FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCE

Amber Heard Calls Blake Lively’s Alleged Smear Campaign ‘Horrifying’

The actress, who says she was subjected to a similar campaign by the same crisis manager, remarked Monday that “a lie travels halfway around the world before truth can get its boots on.”

Actress Amber Heard says the alleged smear campaign against Blake Lively appears all too familiar.

The actress, who moved to Spain after a messy defamation battle with Johnny Depp in 2022, told NBC News she experienced what Lively is going through “firsthand.”

“Social media is the absolute personification of the classic saying, ‘A lie travels halfway around the world before truth can get its boots on,’” Heard said. “I saw this firsthand and up close. It’s as horrifying as it is destructive.”

Heard, 38, joins a growing list of celebrities who’ve offered their support to Lively after she filed a complaint in California that accuses Justin Baldoni, a director and co-star on It Ends With Us, of hiring a communications firm to run a smear campaign against her.

Allegedly orchestrating that campaign was Melissa Nathan, the same crisis PR manager hired by Deep during his successful trial against Heard, which resulted in him being awarded a combined $15 million in punitive and compensatory damages.

Depp said at the time that “the jury gave me my life back,” but Heard countered that her courtroom loss “sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated.”

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Lively, 37, laid out a rash of accusations against Baldoni this month, namely that he and producer Jamey Heath sexually harassed her and created a hostile work environment on the set of It Ends With Us.

Lively alleges that she was shown videos of nude women, including Heath’s wife, against her wishes and faced inquiries about her weight. She also claimed the men repeatedly entered her trailer uninvited while she was undressed or breastfeeding.

The alleged smear campaign came after Lively pushed for changes on the set, she said. Lively alleges that a negative PR wave was unleashed against her after word began trickling out that she and Baldoni—the stars of a movie based of a hit Colleen Hoover novel—weren’t getting along. Lively said the flurry of bad press was part of preemptive smear campaign by Baldoni to destroy her reputation before their on-set differences became fully public.

Specifically, Lively alleged that Baldoni’s PR team used “social media mitigation” that included “proactive fan posting” and “social manipulations” to “help change narrative” about her during the film’s promotion.

Possible strife between Lively and Baldoni didn’t go unnoticed at the time. During promotion for the blockbuster film, which grossed over $350 million worldwide, fans noted that Baldoni was doing press separately from his co-stars and that he and Lively did not follow each other on Instagram.

The severity of the duo’s alleged differences was highlighted in a slew of text messages that were included in Lively’s complaint, which allegedly showed Baldoni’s publicist communicating with Nathan about how she can “bury anyone” with a PR blitz.

Bryan Freedman, an attorney representing Baldoni, called the allegations in Lively’s complaint “categorically false.” He said a crisis communication team was hired because Lively threatened to stop showing up to filming or to promote the film.

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Josh FialloBreaking News Reporter

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