Justin Baldoni, who was accused of harassment and retaliation against the actress Blake Lively, is now being sued by his former publicist.
Credit...John Nacion/Variety, via Getty Images

Justin Baldoni’s Ex-Publicist Sues Over Alleged Blake Lively Smear Campaign

An ousted P.R. executive alleges a conspiracy to harm her and steal her clients, in connection with an effort to tarnish Blake Lively.

by · NY Times

A former publicist for the actor and director Justin Baldoni filed a lawsuit on Tuesday that adds a new dimension to an alleged campaign to undermine the actress Blake Lively. The publicist, Stephanie Jones, said she was forced out of representing Mr. Baldoni and his film studio amid concerns that Ms. Lively would go public with accusations of misconduct against him.

Ms. Jones’s lawsuit, filed in New York and alleging breach of contract, follows a separate legal complaint in California on Saturday by Ms. Lively. The actress asserted that Mr. Baldoni; his film studio, Wayfarer; and their public relations representatives retaliated against her after she raised her misconduct allegations during the filming of “It Ends With Us.”

Ms. Lively’s legal complaint included excerpts from thousands of pages of text messages and emails that she had obtained through a subpoena. Ms. Jones’s lawsuit reveals that those messages came from a company phone used by one of her former employees, Jennifer Abel, who was among those Ms. Lively accused of helping to orchestrate a smear campaign against her.

Ms. Jones said she fired Ms. Abel last summer after discovering that Ms. Abel had been stealing documents from her firm as she prepared to start her own business. According to the lawsuit, the phone was voluntarily returned to Ms. Jones’s company, Jonesworks, “in the presence of an employment lawyer,” and the messages and emails “were forensically extracted directly from that company phone” and “have been preserved in their original state.”

Ms. Abel had been the Jonesworks point person for Mr. Baldoni and Wayfarer, and the messages show that she worked closely with Melissa Nathan, a crisis communications manager, as soon as Wayfarer and Mr. Baldoni hired her. The lawsuit says that Ms. Jones saw the messages from the phone after she fired Ms. Abel and Wayfarer stopped working with Jonesworks.

Ms. Jones says in the lawsuit that in reviewing the messages, she discovered that her former employee had been involved in a retaliation campaign against Ms. Lively. Ms. Abel has since opened her own firm and has continued working for Wayfarer.

As the release of “It Ends With Us,” neared last summer, Mr. Baldoni began to fear that allegations about his on-set misbehavior would come out, the lawsuit says. The suit says that without Ms. Jones’s knowledge or approval, and with encouragement from Jamey Heath, another head of Wayfarer, Ms. Nathan and Ms. Abel began “to formulate a no-holds-barred strategy to discredit and suppress any potential revelations about Baldoni’s on set behavior.” The suit says they launched “a smear campaign against Lively.”

Ms. Jones alleges in her lawsuit that Ms. Abel and Ms. Nathan “secretly conspired” to undermine Ms. Jones’s reputation, steal clients from her firm and blame her for the campaign against Ms. Lively. She also accuses Mr. Baldoni, Wayfarer and Ms. Abel of breaching their contracts with her company. Bryan Freedman, a lawyer representing the defendants, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Since news of Ms. Lively’s allegations broke on Saturday, there have been cascading consequences for Mr. Baldoni and Wayfarer. Within hours, the talent agency William Morris Endeavor dropped him as a client.

Colleen Hoover, author of the book “It Ends With Us”; Jenny Slate and Brandon Sklenar, cast members of the movie; and Alex Saks, one of the producers, are among those who have publicly supported Ms. Lively.

On Monday, Liz Plank, who has co-hosted the “Man Enough” podcast with Mr. Baldoni and Mr. Heath, announced she would no longer be appearing on the show. And Vital Voices, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering women, rescinded an “ally” award it had presented to Mr. Baldoni earlier this month for “advocating on behalf of women and girls.”

For their part, the defendants in the legal complaints by Ms. Jones and Ms. Lively have remained mostly silent. In an initial statement in response to Ms. Lively’s legal filing, Mr. Freedman, the lawyer, said the claims were “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious.” He also has suggested that the text messages cited were “cherry-picked” to make his clients look bad and that the plans his clients drafted proved unnecessary because organic criticism against Ms. Lively took off and received media attention.

The text messages and other documents show that Ms. Abel was part of the discussions as Mr. Baldoni and Wayfarer hired first Ms. Nathan and then Jed Wallace, a self-described “hired gun,” who led a digital strategy that included boosting social media posts that could help their cause. There are references in emails to “social manipulation” and “proactive fan posting,” and text messages cite efforts to “boost” and “amplify” online content that was favorable to Mr. Baldoni or critical of Ms. Lively.

One of Ms. Nathan’s employees wrote in a text message that included Ms. Abel, “We’ve started to see shift on social, due largely to Jed and his team’s efforts to shift the narrative.”

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