THB #641: It Should Have Ended With Them - A Hate Story In 4 Acts

Act 4

(Act 1 & 2 - Act 3)

ACT FOUR

There never should have been an Act 4… because in real life, everything except for its exposure to the world (and perhaps some specific repercussions to come) had already happened.

We will get to the complaint by Team Lively filed on Friday, December 20 shortly. But this unexpected 4th act actually starts back on August 21, when Stephanie Jones fired Jen Abel from Jonesworks and took her phone.

A choice selection of text messages would be at the core of the complaint that Team Baldoni had attacked Lively from behind the digital curtain and by doing so, also attacked the movie… which succeeded in spite of this.

Team Lively has told all who asked that they obtained the text messages via a civil subpoena. What’s funny is that, now that there is a hot story, what is actually being reported by which journalist or set of journalists has become a puzzle unto itself.

The first trade story about how the text messages ended up in Team Lively’s complaint is from James Hibberd at The Hollywood Reporter, timestamped on Monday at 12:10pm. In the piece, there is the since-deleted Facebook post by Jen Abel, a statement from Team Baldoni attorney Bryan Freedman, and Abel claiming that the texts had not been subpoenaed (how would she know whether Jonesworks had received a subpoena after she was fired?). This was followed by an unnamed member of the Team Lively legal team: “The subpoena disclosed and referenced in the complaint was served on Jonesworks LLC,” the team member said. “The internal documents referred to in the complaint were produced subject to that subpoena. We expect that further details regarding the subpoena process will be disclosed during discovery.”

A Variety piece, timestamped Dec 23, 4:20pm PT, pretty much covered the same information, adding some additional background, and a fresh quote from Kristin Tahler, a partner at Quinn Emanuel aka Team Lively.

A Deadline piece, timestamped December 23, 2024 4:43pm, follows with much the same information, but the addition of and focus on the first statement by Sony Pictures: “We have previously expressed our support for Blake in connection with her work on and for the film. We fully and firmly reiterate that support today. Further, we strongly condemn any reputational attacks on her. Any such attacks have no place in our business or in a civil society.”

But let’s go back to the actual complaint, filed with California’s Civil Rights Department.

The key complaint being lodged is that Baldoni’s reps went after Lively via the press and social media. And that was chewed over in the first 3 acts of this story. The complaint starts a bit before the window I have focused on and continues a little bit after.

But the sledgehammer of this filing is the part that has almost nothing to do with this issue of defamation (aside from the paranoia it created). The sledgehammer is the voluminous list of accusations of bad behaviors, alleged to be engaged in by the director, the producer/partner, and others associated with the duo from the start of production until they were shut down by the WGA strike. The issues were then memorialized in the months before production resumed.

Please put down any food or beverage you might be enjoying before you start reading this list. You don’t want to choke or spit out anything on your keyboard/tablet/phone…

As it turns out, this list of 30 issues started, as offered in the complaint, led to a formal agreement of 17 items in November… during the PR silence and the strikes. Called “Protections for Return To Production,” there was actually a sign-off on all 17 items on November 15.

But the list of 30 was offered up in full again at a January 4 “all-hands” meeting that was outlined as Point 17 of the Protections agreement.

Nude videos, and sag-ing, and dead fathers… oy my!!!

Obviously, the accusation that Lively and the rest of the crew needed to be protected from these behaviors does not prove that the behaviors happened.

“No more sucking or biting of lip without BL consent.”

I mean… do you really need much more to get a painfully specific feeling about who Mr. Baldoni is?

“No more description of their own genitalia to Blake Lively.”
”All actors participating with Blake Lively in intimate scenes involving her being in any state of nudity or simulated nudity must be classified as active, working actors, not ‘friends’ of the director or producers.”
”No more private, multi hour meetings in BL’s trailer, with Mr. Baldoni crying, with not outside BL appointed representative to monitor.”

Oy.