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“She’s a phony, but I guess the public likes that…” This is the line that actress Joan Crawford is said to have declared about film star Bette Davis. The back-and-forth sniping between the pair played out in the tabloids of the 1930s and 40s. “Bette is a survivor… She survived herself,” Crawford is also said to have remarked.
Their tempestuous relationship was so notorious that in 2017 it was made into an Emmy award-winning TV series, Feud. Hollywood rivalries are of course nothing new – yet conflicts today rarely play out so publicly. That might be why the dispute between actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, which spilled out into the open in December 2024, is still in the headlines three months on.
The subsequent legal battle brought to light a fallout during production of the film, It Ends With Us. After the promotional and cinematic run had ended, the pair – who didn’t appear on the red carpet together at the premiere in New York – filed lawsuits against each other.
Lively has accused Baldoni and others of carrying out a smear campaign against her after she complained about alleged sexual harassment on set. Baldoni, meanwhile, has accused Lively of carrying out a smear campaign against him, and claims that she tried to take over control of the film. Both sides deny all allegations.
What emerged as this all played out is that crisis PR managers had been employed. Legal representatives for Lively obtained numerous text messages between Baldoni’s publicist Jennifer Abel and the crisis team he retained, led by Melissa Nathan, whose previous clients include Johnny Depp and Drake. Ms Nathan was alleged to have texted Ms Abel, “You know we can bury anyone.”
Lively has now reportedly taken on the CIA’s former deputy chief of staff Nick Shapiro to advise on her legal communications strategy.
It was The New York Times that first reported Lively’s legal complaint in December. “It’s one of the few places that can afford to do that, and then everyone else jumped in so nobody was sticking their neck out.” Baldoni filed a $250 million lawsuit against the New York Times in December, although a federal judge indicated this week that it might be dismissed.
Even when bigger outlets break news about Hollywood disputes, the growing dominance of social media means that stories might not have the same cut-through they had previously.
Doreen St Felix, a writer who was previously an editor on Lena Dunham’s newsletter, recently wrote in The New Yorker that stories of harassment and abuse, for example, now receive a “curdled, cynical, and exhausted reception” – this, less than a decade after the emergence of the MeToo movement.
Sometimes, however, the best way for publicists to prevent stories being amplified is by bypassing social media entirely when reacting to a scandal. “If you give it to the press first, they don’t quote as many of the comments on social media,” says Ms Speight. “You control the narrative completely, because the comments come afterwards.”
What viewers want
None of this industry would exist if the appetite weren’t there and if the viewing public didn’t want to unpick details about their lives – and rifts. And yet attitudes towards celebrity have undoubtedly changed since the advent of social media. “It’s now a two-way communication, which it never was before,” points out Mr Bee. “It was generally celebrities, or lawyer or government or whatever, just saying something that gets reported, and that message is conveyed. Now, you have to be prepared for a two-way conversation.”
But he thinks there are different attitudes to the media today than in the era of celebrity gossip magazines. Nodding to the UK, he continues: “We had the Leveson Inquiry, we’re about to get an ITV drama about phone hacking, it’s as if the curtain has been lifted.”
As for the Lively and Baldoni lawsuits, it’s not clear how these will play out – but the very fact that it has so unusually spilled into the public domain is a reminder of how well-oiled the Hollywood publicity machine is the rest of the time. And that is unlikely to change soon.
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