Since Blake Lively alleged a coordinated attempt to smear her reputation in a bombshell civil rights complaint, many experts, influencers and everyday fans have started to reconsider how public relations efforts may influence their own perceptions of celebrities — especially women in the center of other contentious cases.
Lively accused co-star and director Justin Baldoni of repeated sexual harassment during the filming of her summer blockbuster “It Ends With Us” — then said in her filing that he had employed a crisis publicity team to brand her difficult to work with and insensitive to the film’s central theme, domestic violence. A lawyer representing Baldoni has denied Lively’s allegations and filed a $250 million libel lawsuit against The New York Times, which first reported on the smear campaign allegations, maintaining that there was no smear campaign and that some of the Times’ reporting had omitted crucial context.
The Times, in a statement, responded that it will “vigorously defend” itself and said that Baldoni, other parties and his representatives “have not pointed to a single error” in its reporting. Hours after Baldoni filed suit against the newspaper, Lively filed her own suit in New York with her sexual harassment and smear campaign allegations.
The accusations riveted social media, in part because it pulled back the curtain on the Hollywood press machine.
“The Hollywood publicist has been around for decades, almost as long as the industry itself. What’s changing, I believe, is that people are starting to see how manufactured the narratives are and the personas are,” said Molly McPherson, a crisis communications strategist with over 560,000 TikTok followers. “I believe people are going to scrutinize the PR industry. I also think it’s going to lead to an erosion of trust.”
That is already happening with fans on social media, who are discussing how the Baldoni-Lively dispute has shifted their perceptions and understandings of the machinations and influence of Hollywood PR.
Deborah Hollingsworth, 45, who works in education in North Carolina, said she was inundated with short social media videos on Facebook and Instagram that were critical of Lively during the press campaign around “It Ends With Us.”
“In many ways, before I even knew what the movie was about, it was like, ‘Hey, there’s this new movie about domestic violence and Blake Lively is in it and she sucks,’” Hollingsworth said. “And it was so pervasive.”
After reading the New York Times piece that broke the news of Lively’s complaint, Hollingsworth’s opinion changed. She recalled telling her husband “The whole thing was a setup.”
Hollingsworth said the whole episode made her reconsider how she felt about another huge celebrity feud that took over the zeitgeist in 2022: Johnny Depp’s defamation case against Amber Heard. Hollingsworth said she now questions how PR may have influenced her view of things — and she wasn’t alone.
Online, influencers and everyday people have also begun comparing Lively’s story to those of other celebrity women like Heard, Angelina Jolie and Megan Thee Stallion, who have endured harsh public scrutiny and widespread attacks in recent years, particularly around issues of domestic violence, harassment and their relationships with celebrity men. The attacks, fueled by public relations teams, the accused celebrities and people online, have included negative viral posts, creators churning out monetized content and social media misinformation.
On platforms like TikTok, Reddit, Instagram, X and more, videos and posts with millions of views and thousands of comments have reopened conversations into the role of PR and content creators in celebrity news and controversy, particularly when women are targeted. Some of the cases involve the same creators and players in the Hollywood PR world.
Melissa Nathan, one of the crisis publicists employed by Baldoni, previously represented Depp. Heard, who lost a high-profile 2022 defamation suit against Depp, spoke out after Lively’s complaint was filed, saying: “I saw this firsthand and up close. It’s as horrifying as it is destructive.”
“The smear campaign against Amber Heard and the smear Campaign against Blake Lively were organized by the same PR company. Are you getting it yet?” said one post on X with over 800,000 views. “Angelina, Megan, Amber, Blake, and others are all victim to the same system that’s sole aim is to destroy them whilst uplifting their abusers,” said a comment with more than 3,000 upvotes on Reddit. In addition to online comments, other women in the entertainment industry, like Abigail Breslin and Kate Beckinsale, have spoken up in support of Lively and to share their own allegations about on-set harassment and retaliation.
Chris Harihar, who has also worked in crisis communications strategy, said the crisis publicity tactics that Baldoni’s team are accused of using have been embraced by algorithm-driven social media platforms that reward content with an anti-women bias.
“That narrative works because it fits into a broader framework that we’re seeing online where women in power get demonized,” Harihar said. “You would hope that people would be more skeptical of situations like this, and I think it will happen, but people have short memories. They retreat back to bad behavior.”
For Lively, the tide hasn’t turned completely. After Baldoni filed his suit against the Times on Tuesday, many posts and comments began to sway back in favor of him and against Lively.
McPherson said “people are still weary about Blake Lively,” in part because of her previous controversies. McPherson also made a video, with over 1 million views, about the latest developments in the case and how both sides are using PR tactics.
In 2020, Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, apologized for their choice of wedding venue eight years earlier — a former slave plantation. Some content creators and commenters maintained their disapproval of Lively promoting her beverage and hair care brands alongside “It Ends With Us,” even if they said they believed her allegations against Baldoni. There have also been many posts and comments by those who don’t believe Lively’s allegations.
McPherson said the bigger impact of Lively’s case was how it exposed the “backroom tactics” of crisis publicists, which she said could have crossed into unethical territory. Baldoni’s ex-publicist sued him and his current team, including Nathan, over alleged manipulation and contract breaches.
In one TikTok video with almost 4 million views, creator KJ Miller wondered if an earlier video she made about Lively’s talking points during the “It Ends With Us” press tour was part of a “much bigger chess game” in the PR industry.
“I felt like I was making that video organically, and now I’m like ‘Was I? Did I get got?’” Miller said in the video. “Not trying to absolve myself of any culpability, but more just really wondering about this machine that I guess I now am a part of.”
Factors in how public perception around stars develops include their previous reputations, the size and strength of their fan bases, the way social media influencers and news outlets cover them and, former litigator and workplace consultant Adrienne Lawrence said, various biases against marginalized groups that may come into play.
“Stereotypes against gender, race, sexuality and other identities are often weaponized to bolster these smear campaigns,” Lawrence said. “As we saw with Lively, women are often portrayed as manipulative and overly ambitious when they assert boundaries or seek accountability. It really taps into that long-standing trope that penalizes women for asserting power in professional settings.”
Online reactions to controversies involving celebrity women over the past several years have varied. In 2023, when singer Joe Jonas and actress Sophie Turner divorced, Turner appeared to win the ensuing PR battle by staying largely silent amid negative stories about her from outlets like TMZ. In 2022, after content creators profited from casting Heard in a negative light, women like Jolie and actress Evan Rachel Wood were targeted as “Heard 2.0.”
“Reading the pieces pulled out of the lawsuit and revisiting stuff with Amber Heard really made me feel like I’m not as savvy as I thought,” Hollingsworth said. “I hope I’ve learned something from this.”