Yahoo Lifestyle Justin Baldoni Hit With Defamation Suit As PR Teams Turn On Each Other Over Blake Lively’s ‘It Ends With Us’ Smear Campaign Allegations
Justin Baldoni is probably about to have an even worse Christmas than anticipated, and, amidst sexual harassment, retaliation and It Ends With Us smear campaign claims from Blake Lively, things were looking pretty bad already.
Pummeled and increasingly shunned by Hollywood power players, podcast co-hosts and non-profits as a consequence of Lively’s allegations that paint the one-time feminist ally as misogynistic, petty and kind of dim, Baldoni just got hit with his first formal lawsuit out of the enlarging scandal. Now Stephanie Jones, the founder of the Jane The Virgin vet’s own former PR company, is going after him, his Wayfarer Studios and publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel for defamation, breach of contract and more.
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“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,” declares an eight-claim complaint filed by the Quinn Emanuel represented PR boss this Christmas Eve.
“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 jury trial-seeking filing in New York State court adds.
RELATED: Sony Condemns “Any Reputational Attacks” On Blake Lively From Justin Baldoni’s Alleged Smear Campaign Against ‘It Ends With Us’ Co-Star
In the midst of the whole BTS IEWU chaos both on and off set, Abel exited Jonesworks in early July to form her own PR firm RWA Communications.
Jones’ suit portrays this as a sudden departure with distinctly underhanded methods from the jump. Still, even as Abel has claimed in a now deleted Facebook post that Jones was fully aware of the planned astroturfing campaign against Lively, Baldoni, Wayfarer and several other clients moved with her to her new firm. As Jones seeks a variety of unspecified damages and court orders against the defendants, Abel up until very recently appears to have continued a professional relationship with Nathan’s crisis PR firm TAG.
“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,” Jones and Jonesworks’ suit states, denying all and any involvement or knowledge of what was going down.
Of course, that, along with claims of downloading and stealing company documents as well as clients, is pretty standard stuff for these PR break-ups. However, in what may become a new norm, the notoriously sharp elbowed Jones’ filing, like Lively’s filing late last week with the California Civil Rights department is chock-full of seemingly incriminating texts between the now defendants.
In this case, having seen her efforts at arbitration rebuffed, Jones is dropping some bombs of her own that could explode the relationship between now ex-employee Abel and ex-client Baldoni. For example: “I can’t stand. He’s so pompous,” says one text from earlier this year Abel sent to an unknown recipient about Baldoni. It adds: “You’re not that important and nobody gives a shit how hard your life is.”
In another text, Abel apparently bad mouths pal Nathan with who she is allegedly working: “She’s a piece of shit”.
Ouch!
Claiming that Baldoni and Wayfarer were under a just renewed contact to Jonesworks from May 2024 until May 2025 at $25,000 a month for flack duties, Jones says “the misconduct by Abel, Nathan, Baldoni, and Wayfarer has had a significant negative effect on Jones’ and Jonesworks’s business and reputation. Neither Abel nor Nathan and their mutual lawyer Bryan Freedman responded to request for comment from Deadline on Jones’ claims or legal action If they do, this post will be updated.
Baldoni has also not spoken out.
Seen briefly around town this week, the actor/producer was dropped by his, Lively and Reynold’s once mutual agency WME on December 21. With that he has suffered rejection all over town as Lively is embraced by A-listers, co-stars, SAG-AFTRA and more for her “courage” in speaking out about the alleged harassment and the media and online efforts to “destroy” her. Yet, with this surely the first of a number of lawsuits, including one from Lively herself likely in the next two weeks, Jones’ action today is seen in some circles as an attempt to distance herself from the It Ends With Us mess and retaliate herself against Abel for quitting.
Also, sources with knowledge of Abel’s exit from Jonesworks say it was not as frayed as Jones now tells it. While Abel announced her resignation from Joneswork after four years on July 10, the flack actually stayed at the company for several weeks more, during which time Jones unsuccessfully tried to get her to stay, with even Jones’ husband and WME agent Jason Hodes getting involved at one point.
Playing defense and offense at the same time, Jones’ lawsuit seeks to shut down any implication by Adel ( a.k.a.: “deduce from that what you will” as her now scrubbed Facebook post of this past weekend said) that she leaked or preemptively handed over Abel’s texts and other communications on Jonesworks devices to Lively’s legal team to use as a part of their CCRD filing.
As Jones’ filing says:
On information and belief, since being terminated from Jonesworks, Abel has continued attacking Jones within the industry, using her tried-and-true playbook to preemptively discredit any sources that might shed light on her own misdeeds. Abel has falsely stated to other participants in the public relations industry that Jones was attempting to distribute doctored text messages purporting to be from Abel as retaliation for Abel’s departure. She has also tried again to point the finger at Jones as cover for her own role in the campaign against Lively becoming public. But Jones has never doctored any text messages and has no reason to do so. Abel’s text messages were forensically extracted directly from the company phone that Abel used during her employment at Jonesworks and voluntarily returned to Jonesworks upon her termination in the presence of an employment lawyer, Jonesworks’s Chief of Staff and an IT specialist, and have been preserved in their original state. And as has become glaringly apparent, the text messages are themselves enough to condemn Abel and Nathan without any need for doctoring.
Which, blemishes and all, jives with what Lively’s own legal team told Deadline on December 23 about how they got those texts and stuff.
“The subpoena disclosed and referenced in the Complaint was served on Jonesworks LLC,” a member of Liveley’s Manatt, Phelps & Phillips attorneys and Willkie Farr & Gallagher legal Praetorian Guard told Deadline Monday. “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.”
Walking around the fact that it is always easier to find something if you know where you should look, these subpoena explanations do not shed much sunshine on how Lively’s team found out about said texts and more in the first place or knew where to look.
You heard it here, this is really just the beginning.
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