Over the weekend, Blake Lively joined the pantheon of famous Hollywood women who’ve taken monumental, #MeToo-inspired motion against sexual exploitation within the entertainment industry.
The 37-year-old star not only publicly detailed her own painful experiences with sexual harassment on the set of her film It Ends With Us, but in addition in a lawsuit a viral New York Times storyShe also opened up about how she was allegedly the goal of a classy “smear campaign” on social media in the course of the film's release in August.
The purpose of this campaign, allegedly orchestrated by cunning and cowardly Hollywood publicists, was to wreck her popularity in an effort to advance the profession and private brand of her alleged harasser, co-star and director Justin Baldoni.
In an announcement to The New York Times, Lively boldly said: “I hope my legal action will help lift the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak out about wrongdoing and protect others who may be involved.” be targeted.”
Almost seven years ago Lively also expressed her support for ladies in Hollywood to take a stand against sexual predators in the course of the rise of the #MeToo movement. But unlike now, Lively's alleged advocacy for ladies speaking out against sexual misconduct was met with skepticism and even backlash.
That's because Lively had decided to publicly support one among the industry's most famous alleged predators, Woody Allen. Lively praised Allen, amongst other things, for his “very powerful” direction after she starred in his 2016 film “Cafe Society.” During press interviews for the film, she also refused to deal with the sexual assault allegations made against him by his own daughter, Dylan Farrow.
In fact, one outstanding one who spoke out against Lively in late 2017 and early 2018 was Dylan Farrow, who originally accused the filmmaker of molesting her in 1992 when she was seven years old.
While Dylan Farrow praised women within the industry for “taking a stand” to bring about change in Hollywood, she said too that Lively and other outstanding #MeToo advocates who worked together with her father were actually “complicit in the culture they are fighting.”
“The people who join this movement without taking any personal responsibility for how their own words and decisions have helped perpetuate the culture they are fighting against, that is something I find difficult to reconcile,” Dylan Farrow said in an announcement to the media on the time.
When Lively was first solid in Allen's “Cafe Society” in 2015, the previous television actor undoubtedly relished the possibility to realize serious acting credibility by working with Allen, who was then still considered one among world cinema's hottest auteurs.
A yr later, after the premiere of “Cafe Society” on the Cannes Film Festival, Lively raved about joining an elite class of actresses who might be described as Allen's “muses,” which is telling Hamptons Magazine that it was “really cool to work with a director who’s done so much.”
But in the course of the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, public opinion began to show against Allen, and Lively found himself in an uproar. The change was spearheaded by Allen's own son, journalist Ronan Farrow, whose subsequent reporting on producer Harvey Weinstein's alleged sex crimes helped spur the #MeToo movement.
In a surprising editorial from May 2016 For The Hollywood Reporter, Farrow reminded movie fans – and A-listers like Lively – that his father allegedly “groomed” his sister with inappropriate touching as a young girl and sexually abused her when she was seven. The allegations against Allen first became public within the Nineties, when he had a stormy split from his long-time girlfriend Mia Farrow, the mother of Ronan and Dylan.
When Allen vehemently denied the harassment allegations against Dylan, his “PR engine kicked into high gear,” Ronan Farrow explained in his editorial. Much like Lively would say about Baldoni, Allen had smart and aggressive publicists working on his behalf to convey to the general public a narrative that was favorable to him and harmful to his alleged victim, in line with Ronan Farrow.
In Allen's case, that narrative was geared toward encouraging journalists and news outlets to discredit his own daughter's account of harassment, Ronan Farrow said. Like Baldoni, Allen's goal was also to avoid wasting his popularity and proceed his profession as a filmmaker.
Ronan Farrow described how this narrative gained traction for greater than 20 years, largely since the media didn’t want to contemplate his sister's side for fear of Allen's power within the industry. The journalist described his sister's “torment at the strong voices that brushed aside her accusations” and “the press, which was often willing to be taken along for the ride.” He said it also hurt his sister to see high-profile actors, a few of whom were personal heroes, appear as leads in his movies.
The day after Ronan Farrow published his editorial, Vulture reached out to Lively for comment about being one among the actors who probably hurt Dylan Farrow by lining as much as star in her father's movies. She disagreed and said she hadn't read the article. “I think this is dangerous,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about something I haven’t read.”
Lively too told the Los Angeles Times that she didn’t register any coverage of Allen's personal life when she made the film. “I could (only) know my experience,” she said. “And my experience with Woody shows that he empowers women.”
Lively defended Allen in one other way, attacking a Cannes official who made a joke about Dylan Farrow's allegations before the “Cafe Society” screening. Diversity reported. She said film festivals are intended to be “beautiful” events to have a good time movies and artists, and so they mustn’t be marred by someone making jokes about “something (like sexual abuse) that isn't funny.”
More than a yr later, Ronan Farrow, writing for The New Yorker, together with New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor, published investigative stories that exposed Harvey Weinstein's decades-long history of alleged sexual harassment and assault on quite a few women. The Weinstein revelations quickly spurred many other women to talk out within the media about sexual misconduct by powerful men.
As the #MeToo movement gained momentum, Dylan Farrow was given a brand new platform to reassert her claims against her father within the court of public opinion. She wrote an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, by which she criticized Lively, Kate Winslet and Greta Gerwig for selecting to work together with her father but then refusing to “answer questions about it.”
Now, in 2024, Lively has develop into a #MeToo-style hero by going public together with her allegations against Baldoni. This status was supported by the incontrovertible fact that her claims were detailed in a New York Times report co-authored by Twohey, one among the reporters who originally broke the Weinstein story.
As with Lively's bombshell lawsuit filed in California, the Times story also focuses on the alleged efforts by Baldoni and his publicists to wreck Lively's popularity in an effort to forestall her claims about his sexually inappropriate behavior on set.
But over time, Lively still hasn't addressed her support for Allen or her refusal to debate Dylan Farrow's allegations. Unlike Greta Gerwig and another actors, she has also expressed no regrets about selecting to work with Allen, even after Ronan Farrow provided evidence of his father's PR efforts to get his own daughter married discredit.
But given Lively's recent, allegedly harrowing experience with Baldoni, she may finally be able to discuss whether she regrets working for Allen.
Originally published:
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