THB #642: It Didn't End With Them... The Battle Between The Publicists

Pt 1 of 2

Last week, I brought you a page-one-rewrite of the Blake Lively/Justin Baldoni complaint in 4 acts (Act 1 & 2 - Act 3 - Act 4) and as I was working on that last part, out came the lawsuit between the owner of the publicity company that the 2 key publicists for Team Baldoni were operating under before they were fired for conspiring to leave to start their own PR company as all the Lively drama seemed to be subsiding in late August.

So… we have had the social media and real media shit-throwing during the release of It Ends With Us that was a very public, if seemingly irrational, series of events…. then we had the Lively complaint that exposed the alleged sexualized behavior on the set in 2023 which then, anticipating the return to production in 2024, led to 2 meetings (1 with just Team Lively and Baldoni producer Heath and another “all-hands” meeting) in which rules wee agreed to moving forward.

Both of those stories involve celebrities and a very popular film.

But now we have an added story… much more inside baseball… but in some ways, even messier… or juicier.

Let’s dig in…

If you are a celebrity paying $5000 - $20,000 a month (or more) for a great publicist to make you feel like the sun shines out of your ass and that they will make the world fall in line with that assessment, you might be surprised to know that unless you are one of those rare ones who is a really, really nice person and not at all abusive or just a general jackass (and most think they are, ha)… this kind of not-meant-for-public-consumption text between your hands-on publicists is to be expected…

Adjust gender and bad ideas you may have floated accordingly.

It gets worse because it gets more personal. When discussing the claims by Lively regarding a scene in which he allegedly licked her neck in rehearsal…

Gross!!! Cringy!!!

Publicists hating their clients is not rare… and not necessarily how they feel all or even most of the time. A client that has lost their emotional gag reflex in dealing with the expectation of having their needs met pays a publicist to be part of a very close personal relationship, not unlike “organic” relationships, family, friends or lovers. But in this case, one of the partners in the relationship is paying for the intimacy, so they don’t feel the natural concern about holding back for fear of the ramifications as one might with someone whose emotions may have some importance to this person down the line.

There can be real love between clients and publicists… and there can be the kind of friendly love that one has for someone they get along really well with but about whom you always hold the feeling in the back on your mind that they would go ahead and sleep with your significant other or turn your child against you if the mood struck.

The best client/celebrity relationships are the ones with the least bullshit. And those exist. But these are highly emotional relationships and they can lift to the sky and crash to the bottom of the sea… sometimes in the same weekend.

After the publicist explains to the client how well they will be protected…

They may eventually be discussing protecting themselves from the client, because they are whip smart…

But let’s return to the beginning of this part of the story, starring Stephanie Jones of Jonesworks PR. “Abel and Nathan” are the publicists who worked for her agency and were fired in late August after Jones discovered some of the details she is suing about. Baldoni you know… Wayfarer is his company. Ms. Jones’ lawyers’ complaint explains the exposition as well as it can be explained, so…

Defendants Abel and Nathan secretly conspired for months to publicly and privately attack Jones and Jonesworks, to breach multiple contracts and induce contractual breaches, and to steal clients and business prospects.

Behind Jones’s back, they secretly coordinated with Baldoni and Wayfarer to implement an aggressive media smear campaign against Baldoni’s film co-star, and then used the crisis as an opportunity to drive a wedge between Jones and Baldoni, and to publicly pin blame for this smear campaign on Jones—when Jones had no knowledge or involvement in it. To this day, Abel and Nathan continue to point the finger falsely at Jones now that their own misconduct is coming to light, and to defame and attack Jones in the industry.

Baldoni and Wayfarer, who have since parted ways with Jonesworks, have repudiated their contractual obligations with Jonesworks and rebuffed Jones’s efforts to settle this dispute privately in arbitration.

Defendants will not stop attacking Jones, and have refused any efforts to resolve these issues out of court. This lawsuit seeks to finally put a stop to their continued misconduct and to compensate Jones and Jonesworks for the damage Defendants’ conduct and scheme has inflicted.

To repeat, more simply…

According to Jones, Abel & Nathan spent months fucking with her and conspiring to steal clients.

The smear campaign against Lively (see: acts I - IV) was theirs and Jones had no idea but they used that campaign to break relationships between Jones and Baldoni and others, like Sony.

Baldoni left with Abel & Nathan and didn’t pay off the year-long contract with Jones that was renewed in May, before Nathan was hired, the smear campaign, or the film release.

Abel & Nathan continue to attack Jones and Baldoni refuses to even try to negotiate a settlement. Jones wants to shut them up, perhaps get a damage payment, and get the money she feels is owed by Baldoni.

But the fun is in the details…