As a seasoned entertainment industry observer with decades of experience under my belt, I must say that the latest developments surrounding Justin Baldoni and his film “It Ends With Us” are nothing short of a rollercoaster ride. The allegations against him, coupled with the alleged smear campaign against his co-star, Emily Lively, are truly a testament to the dark side of Hollywood.
Stephanie Jones, a publicist based in Hollywood, has recently filed a lawsuit in New York, alleging that her former client, Justin Baldoni – a controversial filmmaker and actor – breached their contractual agreement. This legal action comes shortly after one of Baldoni’s co-stars from the movie “It Ends With Us” took legal action against him for inappropriate behavior on set, related to sexual harassment.
Director and actor Baldoni, who worked with Lively in the movie adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s top-selling novel, agreed to a one-year contract with Jones’ PR agency, Jonesworks, for a monthly salary of $25,000. However, in August, coinciding with the cinema release of Ends With Us, Baldoni terminated his agreement with Jones’ firm and followed his publicist Jennifer Abel from Jonesworks to her new PR company that she had recently established.
The legal action, initiated in New York State Court, implicates Abel and publicist Melissa Nathan as alleged accomplices in a defamatory scheme targeting Lively. It alleges that they orchestrated a smear campaign against her, and subsequently tried to pin the damaging actions around the launch of “It Ends With Us” on Jones. In her lawsuit, submitted to the California Civil Rights Department on Saturday, Lively claims that Baldoni and his associates carried out a manipulative social media campaign aimed at ruining her reputation as retaliation for asserting she experienced sexual harassment at the hands of Baldoni.
Before Lively filed her lawsuit over the weekend, her lawyers successfully requested text messages from Jonesworks’ company phones by issuing a pre-litigation subpoena to Jones. Later, the representative provided the phone that Abel had been using, which they had “forensically secured” after the publicist left the company. Text messages from this device, as outlined in Lively’s lawsuit, reveal conversations between the two representatives and Baldoni about their intentions to “silence” Lively, as they aimed to suppress a potential exposure of alleged on-set sexual misconduct.
Baldoni has rejected every allegation made in Lively’s lawsuit, labeling them as “disgraceful” and “serious and entirely unfounded charges against Mr. Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and their associates.
In the most recent legal case involving the ongoing saga surrounding the controversial movie addressing sensitive topics like abuse and trauma, Jones is alleging that Abel intentionally plotted for several months prior to departing from Jonesworks, with the aim of stealing the company’s clients while simultaneously damaging Jones’ professional standing. The lawsuit also implicates Nathan, who is being charged with urging Abel to leave, as Nathan supposedly aimed to acquire Jonesworks’ clientele.
“This scheme ultimately inflicted serious damage on Jones and Jonesworks,” the suit claims.
Attempts made by The Hollywood Reporter to contact Jonesworks for a comment went unanswered initially.
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2024-12-25 02:54