Blake Lively’s bombshell sexual harassment complaint against Justin Baldoni set Hollywood running for cover on the eve of the holiday break while simultaneously checking whether they’d missed a memo lowering the bar on public image campaigns for celebrity women.
“It’s really disheartening,” said one senior female industry executive, referring to the detailed allegations of harassment and a social media smear campaign against Lively by her co-star Baldoni. “If you read the complaint, the text messages, it’s crystal clear that something really bad happened here.”
“This is on another level,” said a veteran Hollywood publicity executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, referring to the successful effort by a PR campaign to tag Lively as “tone-deaf, difficult to work with, a bully,” as The New York Times put it.