Justin Baldoni’s Publicist Breaks Silence, Defends Leaked Texts About Blake Lively

Jennifer Abel defends Lively's "incredibly difficult" staff as the true aggressors in those shocking internal communications. Attorney Bryan Freedman issues a warning, saying, "Anyone involved with this abhorrent conduct will be sued into oblivion."

The publicist for Justin Baldoni, who is at the center of the controversy surrounding the movie's purported smear campaign against Blake Lively, star of It Ends With Us, is giving her version of events.

In the course of Lively's sexual harassment case against Baldoni and his production business, Wayfarer Studios, text messages between Jennifer Abel and crisis management specialist Melissa Nathan were exposed.

 While the director and co-star has refuted the accusations and insisted that Lively intentionally set out to damage his name and caused issues while filming, the actress has accused Baldoni of regularly going too far on and off camera.

On Facebook, Abel defended her crisis team conversations (which are described below), claiming that they mostly consisted of jokes about how fans were responding to the Lively-Baldoni conflict throughout the marketing campaign and that there was no evidence that Baldoni's team ever took concrete action against Lively. 

(The Hollywood Reporter has verified the authenticity of the Facebook posts, which have subsequently been removed.)

Abel added, "What the cherry-picked messages don't include—and it's not shocking because it doesn't fit the narrative—is that no'smear' was used.

" No social combat plan or unfavorable publicity was ever enabled, but we were ready for anything since it's our responsibility to be ready for anything. However, since the internet was doing the work for us, we didn't need to implement anything. 

Yes, we discussed it, considered whether we needed certain things, flagged accounts that needed our attention, and collaborated with a social team to help us keep an eye on the story so we could take swift action if necessary. 

We also laughed and celebrated the fact that fans were appreciating our clients' efforts and hearts without us having to do anything but keep our heads down and concentrate on giving our clients positive interviews.


"As the texts demonstrate, we sophomorically reveled and again, joked, privately to each other about the internet's feedback to the woman whose team was making our lives exceedingly difficult throughout the campaign," Abel continued. I am a human. 

Even though we were ready, it felt wonderful to know that we didn't need to go above and above to defend our client, despite the many hours and months of preparation on top of my daily responsibilities.

Abel went on to clarify her statement that Lively's staff was making their lives "extremely difficult."

At the beginning of the [marketing] campaign, she wrote, "I was informed that the opposing team had been spreading false information about my client as a 'fail safe' in case my client did not follow the campaign's requirements." It's not something I do, which is why we hired [a crisis team].

" As part of my regular scope of business, my only responsibility was to organize speaking engagements, screenings, and interviews for my client in promotion of the movie. I performed my duties. Now, what sort of lady would conspire against another woman who suffered from all of the claims? 

I appreciate you asking. I decided to support my client of nearly five years, who had devoted his life to the fair treatment of everyone, particularly women, after examining the facts, evidence, and concrete proof that refuted all of the claims and demands made at the beginning of production. 

who had never treated anyone badly, and who had a great team and community at Wayfarer who all shared the same moral values and led morally upright lives. That is a decision that everyone of us as representatives must make. I felt good about our efforts, so I did that as best I could.

"TAG PR operated as any other crisis management firm would when hired by a client experiencing threats by two extremely powerful people with unlimited resources," said attorney Bryan Freedman, who represents Baldoni along with Abel and Nathan, on Monday. 

Audiences found Lively's own conduct, interviews, and marketing during the promotional tour repulsive, and they naturally reacted to what the media itself noticed, negating the need for the conventional scenario planning TAG PR drafted. 

It's interesting that Lively's own questionable PR strategies were directly aided by The New York Times' attempt to "uncover" a sneaky PR campaign by revealing hacked personal text exchanges devoid of important context—exactly the same strategies she accuses the business of doing.