Good morning! Netflix acquires the FIFA Women’s World Cup broadcast rights, Paramount Global and Skydance Media's merger is challenged, and Blake Lively is the latest victim of tactics long used to discredit women.
- Hollywood drama. If you spend any time on TikTok or Instagram, you probably saw lots of talk about Blake Lively a few months ago. Around the time of her film It Ends With Us's release in August, a conversation started on social media: people noticed that Lively and her costar and director Justin Baldoni avoided each other during the film's press tour and began speculating about who was at fault for the rift. From Lively's upbeat tone during interviews (the film is about domestic violence) to her new haircare brand, many found things to object to about the actress and were quick to jump on the hate bandwagon.
Turns out, they may have had some help. New reporting from the New York Times finds that Lively was likely the victim of a coordinated online smear campaign executed by a crisis PR firm hired by Baldoni. The pair indeed had issues on the set of the movie; she had accused him and his film studio Wayfarer's CEO Jamey Heath of misconduct, from improvising intimate kissing and dialogue out of character, to entering her trailer while she was nude, to discussing their sex lives in front of her, to hiring a friend for a role as an OB/GYN who would be close to a nude Lively during a birth scene. Baldoni, who hosted a podcast about gender equity and toxic masculinity, allegedly hired a crisis PR firm because he worried she would bring these allegations to light during the film's release.
