#it ends with polkadotsandtulips being confused

[polkadotsandtulips]

My Thoughts on the Justin Baldoni/Blake Livey of it All

First of all, I don’t know what happened. The evidence is murky. I’m not Team Blake or Team Justin. I’m just Team Confused.

To back up to when the promo stuff was happening in August, I remember the whole Blake’s talking about flowers and Justin’s talking about DV. Then, negative stuff came out about Blake and everyone started hating on her. Me being the lover of messiness and gossip that I am eagerly clicked on the links to find out why Blake Lively was the worst. At the end, all I found was her being rude a few times, joking at inappropriate times, and being super sarcastic. Just not enough reasons to earn the vitriol she was receiving in my opinion.

On the flip side, people were lauding JB as this amazing superhuman. And I was like eh, he’s ok. I loved him on JtV but I didn’t know much about him personally. He seems very new age to me.

So after all that promo drama, I was like wow, this is a nothing burger. They probably just don’t click as coworkers.

Then comes late December and I find out it’s very much NOT a nothing burger. BL’s accusations against JB are very serious. They shocked me. I didn’t realize it was that bad on set. And the fact that she had so many specific examples really swayed me.

However, I did and still do think it was odd that she had possession of the texts/emails from JB’s PR team talking about how he planned to ruin her. How did she receive them? Did she come by them legally? Did JB’s PR breach contract and send them to her? Are they legitimate?

Because of this, I felt like more information was needed.

Then, we got Justin’s response and a little bit more back and forth between the both of them.

Things that don’t sit right with me or that I wonder about

BL claiming she was on the short stick of a power imbalance. Girl got to rewrite scenes, got her version of the film in theaters, and couldn’t even follow the guidance of her director to film a silent dance scene actually silent - she talked even when he was asking her to act it differently. She didn’t listen to him on the smallest of notes. Literally don’t talk. Yet, there was a power imbalance where she’s afraid of what he’ll do to her career? That’s hard for my brain to compute. Not to mention how she and her husband are huge A-listers and she’s good friends with Taylor Swift. I think their net worth is in the 100 millions while JB’s I don’t think is even 1/100th of that.

Just because BL said she didn’t want to do the intro meeting with the intimacy coordinator doesn’t mean she didn’t want there to be one at all. On IMDB, I see 3 intimacy coordinators listed for the movie so hopefully there was one on set.  I hope there’s further clarification on this because JB’s response to her claim about intimacy coordinators was not satisfactory at all.

Also, just because she said it was OK that he chat with her while she was breastfeeding once doesn’t mean he can visit during that time in the future.

Was Ryan Reynolds always this involved with the movie or was it a protective response to finding out BL was being sexually harassed?

The video JB released shows that BL does not have the best memory of these incidences which I think is a normal human thing. I feel like one of two things is happening. 1) BL is remembering more of how she felt than details of what happened. 2) BL is intentionally exaggerating what happened on set.

Someone can make you feel uncomfortable without sexually harassing you. This has happened to me many times. There are men who haven’t said or done anything inappropriate to me but I feel uncomfortable any time I have to be around them. I’m starting to wonder if maybe this is what happened with BL. He may truly have sexually harassed her or maybe his personality/vibe made her uncomfortable. I really don’t know.

If JB continues to show videos/evidence of how Bl misconstrued, misremembered, misinterpreted claims she made against him, it’s not going to look good on her part. 

I will say I think it’s smart of JB leaking all this evidence. The real court is the court of public opinion. 

I get why BL’s lawyers are trying to stop that but they dropped an explosive story on him days before Christmas. His whole world got turned upside down and his name and reputation were ruined. I think it is perfectly reasonable that he’s fighting back. I would prefer BL and co release their evidence so I could view it at home but if they take it to court then we’ll just have to wait and see how this all plays out.