Is Blake Lively a mean girl, or was she set up? Justin Baldoni drama explained

Actress Blake Lively has filed a lawsuit against “It Ends with Us” director, Justin Baldoni, which alleges that Baldoni sexually harassed Lively and had his PR team orchestrate a smear campaign against her.

Baldoni has denied any wrongdoing and has filed a $250 million lawsuit of his own, not against Blake Lively, but against the New York Times for its reporting on the allegations. His lawyer, Brian Freedman, has threatened to file a lawsuit against Lively.

Both parties are accusing the other of orchestrating smear campaigns to destroy the other’s career and reputation.

“Blake Lively, a few months ago, started having videos of her past interviews going around,” Allie Beth Stuckey of “Relatable” comments. “She didn’t post them herself, but other people, I don’t know, anonymous X users, TikTok users, started posting these old interviews of Blake Lively where she comes across as very bratty.”

“Is this orchestrated?” Stuckey asks. “I’m not saying that it was, but I have heard more negative things about Blake Lively in the past few months than I had ever heard before.”

Internet sleuths have pointed out that Lively and Baldoni not only do not follow each other on social media, but much of the “It Ends with Us” cast follows Lively and not Baldoni. The original author of the book the film was based on, Colleen Hoover, no longer follows Baldoni, and Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, blocked Baldoni on social media months before the film’s release.

Despite the clear issues between Baldoni and Lively, some fans have also gone after Lively for her “tone deaf” marketing of her own projects while promoting the film.

In “It Ends with Us,” Lively’s character, Lily Bloom, owns a flower shop. At one event, Lively promoted her cocktail company, Betty Blooms. Since the film was a commentary on domestic violence, fans found this out of touch.

“People just thought that was a strange marketing gimmick given the gravity of the subject of the movie. I don’t know. I’m not really sure about that. I’m not sure whether or not that is tone deaf, maybe so,” Stuckey comments.

“Of course domestic violence is serious, but that’s kind of Colleen Hoover’s thing. She writes about some serious subjects but in a way that is very romantic, in a way that is kind of light-hearted and very easy readism. So I’m not totally sure if Blake Lively is at fault for something like this,” she adds.

However, some fans did point out that promoting cocktails through her new film is worse than tone deaf, as domestic abusers are often emboldened by alcohol.

“That’s true, that’s fair,” Stuckey says.

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