Amber Heard is speaking out after Blake Lively filed a lengthy complaint against Justin Baldoni, her It Ends With Us co-star and the film’s director, for sexual harassment and an alleged coordinated effort to destroy her reputation.
As the complaint noted, and had previously been reported, last summer Baldoni hired Melissa Nathan, a veteran PR crisis manager. Nathan was the same person employed by Heard’s ex-husband Johnny Depp during during his high-profile trial defamation trial against the actress in 2022.
Heard, who now lives in Spain, gave a statement to NBC News reacting to the allegations outlined in Lively’s complaint.
“Social media is the absolute personification of the classic saying ‘A lie travels halfway around the world before truth can get its boots on.’ I saw this firsthand and up close. It’s as horrifying as it is destructive,” she said.
In the defamation trial against Heard, the jury sided with Depp, awarding him $5 million in punitive damages and $10 million in compensatory damages. In her counterclaim, Heard was awarded $2 million in compensatory damages but no punitive damages.
Depp said at the time that “the jury gave me my life back.”
For her part, Heard said during an appearance on NBC’s Today: “Even somebody who is sure I’m deserving of all this hate and vitriol, even if you think that I’m lying, you still couldn’t tell me — look me in the eye and tell me — that you think on social media there’s been a fair representation. You cannot tell me that you think that this has been fair.”
Among the others showing support for Lively are her Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants co-stars America Ferrera, Amber Tamblyn and Alexis Bledel and her A Simple Favor director Paul Feig.
According to Lively’s complaint, which was filed Friday, an all-hands-on-deck meeting was held during filming to address her claims of a hostile work environment. According to TMZ, Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, was among those who attended that meeting.
During that meeting, Lively reportedly demanded that Baldoni stop the following alleged actions: showing nude videos or images of women to the actress, mentioning his alleged previous “pornography addiction,” discussing his sexual experiences in front of Lively and others, mentioning the cast and crew’s genitalia, and asking about Lively’s weight.
Lively additionally claimed that Baldoni and company allegedly engaged in a “social manipulation” campaign to “destroy” her reputation. The filing includes 22 pages of texts from Baldoni’s publicist to TAG’s Melissa Nathan, who heads her own crisis PR firm, about how he “wants to feel like [Ms. Lively] can be buried,” to which Nathan replied, “we can’t write we will destroy her.”
In a statement to The New York Times, Lively said, “I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted.”
Bryan Freedman, the attorney for Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and all its representatives, released a statement slamming Lively’s claims. “It is shameful that Ms. Lively and her representatives would make such serious and categorically false accusations against Mr. Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and its representatives, as yet another desperate attempt to ‘fix’ her negative reputation which was garnered from her own remarks and actions during the campaign for the film; interviews and press activities that were observed publicly, in real time and unedited, which allowed for the Internet to generate their own views and opinions,” Freedman wrote.
After news of Lively’s complaint broke, WME dropped Baldoni as a client. The agency also reps Lively and Reynolds.
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