Amber Heard supports Blake Lively amid ‘horrifying’ smear campaign allegations
The Aquaman star backs Lively in her legal battle against It Ends With Us director Justin Baldoni, accused of orchestrating a ‘retaliatory social media campaign with help from the same crisis management expert used by her ex-husband Johnny Depp during his 2022 defamation trial.
Amber Heard has voiced her support for fellow actress Blake Lively amid allegations of sexual harassment against It Ends With Us director and co-star Justin Baldoni.
In a complaint filed on Friday, Lively accused Baldoni of orchestrating a “retaliatory social media campaign” against her. It was subsequently reported that Baldoni and his team had hired Melissa Nathan, the same crisis management expert used by Heard’s ex-husband Johnny Depp during their highly publicised 2022 defamation trial.
“Social media is the absolute personification of the classic saying, ‘A lie travels halfway around the world before truth can get its boots on,’” Heard told NBC News in a statement. “I saw this firsthand and up close. It’s as horrifying as it is destructive.”
In the 2022 trial, a jury unanimously found that Heard defamed Depp after she accused the actor of abuse in a 2018 op-ed for The Washington Post titled, “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.”
He was awarded $5 million in punitive damages and $10 million in compensatory damages. At the time, Depp said that “the jury gave me my life back,” while Heard said the decision “sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated.”
Lively’s filing accuses Baldoni and the film’s production company, Wayfarer Studios, of a “multi-tiered plan” to “destroy” her reputation following a meeting in which she and her husband, actor Ryan Reynolds, addressed “repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behaviour” by Baldoni and a producer on the movie.
The filing includes texts and emails between Baldoni and his PR team detailing their online strategy after rumours of an on-set feud between them started gaining traction. “Mr. Baldoni and his Wayfarer associates embarked on a sophisticated press and digital plan in retaliation for Ms. Lively exercising her legally-protected right to speak up about their misconduct on the set, with the additional objective of intimidating her and anyone else from revealing in public what actually occurred,” the complaint alleges.
The digital strategy included boosting social media posts that were favourable to Baldoni and critical of Lively.
Bryan Freedman, a lawyer representing Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios, and its representatives, called the claims “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious.”
In a statement responding to Heard’s comments, Freedman told NBC News: “TAG PR must be the most powerful group of publicists the world has ever seen for it to be able to completely change the perception of both Amber Heard and Blake Lively.”
He added that the only connection between the two cases is that “every move they have made has been out there for everyone to see, widely filmed and documented for the public to make up their own minds — which they did, organically.”
Released in August, It Ends With Us, an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s best-selling 2016 novel, exceeded box office expectations with a $US50m debut.
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