based on that, which

1:19:37

I love him for. Shadow Dad,

1:19:39

but Blake Lively and Brian Reynolds

1:19:41

have a lot more money than

1:19:43

Amberherd has, and influence and connections.

1:19:45

Inversely, Johnny Depp has a lot

1:19:47

more money and influence than Justin

1:19:49

Baldoni does. And I feel like

1:19:52

it's important for people to understand,

1:19:54

again, I just come back to

1:19:56

this, like, the way we think

1:19:58

about these cases and the people

1:20:00

in them is not organic. Public

1:20:02

opinion can absolutely be bought and

1:20:05

paid for. And some people can

1:20:07

afford it and some people can't.

1:20:09

And I do feel like part

1:20:11

of why Blake Lively has had

1:20:13

more success here is because she

1:20:15

can afford to. produce a fight

1:20:17

like this. Exactly. The crucial difference

1:20:20

between Blake Lively and Amber Hurd's

1:20:22

case is the very thing that

1:20:24

caused public opinion to switch up

1:20:26

on Blake Lively, which was the

1:20:28

New York Times article written by

1:20:30

one of the most well-known Pulitzer

1:20:32

Prize-winning journalists today, who wrote the

1:20:35

story that both took down Harvey

1:20:37

Weinstein and launched the Me Too

1:20:39

movement, which came out in conjunction

1:20:41

with this complaint that was carefully

1:20:43

assembled by Bly Clyde Lee's team

1:20:45

that outlined all the tactics that

1:20:47

were used to attack her. Amber

1:20:50

Hurd didn't have any of that.

1:20:52

There was no... giant New York

1:20:54

Times expose that exposed disinformation used

1:20:56

against Amber Hurd at the time

1:20:58

that all of this was happening.

1:21:00

There was no one with the

1:21:03

platform of the New York Times

1:21:05

that came forward to say actually

1:21:07

you guys are being fed a

1:21:09

smear campaign about Amber Hurd. During

1:21:11

the time of the 2022 trial,

1:21:13

there was such little information in

1:21:15

support of Amber Hurd online for

1:21:18

several reasons. One of the reasons

1:21:20

is because people who did speak

1:21:22

up in support of Amber Hurd

1:21:24

were attacked and silenced. Like you.

1:21:26

You said it. You won't say.

1:21:28

Cat will never claim persecution, but

1:21:30

you were put through the fucking

1:21:33

ringer. It's true. I mean, I

1:21:35

saw it firsthand. The very first

1:21:37

thing that I ever said online

1:21:39

about Amber Hurd is I pointed

1:21:41

out that she had. witnesses corroborating

1:21:43

the abuse that she testified to

1:21:46

during the trial. Just making an

1:21:48

objective observation about any information that

1:21:50

supported Amber Hood's case was enough

1:21:52

to face relentless online attacks and

1:21:54

it was not rooted in emotionally

1:21:56

charged sentiment that was fueled by

1:21:58

misogyny, and it was also fueled

1:22:01

by disinformation. And I think what

1:22:03

we saw with Amber Hurd involved

1:22:05

a lot more of the disinformation

1:22:07

element than what we saw was

1:22:09

Blake Lively. With Amber Hurd to

1:22:11

this day, people still believe in

1:22:13

all of these false made-up narratives

1:22:16

that had even more virality online

1:22:18

than the Blake Lively Stuff did.

1:22:20

When I was outlining for this

1:22:22

episode, you know, I know that

1:22:24

the second we bring up Amber

1:22:26

Hurd, the comments just become, you

1:22:28

know, what about that she did

1:22:31

this and what about that she

1:22:33

did? We are not going through

1:22:35

the entire Amber Hurd trial because

1:22:37

we already did that in another

1:22:39

episode and it was the second

1:22:41

episode that it was ever came

1:22:44

out of this podcast. And if

1:22:46

you want to walk through that

1:22:48

with Kat and I, then I

1:22:50

don't know, you can go listen

1:22:52

to that one. But I also

1:22:54

just feel like people like people

1:22:56

like people who... are stuck on

1:22:59

this like, well, yeah, Blake lively,

1:23:01

it makes sense to support her,

1:23:03

but Amber heard, that's a totally

1:23:05

different thing. I feel like if

1:23:07

you're stuck in that trap. Then

1:23:09

the police are coming for you.

1:23:11

Can you guys hear the ambrian?

1:23:14

I feel like if that's the

1:23:16

conclusion that you've arrived at, then

1:23:18

we're not seeing the bigger picture.

1:23:20

and that whether or not you

1:23:22

will support, you know, someone who

1:23:24

comes forward in the future, whether

1:23:26

it's a big celebrity or not,

1:23:29

is still dependent on how much

1:23:31

you like them and how successful

1:23:33

the smear campaign was. I think

1:23:35

that if you're unable to pick

1:23:37

up on the parallels between Amber

1:23:39

Hurd and Blake Lively, then you're

1:23:42

not going to be able to

1:23:44

distinguish when this is happening again.

1:23:46

to another celebrity woman or another

1:23:48

woman in the public eye because

1:23:50

this is going to keep happening

1:23:52

to women and we know that

1:23:54

it will because it's happened to

1:23:57

so many celebrity women repeatedly even

1:23:59

within just the past couple of

1:24:01

years. Yeah, I've been thinking, I

1:24:03

think about you a lot in

1:24:05

general. But I think about you

1:24:07

because you're someone who reports on

1:24:09

a lot of these cases and

1:24:12

just since Depvey heard you have

1:24:14

Brad and Angelina... you have Megan

1:24:16

Estallion and Torrey Lane's, you have

1:24:18

this, and it's a really, like

1:24:20

once you've identified what's going on

1:24:22

as far as the PR of

1:24:24

it all, and people's willingness to

1:24:27

take the bait every time, there

1:24:29

has yet to be a sort

1:24:31

of raising of public consciousness around

1:24:33

the cycle. Yes. And a public

1:24:35

willingness at scale to zoom out,

1:24:37

look at all of this and

1:24:40

not participate in it next time.

1:24:42

And I think that in all

1:24:44

of these cases, there's two things

1:24:46

going on that complement each other.

1:24:48

One of them is the coordinated

1:24:50

efforts from perpetrators or people who

1:24:52

are accused, which involves. publicity and

1:24:55

it also involves social media and

1:24:57

influencers and content creation and looking

1:24:59

at how the accused party in

1:25:01

each of these scenarios and the

1:25:03

representatives, looking at their public relations

1:25:05

strategy, looking at how they're choosing

1:25:07

to communicate information to the public,

1:25:10

the people who they choose to

1:25:12

communicate that information, the information that

1:25:14

they're feeding them, their own statements,

1:25:16

how social media is like sending

1:25:18

this information out to everybody absorbing

1:25:20

it. That's one half of it.

1:25:23

And with each of these cases,

1:25:25

you see the exact same tactics

1:25:27

and the exact same playbook. But

1:25:29

the other side of this that

1:25:31

is also crucial, which is the

1:25:33

power that allows all of these

1:25:35

campaigns to be successful, is people's

1:25:38

preconceived biases around women and around

1:25:40

victims. If people didn't already. have

1:25:42

biases against women and against victims

1:25:44

then none of these campaigns would

1:25:46

be successful because it requires people

1:25:48

to agree with them and to

1:25:50

connect with them and crucially it

1:25:53

empowers them to take these like

1:25:55

breadcrumbs of what they're hearing and

1:25:57

reading and create their own discourse

1:25:59

around it that perpetuates the same

1:26:01

narrative. And that's what I think

1:26:03

a lot of these content creators

1:26:05

who have responded defensively to the

1:26:08

New York Times article and to

1:26:10

the complaint when people are saying

1:26:12

like, oh, well, no one told

1:26:14

me to do that. I did

1:26:16

it on my own, that's the

1:26:18

crux of the issue. When people

1:26:21

make content online that is designed

1:26:23

to reach a wider audience, it

1:26:25

requires that it fits into the

1:26:27

narratives and the mindsets and the

1:26:29

biases that everybody already has. The

1:26:31

whole point of this is that

1:26:33

if there wasn't already a receptive

1:26:36

audience to this type of misogyny,

1:26:38

it wouldn't go anywhere. And I

1:26:40

think that something that we see

1:26:42

reflected in the fact that. the

1:26:44

text messages from Melissa Nathan expressing

1:26:46

that people really just hate women

1:26:48

this much that's the heart of

1:26:51

this story and that's the heart

1:26:53

at all of these stories because

1:26:55

even though the facts differ and

1:26:57

the allegations differ and the evidence

1:26:59

differs none of this would be

1:27:01

possible if people didn't already have

1:27:03

an anti-woman bias that they were

1:27:06

willing to filter and respond to

1:27:08

this information with. That was really

1:27:10

good. Thank you. And also bleak.

1:27:12

Yeah. I guess I kind of

1:27:14

want to wrap this up by

1:27:16

doing what I often do at

1:27:19

the end of these podcast episodes,

1:27:21

which is giving, you know, someone

1:27:23

who's listening to this, maybe their

1:27:25

parents who feel that, you know,

1:27:27

they exist in a world outside

1:27:29

of the consequences of these sorts

1:27:31

of celebrity scandals, like, something to

1:27:34

do, something that they can take

1:27:36

away from this. because this is

1:27:38

about misogyny and it also even

1:27:40

more broadly speaking is about our

1:27:42

information ecosystem and how easy it

1:27:44

is for narratives to be perpetuated

1:27:46

to the point where something inorganic

1:27:49

is believed organically by huge amounts

1:27:51

of people in the mainstream. And

1:27:53

most frequently, like the patterns that

1:27:55

we're examining have to do with

1:27:57

anti-women driven campaigns against celebrities, but

1:27:59

this can also apply way beyond

1:28:01

that. This can apply to everyday

1:28:04

women and everyday people. It can

1:28:06

also apply to topics that on

1:28:08

surface level, it might not seem

1:28:10

connected to things like news and

1:28:12

politics and areas that similarly are

1:28:14

often governed by the information we

1:28:17

consume on the internet and how

1:28:19

it makes us feel, and so

1:28:21

we should all be more cognizant

1:28:23

of how these processes are playing

1:28:25

out. The second part of this

1:28:27

is the decision of what to

1:28:29

do as an internet bystander, because

1:28:32

really, like we discussed, the comments

1:28:34

that we leave, the content that

1:28:36

we engage with, what we choose

1:28:38

to vote on Reddit, what we

1:28:40

choose to like, what we choose

1:28:42

to share, that plays a massive

1:28:44

impact. What we choose to quote,

1:28:47

tweet. We all play a role

1:28:49

in this when we choose to

1:28:51

engage with it. So I think

1:28:53

at the very least, we can

1:28:55

choose to... disengage from it. You

1:28:57

don't have to go out there

1:28:59

and try to be a champion

1:29:02

of who's right and who's wrong

1:29:04

in every single one of these

1:29:06

cases, especially if you don't feel

1:29:08

like you have a sophisticated enough

1:29:10

understanding of these dynamics, which are

1:29:12

complex. But the very least that

1:29:15

you can do, and what I

1:29:17

think we would all benefit from

1:29:19

doing, is disengaging from these types

1:29:21

of campaigns. You don't have to

1:29:23

pile this type of content. Frequently

1:29:25

what I see happen with these

1:29:27

types of things is once the

1:29:30

opposing party comes out with their

1:29:32

own narrative, like once Blake lively

1:29:34

filed this complaint, people started to

1:29:36

say, this is complicated. I don't

1:29:38

know how I feel about this

1:29:40

anymore because new information is coming

1:29:42

to light. But the correct thing

1:29:45

to do is to draw that

1:29:47

conclusion before we get to this

1:29:49

point. If you think it's too

1:29:51

complicated now, then why were you

1:29:53

weighing in before? I think oftentimes

1:29:55

there's a response to a woman

1:29:58

bringing forward allegations where people say

1:30:00

we need to wait for the

1:30:02

other side, but did you wait

1:30:04

for the other side the first

1:30:06

time you weighed in? Did you

1:30:08

wait for Blake Lively's side when

1:30:10

all of this was happening over

1:30:13

the summer? rush ahead and take

1:30:15

part in this without really knowing

1:30:17

what was going on. I think

1:30:19

if people really want to have

1:30:21

all of the information before they

1:30:23

take a stance, then they need

1:30:25

to consistently do that regardless of

1:30:28

whether the person being attacked is

1:30:30

someone who they feel is right

1:30:32

or someone who they feel is

1:30:34

wrong. The other thing I think

1:30:36

about is like... Social media platforms

1:30:38

incentivize us to just kind of

1:30:40

mindlessly participate in whatever the discourse

1:30:43

of the day is. When you're

1:30:45

scrolling TikTok or any other social

1:30:47

media platform, the design of that

1:30:49

platform is intended for you to

1:30:51

not stop and think about what

1:30:53

you're consuming and what you're engaging

1:30:56

with. And so we actually have

1:30:58

to do something that's kind of

1:31:00

difficult, which is like developed literacy

1:31:02

around these platforms that we're using.

1:31:04

And that applies to all of

1:31:06

us. Like we're not exempt from

1:31:08

that. There were so many people

1:31:11

online who expressed sentiments after Blake

1:31:13

Lively's complaint of how did I

1:31:15

let myself fall for this? Even

1:31:17

people who recognized what was happening

1:31:19

with Amber Hurd were saying like,

1:31:21

I can't believe that I saw

1:31:23

it in that case, but I

1:31:26

didn't see it in this one.

1:31:28

And I think the fact of

1:31:30

the matter is, it's really, really

1:31:32

easy to get caught up in

1:31:34

online discourse and online campaigns. And

1:31:36

that's a lesson for everybody, because

1:31:38

regardless of whether you're invested in

1:31:41

celebrity news or not. media than

1:31:43

this applies to you. Absolutely and

1:31:45

the next time this happens and

1:31:47

it will it will be just

1:31:49

as sophisticated as all of the

1:31:51

ones that have come before with

1:31:54

the added sophistication of knowing how

1:31:56

people have come around to

1:31:58

what happened in

1:32:00

these cases. in these like,

1:32:02

I just feel like we have

1:32:04

to constantly be wary, especially if things

1:32:06

that are posted in places like in

1:32:08

New York Post and then New into