Justin Baldoni’s former publicist sues over alleged smear campaign against Blake Lively
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Publicist Stephanie Jones says she learned a former employee had been involved in alleged smear campaign. Justin Baldoni’s former publicist Stephanie Jones is suing the actor and director for breach of contract in a new lawsuit that links her dismissal to the alleged smear campaign against Baldoni’s It Ends With Us co-star Blake Lively.
This weekend, Lively filed a legal complaint against Baldoni, accusing him of sexual harassment during filming as well as organizing a “smear campaign” against her in the months that followed. Jones says she fired Abel last summer after learning she was stealing company documents in an attempt to start her own business.
When Abel returned her company phone to Jones, Jones says she discovered text messages and emails related to Abel’s work with Baldoni and his studio Wayfarer at which point she realized her employee had been involved in a retaliation campaign against Lively.
The lawsuit states that the messages show Abel was working closely with Melissa Nathan, a crisis communications manager hired by Baldoni. The suit alleges that around the time of the release of It Ends With Us in August, Baldoni began to fear that Lively would go public with sexual harassment allegations against him.
It claims that Abel, Nathan and Wayfarer’s Jamey Heath worked together “to formulate a no-holds-barred strategy to discredit and suppress any potential revelations about Baldoni’s on set behavior,” and that to do so they launched “a smear campaign against Lively.”.
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