Blake Lively Bombshell & Beast Games

0:00This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to-do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone, or using the award-winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. This podcast is supported by FX's English Teacher. Last year's critically acclaimed series returns to follow Evan, Gwen, and Marky as they vie for their students' divided attention.

0:38See why Cosmopolitan called its premiere season a master class of comedy. While glamor raved, it's the year's funniest and most heartwarming new comedy series. FX's English Teacher. All new, Thursdays on FX. All episodes now streaming on Hulu.

0:56Lowe's knows how to get you ready for holiday hosting with up to 35 % off select home decor. And get up to 35 % off select major appliances Plus, members get free delivery, hallway, basic installation, parts, and a two-year Lowe's protection plan when you spend$2 ,500 or more on select LG major appliances. Valid through 10-1. Member offer excludes Massachusetts, Maryland, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Florida. Installed by independent contractors. Exclusions apply. See Lowe's.com for more details. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman.

1:34Not just any episode, a Christmas Eve episode. That's exciting, unless you're listening to it at another time. Here we are, ready for you on Christmas Eve. We wish you all the most merry of Christmases. Some people might listen to it on Christmas Day. That'd be nice. Just get away. Just get away. Just tuck yourself away in an upstairs room. So, you know, you've got to find a receipt. Yes, and aspects of the subject matter will be challenging and potentially non-festive. Some of it will be festive. Yeah, it'll be fairly festive, but great stories today. What are we talking about? We are talking about Blake Lively's bombshell lawsuit against Justin Baldoni, who was her director and co-star in It Ends With Us, the adaptation of the Colleen Hoover book.

2:13Absolutely lays bare the stuff that happens in Hollywood in a way I've never quite seen before. I'm stunned that it's happened in the way it has. And we're going to unpack every piece of that. I cannot wait to hear your take on that. We're also going to talk about the most expensive game show ever created, Beast Games, which Mr. Beast has launched on Amazon Prime. I've got a lot of thoughts about that one. And we're also going to be talking about what's on Christmas Day tomorrow or today, depending on what day it is, or yesterday, depending. You might have left this a couple of days. And why it is different from years ago, and why the ratings are very, very different from years ago.

2:45So that's Christmassy. But Blake Lively. Well, let's start with that. So it ends with us. This was, as I say, the Colleen Hoover adaptation in which Blake Lively starred, and which was a really big hit. Huge hit. It was a huge hit. And anyway, Justin Baldoni, the director, got the rights of Colina Hoover himself in 2019. Whatever he said to her and she said, oh, he wrote this email and, you know, how he understood the domestic abuse message of all of this. Yeah, many sharp intakes of breath will be forthcoming. Anyway, Blade Lively, in a move of absolutely pure drama, has now filed a lawsuit accusing him of sexual harassment and retaliation, a spacer smear campaign, a coordinated attempt to destroy her reputation.

3:29So this is the absolute basis of this story is she complained about a series of things on set that she felt were out of place. Instead of actually putting those right, it is alleged that Justin Baldoni and a couple of other people involved in his company deliberately orchestrated a smear campaign using PR companies to ruin her reputation rather than address what she had said. And she has now come out this week and laid all of that bare. And what we do know is that there was a huge backlash. It worked. One of the things she accuses, apart from the hostile work environment, is astroturfing, some sort of internet campaign.

4:05There was a big internet backlash against her for relatively small infractions, but there seemed to be this sort of big groundswell of stuff against her anyway. And astroturfing, they call that, do they? I mean, if you look at Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, there were all these spots that were denigrating Amber Heard. And there can be these coordinated campaigns. By the way, it's not the last time you're going to hear Johnny Depp's name in this. This lawsuit was given or leaked to the New York Times, which in itself is a massive power move because it's like the sort of America's paper of record rather than like one of the trade publications.

4:37And it contains, amongst many, many other things, messages which Blake Lively supposedly got under subpoena. Text messages between a crisis PR who was engaged by Justin Baldoni's team called Melissa Nathan. and Justin Baldoni's kind of usual publicist team, who included someone called Jennifer Abel, who writes to Melissa Nathan, he wants to feel like she can be buried. And Melissa Nathan replies, we can bury anyone. I mean, you know, don't forget, this is a movie about domestic violence. So please remember to believe all the lovely stories Hollywood tells you in their creations. Anyway, Melissa Nathan worked, was this crisis PR who'd formerly worked for Johnny Depp.

5:15What's so interesting about, I mean, there's many interesting things about this, is that you can see from the emails and the messages that she's offering PR packages. And one of them is$175 ,000 for three to four months, including full Reddit, full social media account takedowns. Oh dear. It's fascinating. It's one of those worlds. We'll get on to how it started in a moment, but it's one of those worlds where people go, oh no, there's bots and people employ bots and this happens. There is absolutely black and white documentary evidence, proof of how they do it, why they do it, what they charge for it.

5:48And the effect that it has. It's extraordinary to have it out in the open. I should say that Justin Baldoni says these are just people sort of wargaming ideas. We don't know that this actually happened. It's like, OK. I'm sure you'll outline the allegations that Blake Lively made against Justin Baldoni. But it seems like he pressed the button on I'm going to get some crisis PR in an unbelievably 2024 move when Ryan Reynolds blocked him on Instagram. As I'm sure everyone knows, it's Blake Lively's husband. who is a big star. And quite liked as well by people. So he got blocked and immediately starts going, is this going to be a problem when the film comes out?

6:25Do we think, let's get ahead of this problem right now? In another plot line, they are both, or were both, we'll come on to this again in a minute, represented by the same agency, WME. During the film, we discover that there've been all, from this lawsuit, you discover that they've had a crisis meeting in which I think even Ryan Reynolds attends, where they're saying no one can walk into Break Livey's trailer and find her naked. No one can discuss pornography. It's all about Justin Baldoni and the other producer. Yeah, so Blake Lively has seen behaviour on set and has set a series of rules, series of ground rules, saying none of the following can happen on set from here on in.

7:01Now listen, as we say, this is a hit movie. For obvious reasons, I think they all think it is going to be successful and it might be a surprise hit. Clearly everything has tried to hold together for the press campaign. And bear in mind this movie opened second behind Deadpool and Wolverine. starring her husband. But that was one of the biggest movie openings of all time. And as I say, this is a huge, it's the highest grossing romance since A Star Is Born. It ends with us. It's a big, it was a big, big movie, but it does have a troubled press tour for its biggest star, who is not, by the way, Justin Baldoni.

7:35He's heavily involved. Certainly if he has a lot of power over this film, however much power Blake Lively might have as a big star and enormously well-connected, Justin Baldoni is the king of this project. You need Blake Lively for it to do as well and to open like it did. There's simply no way it would have done that with anyone lesser than that. People are not going to see Justin Baldoni movies. No. I mean, who? So there was dissent on set. There was difficulties. Clearly there was trouble. We see that Justin Baldoni and his people went to a crisis PR. What form did these apparent smears take?

8:10How were we first aware that perhaps somebody was attacking Blake Lively's reputation? Supposedly, people on the internet didn't like that she launched a hair care line at the same time because this movie is about domestic violence. There were old clips that surfaced. There's one or two of her being a bit grand in interviews. One when she was pregnant, one I can't remember, but, you know, nothing enormous. But they kept being surfaced and they kept being shared multiple times. Really a huge backlash built. And the narrative of the backlash against her was enormous. It was like Blake Lively breaks cover amid the backlash.

8:40All of these things. And there's a certain momentum when there's enough social media sort of churn. People, news outlets will start carrying stories about the backlash, which is what happened. But what you see particularly, which I think is interesting, is that fans have become incredibly media literate. They noticed that they didn't pose together, Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively, at any point on any of the red carpets on this press talk. They noticed that the other cast members also didn't pose with him. People have become so media-licious. They can read images and also the sort of general Easter-eggy obsession of our age, where you're always trying to get to the real story behind the story behind the thing that's being presented to you.

9:17There's a secret only for the initiated or for those who know where to look. But the backlash... If I was a crisis PR, I would rebrand myself as, like, you know, cosy PR. Yeah. Just say, oh, that's nice. Justin Beldone's got himself a lovely cosy PR. I just do flowers. I'm a florist. I do flowers. I will also, of course, kill your opponents. Even the CEO of Sony, Tony Vinciquera, jumped in, which is quite significant at the time of this press tour. Remember, nobody wants to really go to town because you think we can't do well this movie, which we think is actually going to do really well. But this is what he said.

9:49He doesn't mention Justin Baldoni at all in his statement. He says, we love working with Blake and we want to do 12 more movies with her. Last weekend, this is all blown up. Leaked the New York Times that this lawsuit is happening. I mean, as I say, this is sensational. How many women actresses have worked with, and we'll tell you later in interviews, we've worked with nightmare directors, nightmare co-stars. Often those men were more powerful than them. And they therefore just over the years, decades, even now, don't say anything. You just have to grit your teeth, get through the experience. You can tell everyone afterwards.

10:20And you can be someone like Kate Winslet, who gets very, very powerful and can get projects off the ground herself, who will say, this terrible thing happened to me. And in later years, you give all these kind of, I'm not saying she's in her later years, many years later, you give interviews saying these awful things happened to me on movies and I think it was disgusting. And then everyone wants to listen to you because you're a powerful woman now. Most people suck it up at the time. She has not done that. A sort of hurricane strength wind is blowing. And I am minded to believe all of the accusations that she makes, although he denies them because there were these crisis meetings.

10:50He hired a crisis PR. All the cast don't want anything to do with him. Colleen Hoover even this week has said, you have been nothing but honest, kind supportive Blake Lively since the day we met thank you for being the human you are never change never wilt um they're both as I said they are or were both with the same agency WME ultimately run by Ari Emanuel who's like one of the most powerful talent agents one of the most powerful people in Hollywood at the weekend Justin Baldoni was immediately dropped but like literally dropped by WME I mean that is let's face it you've got to drop one of them and even if these things weren't true, I'm sorry, but you're still dropping the one who isn't married to Ryan Reynolds, because Ryan Reynolds is also a WME.

11:30As I say, by the way, I believe these allegations because they're so detailed and the rest of the cast is clearly involved. And I mean, even Colleen Hew is making. It's got a tone similar to the Greg Wallace allegations, I would say. That thing of men in the workplace constantly just doing the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, none of which are quite enough by themselves for you to get fired. But every time you're not fired, you move it up a notch for the next one and the next one. And then if they fire you for that, they go, what for that? You just fired me for that? You think, well, no, you've been constantly like this.

12:00This set has a certain tone to it led by you. And that feels like that's what was happening on this movie. There was a slightly unpleasant sexualised atmosphere on set. But all the time. And also on a movie with a message which is about... Domestic violence. Domestic violence and abusive masculinity. Often you hear these stories about backlashes against stars and you think, oh, you know, they're probably just ignoring all this and rising above it. Stars are delicate and they worry obsessively about what people think of them. And even if they say, I never look at social media, even though they say all of those things, they do and they feel they've built something and it can all be taken away.

12:41And there's a specific thing about that kind of star mindset that it always feels precarious. Well, if you're a lumberjack, you worry about wood. Yeah. And if you're a star, you worry about what people think of you. Yeah. Because that's your business. And behind closed doors, they've gone nuts about this backlash. It's interesting the way it's pushed the sort of business of crisis PRs right out into the open. Which is great, isn't it? Because you do need to know. I think we all know, you know, we're manipulated and this, it's lovely sometimes to have the receipts just to go, no, this is the person who did it.

13:14This is how they did it. This is how much they got paid. This is what they said about it. This is what they promised they could do. This is how much they laughed at the person you're trying to smear. This is the day they did that. It's lovely to have those receipts just so every single time you read stuff, you can kind of go, oh, okay, they would do that. We talked about how people love to hate on women. There was a message from one of his standard publicists to the... Justin Baldoni's. Justin Baldoni's standard publicist, yes, to the crisis PR that says, it's actually sad because it just shows you of people who really want to hate on women.

13:45It's like, yes, you're paying for this person to stoke all that. There are certain people who very vocal posting communities just don't like. And I'm sorry to say that even after all of this online, people are still saying about Blake Lively. It really helps, by the way, if those people are women. Other women are very pleased to hate on them, as we can see here. And it's interesting that both of the people in this who are the lead kind of publicist alleged villains are both women. There are still people who are saying, well, Blake Lively is being ridiculous with all of this. And these tiny little infractions that she's supposedly done, like snapped in an interview, are weighed on the same level as, in my view, allegations of quite serious sexual harassment on a set.

14:29That's the absolute playbook of our times, isn't it? And the reason those things work is because most of us are not paying that much attention most of the time. You know, it's not often in my week that the name Blake Lively comes upon my radar. are and certainly any time it has done in the last couple of months it's been someone slagging her off and then more recently it's been ah isn't it there's who's this guy who uh i'm hearing about he sounds like a villain and then you know is we're not paying that much attention so it doesn't take an awful lot to get someone's name muddied and sullied in the in the public realm but i think one of the great things listen it's all going to be in a court case i'm sure we're just talking about our view of what we believe might have happened which is a woman is on a set that she felt uncomfortable on that's what we think has happened here um fortunately she's a very smart powerful woman and kept every single receipt and now the tide is going the other way but this book it ends with us written by Colleen Hoover who we've discussed before yeah was a self-published author who's become the biggest author in the world and has a very very very powerful female fan base puts a very powerful female in her movie and it feels like at the end of this film what's going to happen is going to be a huge win.

15:41Colleen Hoover played Lively to get a win over some guy who's never really directed very much before. And two mean girls in the publicity industry. Yeah. It's quite a story. Because Colleen Hoover rejected a lot of people who wanted to make this movie first time round and Justin Baldoni found the right form of words. I would love to read the original email. He actually has the rights to It Starts With us which is a sort of prequel version of it um which i don't want to call it too soon i just don't feel justin maldoni will be acting and directing in i wouldn't have thought so but if he owns the rights someone's gonna have to pay him i i worry there's there's been um a lack of just desserts in the last couple of years you know i worry that we've slid back and it'll be lovely to see this play out in the same way that we had our own colleen over here colleen rooney and someone got their just desserts.

16:34It'd be lovely if Colleen Hoover starts this thing where there are some just desserts in America next year. I mean, it's really fascinating. It is basically unprecedented to sort of, in the old days, all of this was done on a wink and a nod. And now you can actually subpoena things and they've got messages and everything. It's much easier. If I was a crisis PR, the one thing I'm doing is deleting my emails. Shall we go to a break? Let's do that. And then we'll talk about the spectacle that is the Beast Games. At Sierra, discover top workout gear at incredible prices, which might lead to another discovery.

17:07Your headphones haven't been connected this whole time. Awkward. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from EBCLIS. After an initial dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EBCLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.

18:01Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EpGliss. Before starting EpGliss, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Searching for real relief? Ask your doctor about EpGliss and visit epgliss.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979.

18:20When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com.

18:51Welcome back, everybody. It is Christmas. You may be at home with a family. There may be younger members of that family. and they may be introducing you to Mr. Beast for the first time. Regular listeners of this podcast will be very familiar with his work. But if you are about to be introduced to his work via Beast Games, we have watched the first few episodes for you. We have an opinion. What do you think people are going to make of it? It dropped on last Thursday on Prime. They've dropped the first two episodes and they're going to do one a week thereafter. It's the most expensive game show ever by a long way.

19:21It's cost them about 100 million. Well, I have a view on whether it cost them 100 million. I think it cost them a lot more than that. Okay, then let's talk about that in a minute. Biggest jackpot, which is five million. The most contestants, they sort of whittle it down. Yeah, they actually whittled from 2 ,000 to 1 ,000, but the sort of craziest prizes along the way, you know, there's sort of random, you know, Lamborghinis of private island just given away. Even the village he built for the contestants to live in cost something like$14 million. The show itself is an extraordinary spectacle and it's presided over Mr.

19:56Beast. It's a Squid Game knockoff. It is. It's what it is. A lot of people come somewhere. It is unbelievably derivative of Squid Game. I mean, it really is sensationally influenced by Squid Game. The aesthetic of the first stages, the colours, the game marshals are like the guards in Squid Game with their faces covered in that sort of way. I mean, Hwang Dong-hak should really, who is the Squid Game creator, should genuinely have a credit on this show. But it is an extraordinary spectacle. You've got a thousand people in long, long rows. And I mean, the most enormous warehouse. And there's a sort of elimination device.

20:29He's dropping the rows. There's a huge amount of betrayal in it. It's one of those sort of classic American dream shows where contestants say things like, you know, I'm a veteran and I'm living in my vehicle. What I noticed about this, it constantly requires people to demonstrate altruism or else everybody dies. or not everybody dies, but everyone isn't in the game anymore. So you're constantly saying, OK, one person in this row has to volunteer to just go home or else the whole row goes. So they're all sort of screaming and arguing with each other about who deserves it least and therefore should just do one.

21:04It's interesting. It's a series of different rounds where you lose an amount of people. That's the point. It's got 1 ,000 people and it's a traditional game show structure where you're going to get down to one at the end and that one person is going to win 5 million. Now, some of the time it's done via games, trivia games, things like that, physical games sometimes as you say it's done by volunteers if you leave now then the rest of your team are saved or yeah if you take a sum of money from me now then the rest of your team will go home so there's lots and lots of different devices all of which we've seen before in various different forms to try and whittle people down yeah the altruism ones are interesting which is if you just go home everyone's saved and some people the few nice people in the room are kind of going you know what okay i guess i'm not going to win five minutes anyway genuinely bits where you said I'm going to give you$20 ,000 if you leave the show now.

21:49But it means all your teammates will leave as well. And they go, no, no, never, never. $50 ,000,$100 ,000. They're going up to like a million to get rid of people. Can we talk a little bit about the YouTube of it all? Because obviously this is a show on a streamer. It's on Amazon Prime. And I'm definitely going to talk in a minute about what Amazon want from it all. The YouTube of it all. Mr. Beast is, as I say, the biggest YouTuber. Interesting to see him transition from doing his... He does a lot of... Every week he does some sort of amazing stunt on YouTube. But sometimes it's like, I'm going to live on this tiny little platform on the ocean for a week and see if I can survive.

22:22I think it's said whether or not this is correct. He says he spends about 50 million a year on his stunts. And this costs 100 million or does it? We'll come to that. The YouTube of it for me was that it moved incredibly fast. The show was quite short. You know, when you spend that much money, you think, surely I'm getting an hour out of this. The first episode is like 39 minutes. Two minutes, 35, I noticed on the clock. I think he'd already given away a million. And you're like, right, I'm not in Kansas anymore now. Honestly, on Only Connect, they're still getting an anecdote about someone meeting Derek Griffiths with a trombone.

22:53And yeah, they're already giving away a million. Anything that would have been strung out over an entire show in a traditional game show was done in absolute moments here. There's also, though, at the same time, a lot of upcoming. Don't get bored because in a minute we're going to do this. There are masses of cameras. I don't know how many world records he broke. He's got lots of Guinness World Records in the show. He talks a lot about the records, the amount of money. that I think it's 1 ,100 cameras or something like that. And you think virtually every boast you can make on this show is saying there's a lot of money behind it.

23:21It's got a really big budget. It's not, there's not a single boast, which is no one's ever thought of this before, or you won't believe the trick we're about to play that no one's thought of everything is, no one's ever given away this much money in a first episode was one of the things they said. Wow, well done. The contestants were different to the ones you see on traditional game shows. They behaved in a way that people behave on YouTube and not the way that someone does on a traditional game. Well, and don't forget there's a thousand of them and they're only picking the ones who, you know, so the producers really are choosing the contestants who emote in a way that they want them to.