How the Lively-Baldoni Feud Exposed a Secret Smear Machine
From left: Rebel Wilson, Jed Wallace, Melissa Nathan, Bryan Freedman and Andrew Huberman
Illustration by Christopher Hughes; Getty Images
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In 1969, the chaos theory founder Edward Lorenz articulated the Butterfly Effect, in which a single, small action in one area can lead to broader, unexpected outcomes in others. The phenomenon, based on his research into weather patterns, is a helpful metaphor for a storm now gathering force in Hollywood.
When Blake Lively and her co-star and director Justin Baldoni first clashed on the New Jersey set of their hit romantic weepie It Ends with Us, they no doubt didn’t realize their careers would both be overwhelmed by the maelstrom. Nor that years on, and millions of dollars in legal fees later, the dispute would remain constant public fodder, heading to a May jury trial in a Manhattan federal courtroom.
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But what’s most surprising is what’s taking place downwind — thanks to their mutual animosity and assets. The personality-driven spectacle has uncovered a clandestine smear machine. Its workings span industries and continents, playing an extrajudicial role in recent high-profile conflicts involving Rebel Wilson, Scooter Braun, the wellness guru Andrew Huberman and other bold-faced names both within and beyond entertainment. The Hollywood Reporter has been connecting the dots and surfacing the claims over the past three months.
The revelations began to appear in court this past December, when Baldoni’s ex-publicist Stephanie Jones filed a lawsuit against him, his production company Wayfarer and his crisis communications specialist Melissa Nathan. Jones’ legal team had hired a digital forensics firm to examine a vilifying anonymous website made about her and discovered that it allegedly was the handiwork of Nathan as well as a fixer named Jed Wallace, who’s had a long association with Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman.
Jones’ forensics firm also found, according to her lawsuit, that her website was connected to “a growing list of attack websites from the same band of conspirators.” The sites mix factual assertions about their targets with unsubstantiated conspiracies and defamatory claims of misconduct ranging from extortion and embezzlement to drug dealing and prostitution. Jones’ attorneys say Nathan and Wallace have run “a clandestine cottage industry of creating false smear websites and social media accounts targeting their adversaries and those of their clients,” often in connection with litigation. Her legal team describes what it’s uncovered as a “playbook.” Freedman has denied that Nathan and Wallace are responsible for the sites, which have since gone offline, and objected to Jones’ forensic data, deriding it as “speculation presented as fact.”
The sites — THR was able to review them via the Internet Archive — are strikingly rinky-dink. This is likely not by accident. Professional hit jobs, they position themselves as the handmade, lo-fi work of amateurs, typically self-styled whistleblowers speaking their truths to power. The sites are amplified by online bots. The apparent goal is to discredit accusers in public — then circulate the smears to their social circles — as well as demoralize adversaries amid legal disputes, forcing quiet settlements on preferred terms.
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The key players and their antagonists in this saga exist at the center of the entertainment industry’s attorney-publicity matrix. Freedman has become one of the most well-known lawyers in entertainment for his over-the-top aggression, hired by everyone from Range’s founding CAA defectors to Megyn Kelly, who has recommended him to THR by explaining that “once he’s on board for you, he’ll kill for you.”
Nathan launched her firm The Agency Group (often referred to as TAG PR) — whose clients have included Drake, Logan Paul and The Chainsmokers — along with several of her former colleagues at PR crisis consulting powerhouse Hiltzik Strategies. Until now, Wallace has been the lowest profile of the trio, a mysterious Texas-based operator who’s been compared to the titular troubleshooter in Showtime’s Ray Donovan. Lively’s legal team has claimed in a legal filing that he specializes in “executing confidential and ‘untraceable’ campaigns” against opponents. For his part, his own lawyer describes his business as