A former publicist for actor Justin Baldoni alleges that his current publicity team conspired to harm her and steal her clients, in conjunction with their efforts to allegedly launch a “smear campaign” against his “It Ends With Us” co-star, Blake Lively.
In a lawsuit filed in New York Supreme Court on Tuesday, Stephanie Jones and her agency Jonesworks accuse Baldoni’s publicist Jennifer Abel of breach of contract, claiming she violated her employment terms by setting up a competing firm and stealing documents and clients out from under Jones. It also accuses Abel of defamation, according to a copy of the suit.
Jones’ suit, which was first reported by The New York Times, comes days after a separate complaint filed by Lively with the California Civil Rights Department against some of the same defendants, alleging Baldoni sexually harassed her on set and then engaged in a retaliatory campaign facilitated by Abel and crisis communications representative Melissa Nathan. Nathan is also named as a defendant in Jones’ complaint, along with Baldoni and his company, Wayfarer Studios.
Lively’s allegations have sent shock waves across the industry. Her complaint has also put the role that crisis PR firms play in the spotlight, with many online reexamining some of the negative headlines surrounding Lively during the promotional tour for “It Ends With Us.”
Jones represented Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios from 2017 to August of this year. Abel worked for Jonesworks from 2020 to August. Several of Abel’s text messages and emails, which the suit said were obtained via a subpoena of Jonesworks, were cited heavily in Lively’s complaint.
The film “It Ends With Us,” an adaptation of the popular Colleen Hoover novel, was released in theaters in August. Lively portrays heroine Lily Bloom, while Baldoni plays her abusive romantic partner, Ryle Kincaid. Baldoni also adapted and directed the project.
According to Jones’ suit, in August Baldoni “began to fear that the increased attention being paid to him and the Film would cause reports of allegations about his on-set misbehavior to come out.” Nathan and Abel subsequently began “to formulate a no-holds-barred strategy to discredit and suppress any potential revelations about Baldoni’s on-set behavior” without Jones’ knowledge or approval, the suit alleges.
“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,” the lawsuit states.
Abel and Nathan “leveraged their teams to create and perpetuate negative content about Lively on social media platforms such as Reddit and TikTok,” according to the suit.
“At the same time as Abel and Nathan were working to protect Baldoni from negative press attention, they were actively working their media contacts to plant negative stories about Jones and Jonesworks,” Jones’ suit states. They used “more than a dozen fake social media accounts and dark web accounts that defamed Jones and Jonesworks.”
Bryan Freedman, a lawyer representing Baldoni, Wayfarer, Abel and Nathan, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Jones’ suit on Tuesday.
In a previous response to Lively’s complaint, Freedman wrote that Nathan’s company, The Agency Group PR, “operated as any crisis management firm would when hired by a client experiencing threats by two extremely powerful people with unlimited resources,” referring to Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds. Freedman also referred to Lively’s claims as “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious.”
In her suit, Jones cited some text messages she said she obtained from Abel’s work phone after terminating Abel in August. Some of the texts Jones included in her own suit were previously unpublished, including one allegedly sent by Abel that called Baldoni “unlikeable and unrealistic as a leading man.”
“I can’t stand him. He’s so pompous. A men’s retreat during release, is he crazy?!” one of the texts from Abel’s phone said. “He doesn’t need a retreat. He needs to be humbled.”
In the wake of on-set demands from Lively asking Baldoni and Wayfarer CEO Jamey Heath to stop certain behaviors, including entering her trailer while she was in a state of undress and adding unscripted sexual scenes into the film, Jones alleged that she had originally planned to counter the emerging media narrative around tensions between the stars with “a positive press strategy.”
Instead, Jones alleges that Abel and Nathan implemented “an aggressive media smear campaign” against her and Lively at the same time on behalf of Baldoni and Wayfarer, amid their own plans to establish a competing PR business.
Jones’ “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,” it states. She is requesting a jury trial.
In the days since Lively’s complaint was filed, many in Hollywood — including the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA and Sony Pictures Entertainment, the studio behind “It Ends With Us” — have issued their support for Lively.
Baldoni was dropped by his talent agency WME. He has not publicly addressed Lively’s complaint or Jones’ lawsuit.
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