How Blake Lively once complicated her anti-predator advocacy

Over the weekend, Blake Lively rose into the pantheon of famous Hollywood women who have taken monumental, #MeToo-inspired stands against sexual predation in the entertainment industry.

The 37-year-old star not only publicly detailed her own painful experience with sexual harassment on the set of her film It Ends With Us in a legal complaint and a viral New York Times storyshe also described how she was allegedly targeted by a sophisticated “smear campaign” on social media during the film’s August release.

The purpose of this campaign, allegedly orchestrated by cunning and greedy Hollywood publicists, was to damage her reputation for the sake of promoting the career and personal brand of her alleged harasser, co-star and director Justin Baldoni.

In a statement to the New York Times, Lively bravely said: “I hope my legal action helps draw the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about wrongdoing and help protect others who may be targeted “.

Almost seven years ago, Lively also expressed her support for women who are taking a stand against sexual predators in Hollywood during the rise of the #MeToo movement. But unlike now, Lively’s purported support for women speaking out against sexual misconduct was met with skepticism and even backlash.

That’s because Lively chose to publicly support one of the industry’s most famous alleged predators, Woody Allen. Among other things, Lively praised Allen for his “very responsible” direction after they starred together in his 2016 film Cafe Society. During press interviews for the film, she refused to address the sexual assault allegations brought against him by her own daughter, Dylan Farrow.

Indeed, one prominent person who spoke out against Lively in late 2017 and early 2018 was Dylan Farrow, who initially accused the director of molesting her in 1992 when she was 7 years old.

While Dylan Farrow praised women in the industry for “taking a stand” to bring about change in Hollywood, she also said that Lively and other famous #MeToo advocates who worked with her father were actually complicit “in the culture they’re fighting.”

“People who join this movement without taking any kind of personal responsibility for how their own words and decisions have helped perpetuate the culture they’re fighting against, that’s hard for me to reconcile,” said Dylan Farrow. in a statement to the media at the time.

When Lively was originally cast in Allen’s Cafe Society in 2015, the former TV actor no doubt relished the chance to gain serious acting credibility working with Allen, then still revered as one of the world’s most beloved auteurs .

A year later, after “Cafe Society” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Lively gushed about joining an elite class of actresses who could be considered Allen’s “muses,” saying Hamptons magazine that it was “really great to work with a director who has done so much.”

But during the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, public opinion began to turn against Allen, and Lively began to feel some heat. The change was spearheaded by Allen’s own son, journalist Ronan Farrow, whose subsequent account of producer Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sex crimes helped spur the #MeToo movement.

In an amazing op-ed from May 2016 to The Hollywood Reporter, Farrow reminded fans of the movie — and top stars like Lively — that his father allegedly “groomed” his sister with inappropriate touches when she was young and sexually assaulted her when she was 7. The allegations against Allen became the first. public in the 1990s amid his stormy split from longtime girlfriend Mia Farrow, mother of Ronan and Dylan.

While Allen vehemently denied molestation allegations involving Dylan, his “PR engine kicked into gear,” explained Ronan Farrow in his op-ed. Similar to what Lively would say about Baldoni, Allen had skilled and aggressive publicists working on his behalf to present the public with a narrative favorable to him and harmful to his alleged victim, according to Ronan Farrow.

In Allen’s case, that narrative tried to enlist journalists and news outlets to discredit his own daughter’s account of molestation, Ronan Farrow said. Also similar to Baldoni, Allen’s goal was to save his reputation and continue his career as a director.

Ronan Farrow described how this narrative held sway for more than 20 years, largely because media outlets, fearful of Allen’s power in the industry, did not want to consider his sister’s side of the story . The journalist described his sister’s “agony in the wake of loud voices dismissing her accusations” and “the press often willing to be taken along for the ride”. He said it also hurt his sister to see top actors, some of whom were personal heroes, lining up to star in his films.

The day after Ronan Farrow published his op-ed, Vulture asked Lively for comment being one of the actors who probably hurt Dylan Farrow lined up to star in her father’s movies. She refused, saying she hadn’t read the play. “I think it’s dangerous,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about something I haven’t read.”

Lively too said the Los Angeles Times that no news coverage of Allen’s personal life was recorded with her when she was making the film. “I could (just) know my experience,” she said. “And my experience with Woody is that it empowers women.”

Lively has come to Allen’s defense in other ways, going after a Cannes official who made a joke about Dylan Farrow’s allegations before a screening of “Cafe Society.” Variety reported. She said film festivals are meant to be “beautiful” events to celebrate films and artists and shouldn’t be tarnished by someone making jokes about “something (like sexual abuse) that wasn’t funny”. .

More than a year later, Ronan Farrow, writing for the New Yorker, joined New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor to publish investigative stories that exposed Harvey Weinstein’s decades-long history of alleged sexual harassment and assaults against dozens of women. Weinstein’s revelations quickly prompted many other women to come forward about sexual misconduct by powerful men in the media.

As the #MeToo movement gained momentum, Dylan Farrow gained a new platform to re-litigate her claims against her father in the court of public opinion. It wrote an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, in which she called out Lively, Kate Winslet and Greta Gerwig for choosing to work with her father, but then refused to “answer questions about it.”

Now in 2024, Lively has become a #MeToo hero by going public with her allegations against Baldoni. That status was helped by the fact that her claims were detailed in a New York Times report co-authored by Twohey, one of the reporters who originally broke the Weinstein story.

As with Lively’s bombshell legal complaint filed in California, the Times story also focuses on alleged efforts by Baldoni and his publicists to damage Lively’s reputation in order to preempt her claims about his behavior sexually inappropriate on set.

But over the years, Lively has yet to address her support for Allen or her refusal to discuss Dylan Farrow’s allegations. Unlike Greta Gerwig and other actors, she too has not expressed regret for choosing to work with Allen, even after Ronan Farrow presented evidence of his father’s PR efforts to discredit his own daughter.

But given Lively’s recent, allegedly awful experience with Baldoni, maybe she’ll finally feel willing to speak up about whether she regrets working for Allen.

Originally published: December 27, 2024 at 2:02 PM PST