On December 21, actress Blake Lively filed a lawsuit against her It Ends With Us director and co-star Justin Baldoni. She accused him of s*xual harassment, attempting to “destroy” her career, and seemingly running a smear campaign against her.
Amid the now-viral suit, two names have come up from Justin Baldoni’s PR team – crisis PR executive Melissa Nathan, who’s the founder of the company The Agency Group, and entertainment publicist and strategist Jennifer Abel, who’s the founder and CEO of RWA Communications.
As per Blake Lively’s accusations, both Melissa and Jennifer reportedly tried to damage her reputation, by running a seemingly “untraceable” smear campaign against her online.
Not only that but the suit also mentions Melissa’s sister Sara Nathan of allegedly orchestrating the same against Lively. Sara is an editor-at-large for the New York Post.
Page Six, the tabloid owned by NYP ran the headline, “Blake Lively approved final cut of ‘It Ends With Us’ amid feud with co-star director Justin Baldoni” and other similar “negative” stories. Reportedly, they were done by Sara Nathan.
All you need to know about Sara Nathan amid her sister’s alleged involvement in Blake Lively smear campaign
As per her bio on the New York Post website, Sara Nathan is an award-winning editor-at-large who has worked for The Sun, People Magazine, Daily Mail, and DailyMail.com, before joining NYP.
Born in Britain, Sara primarily covers Hollywood, celebrities, and the Royals. From Prince Harry’s memoir to Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen’s breakup, alongside Florence Pugh’s fallout with Olivia Wade and drama surrounding Don’t Worry Darling – Nathan has covered them all, recently.
Before becoming an editor-at-large, she was the Page Six features editor. She has worked at the New York Post since May 2018 and has an overall 25 years of experience in world, US, and UK news.
She has also interviewed the likes of Anna Delvey and former NXIVM member, India Oxenberg. According to Sara’s LinkedIn, she studied newspaper journalism at the City University of London and earned her bachelor’s degree in humanistic studies from Manchester Metropolitan University.
In brief, exploring the alleged smear campaign against Blake Lively
According to Blake Lively’s lawsuit against Justin Baldoni, he hired a PR team comprising Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan who reportedly attempted to “sway” the public opinion against Lively and in favor of Baldoni, ahead of the August 9 release of It Ends With Us.
During the same, the publicist duo seemingly exchanged text messages trying to find ways to discredit Lively.
“We can’t write it down to him. We can’t write we will destroy her. [Baldoni] has to look at it as an information document for us to be armed with. That’s all. Imagine if a document saying all the things that he wants ends up in the wrong hands.” Nathan allegedly wrote to Abel.
In a separate text, she seemingly added, “You know we can bury anyone but I can’t write that to [Baldoni].” It was reportedly followed by, Abel telling Nathan that their online campaign in favor of their client Justin Baldoni was “so freaking good” and a “total success.”
The latter allegedly responded by writing, “The majority of socials are so pro-Justin and I don’t even agree with half of them lol.”
Besides, they allegedly planted “pieces” of how “horrible” Lively “is to work with,” and seemingly told an editor “friend” at Daily Mail that they were “ready when we are” to run narratives against the Gossip Girl alum.
The alleged text chain also named a man Jed Wallace, whom Melissa reportedly credited as the one who pushed the shift in narrative about Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni on social media. In a follow-up text, Melissa seemingly shared how it proved people were still eager to “hate on women.”
As per the suit, Abel and Nathan purportedly pushed a story on Daily Mail titled, “Is Blake Lively set to be CANCELLED? String of ‘hard to watch’ videos that have surfaced following ‘tone deaf’ Q&A to promote ‘It Ends With Us.’”
Following its publication, Abel reportedly praised Nathan for outdoing herself with the “piece,” while the latter responded, “That’s why you hired me right? I’m the best.” The duo reportedly discussed being in the “clear” and surviving the alleged Blake Lively smear campaign, as well.
The lawsuit, which was filed on Saturday in the California Civil Rights Department, has accused Justin Baldoni of a “targeted, multichannel, online attack.” Elsewhere, the court documents alleged Baldoni reportedly watched Blake Lively get undressed, shared his s*xual exploits on set, and showed her the video of his wife, n*ked, among other things.
Justin Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman has called the suit “completely false, outrageous, and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media.”
Blake Lively on the other hand told New York Times that her “legal action” would hopefully “pull the curtain” on “sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct” and help “protect others who may be targeted.”
Edited by Prem Deshpande
