Blake Lively’s Brother-In-Law Calls Out Justin Baldoni’s PR Team

Blake Lively‘s family has stepped in to support her following her recent lawsuit against her “It Ends With Us” co-star and director, Justin Baldoni.

In the suit, Lively claims she was the target of a smear campaign after accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment during the film’s production.

Following the news, Blake Lively’s brother-in-law, Bart Johnson, has spoken out, slamming Justin Baldoni and his PR team.

Johnson took to the comments section of an Instagram post about the news from The New York Times to express his true feelings regarding the situation.

“Her complaints were filed during the filming. On record. Long before the public conflict. The cast unfollowed him [Baldoni] for a reason,” he said. “His PR team was stellar. Gross and disgusting but highly effective. Read the article, their text message exchanges and his PR campaign strategy to bury her by any means necessary. No one is with out [sic] faults. But the public got played.”

He later admitted that “of course mistakes were made” on Lively’s part,  “Just IMAGINE being a stay at home mom raising 4 kids, married to the busiest man in Hollywood and at the same time being a girl boss running multiple companies while writing, producing, running non profits and working 16+ hour days from home so you can be with your kids.”

“Launching 2 new businesses you been working on / developing for many years (launch scheduled by distributors, not you, btw) all while getting attacked by a VERY expensive PR smear campaign because you filed a sexual harassment claim for the very film you have to go out and promote with just the right tone or you get cooked!?” he added to his comment.

The actor then addressed the resurfaced interviews where Blake Lively seemed to respond to interviewers in a dismissive or impolite manner.

“But yeah let’s post from our couch how much we hate her for making mistakes. That makes sense,” he expressed. “I mean, she’s been rude in these interviews that magically played on repeat. I saw it. None of us have ever been wrong or mean. Never. We should discount decades of good for those few bad moments. Glad the microscope isn’t on me every day of my life.”

As previously reported by The Blast, Blake Lively has filed a lawsuit against Justin Baldoni, his production company WayFarer Studios—producers of “It Ends with Us”—and several other individuals. The suit includes allegations of sexual harassment, negligence, interference with prospective economic advantage, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and more.

Lively’s legal team is also pursuing claims of retaliation, arguing that Baldoni and WayFarer Studios “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 set, with the additional objective of intimidating her and anyone else from revealing in public what actually occurred,” according to the filing.

The lawsuit also reveals a “Scenario Planning Document” allegedly sent by a hired crisis management team to Baldoni, WayFarer Studios executive Steve Heath, and others. This document reportedly outlined three potential strategies Lively’s team might pursue and detailed how Baldoni’s team should respond if she made her grievances public.

Lively’s attorney claims the document was distributed by Baldoni’s crisis PR manager, Melissa Nathan, on August 2, 2024, with the intention of promoting “misleading counternarratives.”

In a resurfaced interview, Justin Baldoni openly acknowledged having struggled with an “unhealthy” relationship with pornography—a revelation that has gained renewed attention in light of Blake Lively’s sexual harassment allegations against him.

“I was introduced to porn when I was 10 years old. Long before I ever, you know, could have an erection or even knew how I felt about anything,” he revealed during a July 2021 episode of Sarah Grynberg’s “A Life of Greatness” podcast. “It was, you know, like any young boy who sees boobs for the first time, it’s exciting because our culture has shielded them from us because they’re sexualized. It’s cultural.”

“You go to places like Africa and different tribes … and the breast is the breast,” he added. “We’ve sexualized this thing, so, of course, it becomes fascinating and interesting and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, boobs.’ And then, you know, hormones start raging.”

He admitted that he would often “seek refuge” in pornography during moments of loneliness, abandonment, or emotional pain, describing it as a source of a “dopamine rush.”

“I trained my brain to deal with pain with the dopamine hit … but it doesn’t mean that I’m not using something in an unhealthy way,” he shared.