We’re listening to the Daily Roundup here as part of the Reality C Podcast. I’m your host, Reality Steve. Thank you all for tuning in. A good Monday show for you. We are going to discuss more in the Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni back and forth that’s happening. Her complaint, apparently his lawyers are getting ready to fire back a countersuit against her.
Blake’s publicist speaks out. A lot going on. Sheena Shea speaks out for the first time on James Kennedy. Squid game two premiered on Friday. I watched the whole thing. Give you my thoughts without giving away any major spoilers. And I might get to a story on people. com where once again, they just went to Reddit, found something on there and put a front page story about it yet.
I have no idea if it’s even true or not, and I might get to one email reader email from you guys. We’ll get to all that momentarily. So, this week, I’m going to do Thursday’s weekly podcast, which is, well, Thursday’s January 2nd. Why did I think it was the first? Anyway I recorded something with Dave Neal already.
I was on Dave’s podcast. That’s going to air later this week, but I’m going to run it as my podcast as well for Thursday, just because once again, really tough week to get anybody to come on. And Dave’s always willing to come on, but I did his and I was just like, well, I’m not going to call you right back and record something for me.
Good conversation. Spent about 10 or 15 minutes talking about my dating life or lack thereof. And kind of some of the reasons behind it and some good stuff. Talk a lot about the party. So just a lot of good stuff in there. That’s coming on, on Thursday. That’s already done. So just wanted to give you a heads up there.
All right. Let’s talk a little bit more about Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, because Justin Baldoni’s lawyers came out and said, just wait till we file this countersuit, we’re going to blow away Blake Lively and no, no, no. They’re the ones that are putting out. A smear campaign against our client. It’s just like, I knew this was coming.
I knew that’s exactly what his team was going to say. No, no, no, no. She’s doing the PR stuff. So Blake’s publicist gets out in front of that story before we even see what Justin Baldoni’s lawyers are going to say in retaliation to Blake Lively’s complaint, Blake Lively’s publicist, Leslie Sloan is denying the report saying that she planted false stories in the press about what went on behind the scenes with Justin Baldoni on the, it ends with us set.
Apparently he’s going to counter Sue and after the holidays and Blake Lively’s publicist, Leslie Sloan is denying that she tried to tarnish. Justin Baldoni’s reputation by leaking stories to the media outlets, which is exactly what Blake had in her complaint, that that’s what he did. She said, I was contacted on August 11th by Sarah Nathan, Melissa Nathan’s sister, forwarding an anonymous tip that page six received regarding allegations of HR complaints on the set of.
After that, I was contacted by various press outlets about asking about allegations of HR complaints. When contacted, I responded Wayfarer or Sony for information regarding HR complaints. It’s clear that Mr. Baldoni and his Wayfarer associates are suggesting that I originated the press stories about HR complaints on set, which is false.
Please read Ms. Lively’s complaint and the complaint filed by Jones works LLC and Stephanie Jones, which provides the details of the campaign against my client. So I guess we kind of need to wait until Justin Baldoni’s lawyer files this countersuit against Blake to see if he has proof of this, or it’s just speculation.
Cause at least when during in Blake’s complaint, she showed us emails and text messages. Now, if you look at what Leslie Sloan said in this statement. You might want to check out the complaint filed by JonesWorks LLC. There was more that came out on JonesWorks LLC. JonesWorks is a PR firm in Los Angeles.
And one of the people that worked at JonesWorks was Jennifer Abel. Jennifer Abel handled Justin Baldoni. At Jones works. Well, Jennifer Abel did not get along with, I think her name is Stephanie Jones, the founder of Jones works PR and Jennifer Abel worked for her, but didn’t get along with her. So Stephanie fired her.
And said, Oh, by the way, you know, your, your last day is going to be here is your last day. And one week before Jennifer Abel, the one who ended up being in all those text messages and emails talking about the smear campaign against Blake one week before she left Jones works PR, a hit piece came out on the business insider about Stephanie Jones.
And it was basically traced to the fact that this Jennifer Abel girl was leaving. And now we kind of know exactly, because remember the main question when this all came out was, How in the world did Blake’s people and Blake’s lawyers get a hold of all these Justin Baldoni’s text messages and emails?
Well, it’s clear that it came from Jones Works. They had to subpoena it, but Jennifer Abel, the one who left Jones works to go start her own and basically threw her old boss under the bus. Well, that old boss had receipts. So we kind of know how it’s happening. Look, this is going to go on. This is not a story that’s going away anytime soon.
We’ve talked about this. The next thing we’re going to get is allegedly this countersuit and Justin Baldoni is going to counter Sue Blake Lively and saying, no, no, no, she had a random smear campaign against me. And, but Blake’s publicist has already gotten out in front of him and said, no, he didn’t. We absolutely did not do that.
So again, I’ve always said the smear campaign stuff is going to be a lot of he said, she said, granted Blake provided receipts, but now they’re saying there’s no context to it and there’s more to it. Well, we have to wait until he countersues. But the one thing that isn’t disputable here, seemingly. Is the stuff that she complained about on set during the strike.
She said, look, I’m not going back on set until these parameters are put in place. These protections are put in place for Justin and the CEO, whose name is forgetting me right now of Wayfarer until they changed their behavior on set. These protections need to be installed. Now, I don’t know if that meant she was going to quit or never join the movie again.
Justin agreed to it. If he said none of this ever happened, then we’re like 30 things that she requested about behavior on set. If Justin never did anything, any of those things beforehand, why would he agree to do that? Why would he agree to that stipulation? Seems weird to me. Minus the whole PR smearing back and forth that they’re both claiming.
Which might be tough. I think that you’re going to lose a lot of people because team Justin’s going to say, no, no, no. See, Blake did it to him and team Blake is going to say, no, no, no. He did it to her until we see what just inside has, if they have any proof or they’re just claiming that they think they know that Blake’s PR team tried to smear Justin thinking going to lose a lot of people there, but you’re, what you’re not going to lose a lot of people with is the way she was treated on set in what she’s claiming.
So I think. Like I said, this, this story is far from over so much more stuff is going to get out, but I also do think it is big that Atlas Corrigan, Brandon’s cleaner, her co star came out in her defense. Jenny Slate came out in her defense. And outside of Wayfarer, nobody from the movie has come out in Justin Baldoni’s defense.
And he was the director of the movie and owns the rights to the books. Colleen Hoover hasn’t come out and supported Justin Baldoni. So he’s Oh, for three people in that movie that were big names, either the writer of the, you know, the person who wrote the book and two major co stars haven’t come out and supported him.
So seemingly they know what to do. Went on on set and that’s going to be really tough for him. Sheena Shea spoke out for the first time since James Kennedy’s arrest and. She said I did as she said this on her podcast on Friday She said I was respecting Allie’s privacy as she requested so I wasn’t gonna say anything on the podcast But I now see how that’s coming off by staying silent.
So I have spoken to Allie. I check in with her often I always have but I know it seems like if I stay silent you all somehow think I support his behavior, which I absolutely do Not she said she knew about Kennedy She, she took the information that was out there and she knew about Kennedy from also his past relationships.
She said, quote, obviously I was very close with Raquel for years. And while she always told me that James was never, never physically abusive, as we all know, abuse isn’t limited to just physical and ultimately it led to her. Exiting that relationship. I had a lot of empathy for her. I wanted to do anything I could to help and give her a safe space.
And then she says, look, I hope James views this as a rock bottom moment and is serious about just committing to a healing plan versus just seeing this as something that’s going to like ruin the world tour or residency or whatever. I’ve noticed his name has been taken off certain shows and that is a direct consequence to his actions.
And this is kind of what I said in the beginning of all this. Once it came out, it was like, look, He can apologize all he wants, even though he didn’t even apologize. Cause I guess apologizing is an admittance of guilt that you did something, but he said he was going to try and make himself better, needs to be better working on his sobriety, stuff like that.
And again, those are just words. If he doesn’t work on it and behavior continues, then it doesn’t matter. And people that have followed James a lot longer than I have said, this isn’t the first time he’s had to come out and say something and talk about his behavior. And say, he’s going to get better. So yeah, he’s lost a lot of credibility with some of his audience and nobody is going to believe it.
It’s, this is like a time will tell thing. This doesn’t just happen overnight. Is this guy’s sobriety going away? Is, did he relapse, but he has to change his behavior and he should be thinking of it as, Oh crap. Now I don’t have any work. I don’t have Vanderpump rules. Fountain blue canceled me and I’m not a DJ there anymore.
Does he only get local gigs? Is everybody that has hired him for a future gig? Have they all canceled on him? I don’t know yet. It seems like the Vegas residency is done, but being a DJ like him, I would think he’s got some new year’s gig lined up, right? Did he get kicked out of that? Has he been canceled from that?
I don’t know, but yeah, he should definitely look at it as more of man. I need to get my shit together versus, Oh crap. Where am I going to get my next paycheck from? And where’s my next DJ gig?
