Blake Lively’s case against Justin Baldoni prompts questions about the role of PR in Hollywood
Posts dissecting how PR tactics may have been used in previous high profile cases have gained millions of views online.
Since Blake Lively alleged a coordinated attempt to smear her reputation in a bombshell civil rights complaint, many experts, influencers and everyday fans have started to reconsider how public relations efforts may influence their own perceptions of celebrities — especially women in the center of other contentious cases.
Lively accused co-star and director Justin Baldoni of repeated sexual harassment during the filming of her summer blockbuster “It Ends With Us” — then said in her filing that he had employed a crisis publicity team to brand her difficult to work with and insensitive to the film’s central theme, domestic violence. A lawyer representing Baldoni has denied Lively’s allegations and filed a $250 million libel lawsuit against The New York Times, which first reported on the smear campaign allegations, maintaining that there was no smear campaign and that some of the Times’ reporting had omitted crucial context.
The Times, in a statement, responded that it will “vigorously defend” itself and said that Baldoni, other parties and his representatives “have not pointed to a single error” in its reporting. Hours after Baldoni filed suit against the newspaper, Lively filed her own suit in New York with her sexual harassment and smear campaign allegations.
The accusations riveted social media, in part because it pulled back the curtain on the Hollywood press machine.
“The Hollywood publicist has been around for decades, almost as long as the industry itself. What’s changing, I believe, is that people are starting to see how manufactured the narratives are and the personas are,” said Molly McPherson, a crisis communications strategist with over 560,000 TikTok followers. “I believe people are going to scrutinize the PR industry. I also think it’s going to lead to an erosion of trust.”
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