Blake Lively saw the full force of a hate campaign this summer. During promotion for her movie This Ends With Us, there was suddenly an influx of negative headlines about her. She was rude, she was a mean girl, she was arrogant, she deserved the full ire of the internet, went the narrative. But the narrative was wrong.
The hate campaign against Lively didn’t happen organically. Thousands of people didn’t all independently decide they hated one of America’s most bankable stars—they were spurred on. And the person responsible had, it transpired, been abusing Lively on the set of It Ends With Us, and wanted to bury her. This was Justin Baldoni, Lively’s co-star and director on the movie.
After treating Lively in the most appalling way, Baldoni hired a woman called Melissa Nathan and she worked with him, producer Jamey Heath (also accused by Lively of sexual misconduct), and fellow PR guru Jennifer Abel to bring Lively down. There are text messages between them obtained by the New York Times, and they make for depressing reading. Nathan and Abel worked tirelessly to amplify posts about Lively being difficult, mean and shallow. The internet began to hate her for “glamorizing domestic violence” during her promotion of It Ends With Us, even though the promotional plan for the movie was, according to the New York Times, actually meant to “focus more on the uplifting aspects of the movie than on abuse.” The PR plan worked like a dream. “It’s actually sad because it just shows you have people [who] really want to hate on women,” Nathan wrote to Abel at one point, and she was correct.
People did want to hate on Blake Lively. There was no doubt she was a desperately imperfect person, what with her getting married to Ryan Reynolds on a former plantation, something she’s received pushback about for years. But, notably, she’s always been criticized for that more than Reynolds has. (Both sides of the couple have apologized for it.)
In fact, she has been criticized more in the past year than many men who have been allegedly outright abusive, highlighting a painful double standard. Take Brad Pitt. Pitt was accused of domestic violence by his ex-wife Angelina Jolie, against not just her but their children as well. And yet his career continues with barely a whisper of the allegations while he’s promoting a movie. Next year he’s set to star in F1, which has a $300 million budget. But the campaign against Lively, who was the victim of abuse rather than its alleged perpetrator, caused her haircare brand to lose, according to NYT, 78 percent in sales. Money talks, and it indicates time and time again that people care more for abusive men than imperfect women.
Or you could take Jared Leto. Allegations have been floating around Leto for years but they never seem to stick. He’s been accused of sexting underage girls, with film director James Gunn notably calling him out for it in 2018. Other people have accused him of sexual abuse in since-deleted posts. He also sent his co-stars unpleasant items while “method acting” as the Joker, including a dead pig. His career is still going from strength to strength, and he was recently cast as the villain Skeletor in a Masters of the Universe film.
Lively was treated worse than either of those men despite there being no abuse allegations against her whatsoever. It highlights a nasty truth about our society and the misogynistic undercurrents that lie beneath Hollywood.
Published: Dec 27, 2024 01:39 am