Amber Heard has spoken out and expressed her support for Blake Lively after it was noted that Justin Baldoni, who Lively has accused of sexual harassment and creating a smear campaign, has hired the same crisis PR team as Johnny Depp.
Lively has sued her It Ends With Us co-star and director – claiming he caused her “severe emotional distress”. Reports of a rift between the two actors emerged in August, with suggestions that creative differences lay behind the fallout, but now the Gossip Girl star has filed a suit against Baldoni, claiming he sexually harassed her on the set of the film.
The undated complaint filed with the California Civil Rights Department also accuses Baldoni of creating a hostile working environment on set, and claims he has been trying to tarnish Lively’s reputation with a targeted social media campaign.
Lively’s complaint stated that Baldoni retained prominent PR crisis manager Melissa Nathan, the same person Depp hired during his defamation trial against Heard.
Heard has commented on the situation in an interview with NBC News. “Social media is the absolute personification of the classic saying ‘A lie travels halfway around the world before truth can get its boots on,’” she said.
“I saw this firsthand and up close. It’s as horrifying as it is destructive.”
In Heard’s case, the jury found that Depp was defamed and he was awarded $10million (£8million) in compensatory damages and $5million in punitive damages. Heard was awarded $2million after the jury found that Depp had defamed her through his attorney. However, the jury found that Heard’s statements about her marriage were “false” and that she acted with “actual malice”.
According to Lively’s complaint, Baldoni hired a crisis communications team to launch a “retaliatory social manipulation campaign” against her during the promotion of It Ends With Us.
“Mr. Baldoni and his Wayfarer associates embarked on a sophisticated press and digital plan in retaliation for Ms. Lively exercising her legally-protected right to speak up about their misconduct on the set, with the additional objective of intimidating her and anyone else from revealing in public what actually occurred,” the complaint reads.
As NBC reports, the lawsuit alleges that Nathan delivered Baldoni a plan consisting of “social media mitigation,” including “proactive fan posting” and “social manipulations” to “help change narrative” during the film’s promotion.
Bryan Freedman, representing Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and all its representatives, called Lively’s claims “categorically” false. Freedman said that a crisis PR management team was hired because Lively allegedly threatened to not promote the film or show up to set.
Freedman said to NBC: “TAG PR must be the most powerful group of publicists the world has ever seen for it to be able to completely change the perception of both Amber Heard and Blake Lively.”
He continued to say the only similarities between Lively’s case and Heard’s case is “every move they have made has been out there for everyone to see, widely filmed and documented for the public to make up their own minds — which they did, organically.”
For help, advice or more information regarding sexual harassment, assault and rape in the UK, visit the Rape Crisis charity website. In the US, visit RAINN.
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