Blake Lively’s brother-in-law Bart Johnson is supporting the actress amid her sexual harassment lawsuit against It Ends With Us costar and director Justin Baldoni.
Johnson, who is the husband of Blake’s half-sister Robyn Lively, took to the comments sections under a New York Times‘ Instagram post about the complaint.
“Her complaints were filed during the filming. On record. Long before the public conflict,” clarified Johnson, 54, in the comments.
“The cast unfollowed him for a reason. Read this article before spiting [sic] ignorance,” he went on.
Johnson then slammed Baldoni, 40, accusing him of misleading the public with alleged defamatory posts about his costar.
“His PR team was stellar. Gross and disgusting but highly effective,” he continued. “Read the article, their text message exchanges and his PR campaign strategy to bury her by any means necessary. No one is without faults. But the public got played.”
Lively’s lawsuit alleges that Baldoni’s behavior, “behind closed doors she has suffered from grief, fear, trauma, and extreme anxiety.”
Blake’s complaint includes screenshots of alleged texts and emails between members of Baldoni’s team planning the smear campaign.
Johnson did not stop there and pointed out that no one is perfect, including his sister-in-law and that while “mistakes were made,” Lively is only human.
“Just IMAGINE being a stay at home mom raising 4 kids, married to the busiest man in Hollywood and at the same time being a girl boss running multiple companies while writing, producing, running non profits and working 16+ hour days from home so you can be with your kids,”. he continued.
“Launching 2 new businesses you been working on/developing for many years (launch scheduled by distributors, not you, btw) all while getting attacked by a VERY expensive PR smear campaign because you filed a sexual harassment claim for the very film you have to go out and promote with just the right tone or you get cooked!? Looks like she’s doing a hell of a job to me and trying to do good things for the right reasons.”
Johnson then seemingly referenced the resurfaced interviews that went viral earlier amid It Ends With Us promotions, documenting her past interactions with journalists.
“But yeah let’s post from our couch how much we hate her for making mistakes. That makes sense. I mean, she’s been rude in these interviews that magically played on repeat. I saw it. None of us have ever been wrong or mean. Never. We should discount decades of good for those few bad moments. Glad the microscope isn’t on me every day of my life,” Johnson wrote.
He also replied to one commenter, “To clarify, to ME a ‘girl boss’ means a woman that is kicking a$$ as an entrepreneur and/or business owner in what has been previously dominated by men, and showing they are every bit as capable and qualified if not more so in that space. She’s my hero as is any woman charging it like this. You’re free to define it as you wish, but that’s on you.”