Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni's 'smear campaign' texts UNSEALED; director's crisis management 'unnecessary' over "organic criticism" of actress

Explosive new evidence has emerged in Blake Lively’s ongoing legal battle with her 'It Ends With Us' co-star and director Justin Baldoni. A New York federal judge has unsealed a series of text messages and emails that appear to show Baldoni’s team discussing their social media activity with a hired crisis management team leading up to the film's release. However, text messages reveal that all the strategy was ultimately deemed 'unnecessary' due to a wave of “organic” online criticism over Lively's remarks.Court filings, which include more than 60 exhibits submitted by Lively’s attorneys last week, reveal that Baldoni’s publicist Melissa Nathan connected his business partner, Jamey Heath with social media consultant Jed Wallace in August 2024. While the consultant's LinkedIn profile has since been deleted, it described him as a “hired gun”, according to Daily Mail.In the report, Nathan allegedly outlined a $25,000-per-month package for “mostly untraceable” services designed to seed content, engage with negative accounts, and push pro-Baldoni narratives using anonymous profiles. In one email, Nathan’s colleague Katie Case described the strategy as “social and digital mitigation and remediation”, stressing the need to execute operations “without fingerprints.”Plans included monitoring Reddit and other forums, taking down hostile accounts, and starting discussion threads that redirected criticism away from Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios.Despite these preparations, sources told the publication that much of the work turned out to be 'unnecessary' over the 'organic' widespread criticism of Lively’s promotional strategy. The actress' highly controversial line, "wear your florals" to a film about domestic violence, also spread rapidly online.According to the report, Case shared the infamous Instagram video of Lively and said, “Like come on. We had NOTHING to do with that.”Internal texts show PR staffers distancing themselves from the backlash, insisting that negative TikToks and commentary were “organic stuff from real people.” “We didn’t tell Jed to go after the idea that her promo was inappropriate,” read the message that went on to add, “That happened organically. People saw the actual movie and were like… wait.”An unnamed member of the group chat agreed, replying, “This is crazy. She doesn’t have a good reputation. All of this is organic stuff from real people making TikToks — not bots.”One internal email also revealed concerns about Lively’s close friendship with Taylor Swift. Case warned that if Lively “activated the Taylor Swift fan base,” it could trigger a major PR crisis, prompting the crisis team to raise its proposed fee to $30,000 per month.In a separate January 2024 text exchange with fellow executives, Baldoni expressed frustration over his working relationship with Lively. The 41-year-old filmmaker wrote that he felt like he was “acting and working with this person who can and will use anything she can against,” him. "It’s all scary — yet I know I have protection," he saidHe also expressed his outrage over having to direct the movie, while the actress was seemingly taking control of the project. He said, “trying to find [his] balance of captaining a ship and leading it while it’s being held hostage.”The revelations are the latest twist in the highly publicised legal feud between Lively and Baldoni which sparked off over the New Year, with the actress filing a lawsuit against the director and him counter-suing her for $400 million. While Baldoni's lawsuit was later dropped, Lively’s legal team is going ahead to allege that Baldoni’s camp engaged in an intentional 'smear campaign' against her. Baldoni and his legal team has maintained since the start of the court battle that the negative press against Lively emerged 'organically' from genuine audience reaction.