Justin Baldoni's problematic behavior, told by those who worked with him
What his co-stars, colleagues, and even his own publicists really thought about working with Justin Baldoni
When a man is credibly accused of sexual misconduct, there is a predictable playbook that is launched in return. Justin Baldoni continued his execution of it earlier this month with headlines reporting that he had broken his two years of “public silence” with what was disguised as an unscripted, heartfelt video posted to Instagram. In which, joined by his wife Emily, he offers gratitude to his supporters through the “injustice” of the multiple lawsuits he is facing. PR analyst Molly McPherson praised the move saying Baldoni skipped the publicist and it worked.
Except Baldoni hadn’t been silent. His legal and PR teams have been giving interviews and planting stories with TMZ, People and Megyn Kelly, ensuring an actor/director most people have never heard of grabbing one or two headlines every single week for the better part of two years. McPherson is also wrong that Baldoni skipped the publicist. Pull up the metadata behind TMZ’s “Exclusive” and the story started being worked on at 10:20am Pacific, nearly eight hours before it was posted.
All of this was a deliberately crafted PR strategy, McPherson calls it the “Family Deployment”, in service of a second story. Two days later, when Baldoni’s old Jane the Virgin co-stars Gina Rodriguez and Brett Dier turned up in the comments with hearts and a “por vida.” TMZ covered that too. An entire new news cycle built from the incredibly newsworthy and important story that two people Justin Baldoni hasn’t worked with in over a decade were nice to him online.
We have, of course, seen this story before. BuzzFeed’s Natasha Jokic recently cataloged eleven examples of celebrities rushing to defend their co-stars. Including Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, who wrote letters of support defending Danny Masterson’s “innate goodness” during his trial. Masterson was convicted of two counts of rape. Judi Dench was eager to let us know that Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein were very good friends to her. The testimonial is always the same shape. I worked with him. He was lovely to me. I don’t believe it.
The reason this works is because we’ve agreed to a very old and convenient rule: when a man is accused of sexual misconduct, the credibility of his alleged victims weighs far less than what literally any other person has to say about him. Yet nobody defends a murder charge by calling character witnesses to testify the defendant never once murdered them.
The accuser needs corroboration, documentation and an unimpeachable history, the proverbial perfect victim. The accused merely needs two people willing to say he smiled at them and didn’t yell at them. Given that only 2 to 10 percent of sexual assault reports are ever found to be false, roughly the same rate as false reports for any other crime, calling this a necessary caution is dubious. It allows men to do the absolute bare minimum, not abusing everyone they meet, and actually be celebrated and praised for it.
At the same time, Baldoni’s PR team has fought to flatten this into a single head-to-head fight, Lively v. Baldoni, minimizing, dismissing, and in most cases simply ignoring the long line of colleagues who complained not just about sexual harassment, but also verbal abuse, exploitation and Baldoni trying to destroy their livelihoods. If they are covered, they’re dismissed as being pawns of Lively, despite the fact many of these people had issues with Baldoni long before he ever met Blake Lively. The reason is transparent. One account is the false allegation of a bitter woman. Two, three, four and more starts to look like a pattern an entire career is built off, which is exactly why nobody wants you keeping count.
Before we pick apart the mechanics of the Baldoni Playbook, it’s worth asking why it was even necessary at all. Why a man who built a career selling himself as an emotionally evolved feminist ally needed to fund a $70,000 a month PR campaign to protect his reputation, threaten journalists and silence his critics.
Here’s what those who worked with Justin Baldoni had to say about him, in their own words
Claire Wineland
My Last Days led Baldoni to two feature films built from the lives of the people he’d profiled for it. The first was Five Feet Apart, which Baldoni publicly claimed was heavily influenced and inspired by cystic fibrosis advocate Claire Wineland saying that “Her soul is in this movie and it wouldn’t be made without her.” He brought her on as a consultant to the movie, to ensure accuracy of details about life with Cystic fibrosis. He used her name and image heavily to promote the film, and kept doing so for years after her death describing her as a “dear friend” and “little soul sister”.
Claire, however, felt very differently. In a signed Court declaration under oath, Claire’s mother Melissa Yeager revealed that Claire had grave concerns about Justin Baldoni’s “authenticity and making sure sick people were not exploited”. In particular Claire “took issue with the way Baldoni seemed to use many sick people for his own career advancement” without offering compensation. For example, that the individuals and families featured on My Last Days, were never paid for their appearances.
In exchange for tying her name to Five Feet Apart, Baldoni promised “tangible benefits to the community” that would support and benefit Claire’s Place, the CF nonprofit founded by Claire that her family runs in their daughter’s honor. Yeager says despite the fact “the film made Baldoni and his companies more than $94 million”, neither Claire, her family, nor her foundation ever saw a penny of it. Worse, Yeager says, Baldoni’s use of Claire’s story has closed the door on her family ever telling it themselves: “it has taken away the opportunity for us to make a movie or content about her as it has already been used by Justin Baldoni, though the story is not based on her life experiences.”
Yeager spent years handling her discomfort privately as she “hoped and expected that Mr. Baldoni would honor the commitments and assurances” he had given her and her daughter. Only due to recent events has she come forward to plainly state her view: Baldoni “benefited publicly from association with sick or vulnerable individuals including by using those associations to promote himself” and his projects. Confirming the performative exploitation her daughter had been so concerned about.
Cody William Smith
Cody William Smith, one of the cinematographers who worked on My Last Days, shared Wineland and her family’s view of Baldoni. Shortly after the allegations against Baldoni became public, Shabnam Mogharabi, CEO of SoulPancake, which co-produced the series with Wayfarer, posted her public support of him. I know him, he was lovely to me. Smith, who’d spent time working on set with Baldoni, remembered it differently:
working with Justin was one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had in my entire film career. I watched him, first hand, exploit the stories of people of terminal illnesses for personal gain. On that particular project, he treated the crew like trash. I honestly have a hard time thinking of someone that I’ve met who has been more disingenuous... he’s been like this for a while and it doesn’t surprise me at all that the entire cast of a film is saying this about him.
Liz Plank
Journalist, Author and gender equality activist Liz Plank worked with Baldoni and Heath for over 3 years as a co-host of the Man Enough podcast. Plank announced her departure from the podcast just days after Blake Lively’s sexual harassment allegations went public. Baldoni’s team spun this as Lively exerting influence over Plank and turning his former colleague against him, her social media filled with comments calling her a snake and a false friend.
In reality, it was Plank who had tried to forewarn Lively about the environment she was walking into.
In April 2023, before filming began, Ryan Reynolds was baffled by Baldoni’s behavior and reached out to Liz Plank for advice: “I would love any guidance at some point”. Plank responds with disappointment telling Ryan that: ‘’I tried to warn Blake on the red flags but was hoping he had gotten better”.
As the incidents and frustrations with Baldoni’s behavior grew, Plank shared with Blake Lively her sympathy and guilt: “I keep thinking I should have been more direct with the level of dysfunction, I thought maybe things had gotten better”. Revealing that she’d already moved to LA to support her new show.
Plank’s experiences working with Justin Baldoni were eerily similar to Smith’s, saying that: “working on his set was truly one of the worst days of my life”.
Claire Ayoub
Claire Ayoub wrote and directed the film Empire Waist, which was produced by Wayfarer Studios and filmed in 2021. Baldoni himself was credited as a producer. In her own signed declaration to the Court, Ayoub detailed that “as part of my work on Empire Waist, I had repeated, negative interactions with Mr. Baldoni and his associates, including verbal abuse by Mr. Baldoni”.
As a result, Ayoub “asked Wayfarer that Mr. Baldoni not be permitted on set during the majority of production as a result of those experiences” and later requested “that he not be involved in Empire Waist’s marketing or public relations efforts. Wayfarer agreed to my request.“
Alex Saks
Baldoni walked his abusive behavior right onto the set of It Ends With Us. Producer Alex Saks gave testimony in her deposition that Baldoni yelled at her on three separate occasions. Before filming ever started, on February 19th 2023, Baldoni was already sending out an email apologizing to Saks and other members of production titled “Yesterdays call”. In it, Baldoni apologizes specifically to Saks for “my behavior yesterday”, saying that he had “failed at being a safe space for others” and that “I will make sure that doesn’t happen again, to any of the women involved in this film”. He adds that “I may disagree... but I will always listen”.
However, rather than listen to Saks, Baldoni sidelined her. Originally hired as the sole producer, within weeks Jamey Heath was also given a Producer title and Saks recalls “it became clear I was just there working for them, not able to make decisions”.
On May 29th, after just 7 days of shooting, Saks texts Sony’s Ange Gianetti telling her “we have issues”, “we need to replace our Director” and Heath should also be removed from set as both were making the actors uncomfortable. Saying that “I'd genuinely rather someone shove bamboo shoots underneath my fingernails” than get on another call with Baldoni and Heath.
On Shoot day #15 Baldoni and Saks had a disagreement about a scene, with Saks insisting they had the shot, but Baldoni wanting to go again. This led Baldoni to yell at Saks telling her “I decide”, and “slammed his hands on the director’s chair”. Saks was disturbed by this saying she felt “physically intimidated”. Saks recalls telling Heath and Gianetti, “if he did that something like that to me one more time, that I was going to walk off the movie”.
By shoot day #17 in June Saks shared with Gianetti that “[Baldoni] and Jamey have a way of making women (and some men ) feel like shit ... this is where the narcissism is dangerous.. I don’t think he remembers honestly or knows that he’s doing anything wrong... The inexperience and their complete control put EVERYONE on their heels. Every dept head, it exacerbated EVERYTHING.. Our whole crew honestly”. In her deposition Saks notes that many of the crew had issues, some refusing to return for Phase 2 of shooting including Production Designer Russell Barnes who “said to me at one point that, at the end of the first round of shooting, he felt like he was leaving a cult.”.
Colleen Hoover
When Justin Baldoni reached out to Colleen Hoover about potentially optioning her book, Hoover made it clear that before going forward she had two requests. That funding for the movie not be crowdsourced and that she was allowed to be significantly involved in the film.
Like Saks and Wineland, Hoover quickly realized Baldoni does not keep his promises. She recounts being sidelined from the script writing process. She used her social media to heavily promote a contest where fans could meet Hoover and read an early draft of the script. In her deposition Hoover gave testimony under oath that “Justin had asked me not to speak during the script meeting” because he didn’t want the author of the book “to ask questions that could influence readers’ questions”. This was despite the fact Hoover did have concerns about the script being “too forgiving” of the abusive men in the story.
She goes on to describe Baldoni as “manipulative”, telling her that he would include her notes into his cut of the movie, but then never doing so. Often only adding her notes after seeing their inclusion in the studio’s competing cut of the movie.
Hoover describes how she, Blake Lively and Isabela Ferrer faced incredible harassment online. She was frustrated that not only did Baldoni do nothing to defuse the harassment but that he was seeding articles and interviews “to make himself look like he was aligned with what people were saying negatively about us and not actually speaking the truth”. In text messages to Baldoni, Hoover tells him that “it just feels like you’re worried about your image but not the women who are behind this story”. Hoover also recounts with him his many broken promises to her, including her involvement in the script but also that she had “asked you guys to at least donate a portion of the proceeds to DV and then I was told the only way a donation would be made is if I took 1 % and donated that myself”.
In closing she tells Baldoni: “you are grown men with a platform. You know how to use it to protect your image. Please don’t continue to use it to harm me or mine”.
Christy Hall
As with Saks and Hoover, screenwriter Christy Hall originally signed on wanting more involvement and a bigger role. Baldoni had originally said he wanted a female Director for It Ends With Us and Hall had wanted to step into that role. However Baldoni was dismissive of her and “used Jamey to try to manipulate her” according to a conversation with Alex Saks. Hall felt she “didn’t feel respected as a female voice on the team” and refused to do any promotion and “doesn’t want to be associated w him/them”.
Andrew Z. Davis
President of Production Administration for Columbia, Andy Davis, received a complaint about Baldoni attempting to invite department heads to join him in participating in nude Russian baths together. Davis confirmed Baldoni’s behavior was “not appropriate behavior in the workplace”.
Ange Gianetti
Executive Vice President at Columbia, Ange Gianetti, expresses exhaustion to Alex Saks at the many incidents of misconduct involving Justin Baldoni: “Just SO many things stacking up people are so upset or pissed off about. I cannot believe how they Just keep on coming . Did he think no one would notice or remember?” and notes that “Everybody has something weird uncomfortable and bad to say”.
Josh Greenstein
During production, Josh Greenstein was president of Sony Motion Picture Group and was heavily involved in production working directly with both Blake Lively and Wayfarer. Greenstein saw the NYT article about Baldoni as vindication and validation of his poor working experience with Baldoni, sharing with other Sony/Columbia executives that “I said these wayfair [sic] guys are terrible” adding “these people should be thrown out of the Buisness [sic]”.
Danni Maggin
During promotion of It Ends With Us Danni Maggin, Senior Vice President of Global Publicity at Sony Pictures Entertainment, wrote to other Sony Executives concerned that “Justin is basically alluding to ‘raping’ Atlas out of Lily” during an interview. Maggin says they cut the tape, refers to Baldoni as “a moron” and relays Greenstein’s recommendation that Baldoni “shouldn’t do any more press”.
Jenny Slate
After just 12 days of filming, Jenny Slate shared with her publicist that “I don’t want to do anything with Justin... And the same goes for Jamey, who is truly unprofessional”. She calls the production “a really gross and disturbing shoot”, stating that she is “one of many” who feel this way. Of Justin she says he “is truly a false ally” and that “honestly i have no words to describe what a fraud he is”. She continues, calling him a “clown” and “the most intense narcissist”.
Isabela Ferrer
It Ends With Us was Ferrer’s first movie role and she remained apart from the litigation until Baldoni’s counter suit specifically named Ferrer. He included screenshots of text messages from Ferrer calling Baldoni a “wonderful, smart and sincere director” who created a “comfortable, safe space for me”. Baldoni blamed Ferrer’s later proximity and interactions with Lively for turning her against him.
In truth, Ferrer recalls Baldoni made changes to scenes that she felt inappropriately sexualized her underage character. In one incident after filming an intimate scene with her co-star, Baldoni announced that he was “not supposed to say this, but that was hot”. In her deposition, Ferrer states Baldoni’s comments “didn’t feel appropriate in a work environment” and were “out of place” as they felt directed to her personally.
Baldoni’s inappropriate behavior around Ferrer began on the first day she was on set. Shortly after Ferrer met her co-star Alex Neustaedter for the first time, Baldoni pulled Neustaedter aside and told him to “get to know” Isabela “really well” and winked at him. Ferrer would not learn of the incident until months later but felt Baldoni was “insinuating something” inappropriate and sexualizing her.
Much of her filming took place in June after picketing shut down production, isolated and without the main cast. It was not until promoting the movie that Ferrer learned of Baldoni’s inappropriate behavior with others. This made her no longer want to associate with Baldoni. Saying that hearing that Hoover, Saks and Lively also had issues helped to “validate the situations that I also experienced on set that I thought were inappropriate”.
Her frustrations only increased during promotion of the movie around the topic of domestic violence and the contradiction of “Wayfarer telling us to not speak on it”, noting that “Justin is only speaking on DV to make everyone look bad”. In text messages at the time Ferrer shares that “Justin has been playing all of this up because he knows he’s about to get his shit exposed” and that he was “playing the victim”.
Jennifer Abel
In July 2020, Jonesworks hired Jennifer Abel to work as a publicist and shortly after was assigned to the Justin Baldoni and Wayfarer accounts. This put Abel in close proximity to both Justin Baldoni and Jamey Heath, Wayfarer’s CEO. When Justin discovered Ryan Reynolds had unfollowed him on Instagram, it was Abel that he trusted “to very much have a real plan so I can feel at ease”. She is arguably the closest professional colleague of Justin outside of Wayfarer, working with him on a near daily basis for the last six years.
Her thoughts on Justin? “I can’t stand him. He’s so pompous”.
Lamenting to other Jonesworks employees about Justin’s desire to go on a men’s retreat during the release of Wayfarer’s biggest movie she adds “is he crazy?!”. Saying in response to his claim that he’s overworked: “like calm down. You’re not that important and nobody gives a shit how hard your life is”. Abel points out that he’s not doing magazine covers “because he’s not a star”. That “he doesn’t need a retreat. He needs to be humbled. When this movie flops, he’s going to try to blame every person around him for it”. Accepting that even if she does get blamed and is fired “it’s not going to change the fact that he’s so unlikable and unrealistic as a leading man”. Abel also talks about the uphill battle of promoting her client as “press will be reluctant to do anything with Justin without Blake being part of it”.
Abel paints the picture of a frustrating client who is egotistical, arrogant, out of touch and entirely dependent on his proximity to Blake Lively for relevance and interest. Everything she would spend the last two years attempting to flip and claim that Lively was the unlikeable one.
Matthew Mitchell
Another publicist at Jonesworks running the Baldoni/Wayfarer account, Matthew Mitchell, also had a low opinion of Baldoni. When Justin Baldoni was hospitalized for a spinal infection after getting a botched counterfeit stem cell treatment in Mexico, Mitchell calls out that Baldoni “does the sketchiest shit to his body”. While Baldoni claimed the infection was due to stress, Mitchell mocks Baldoni to the rest of Jonesworks team: “NO BABY BOY, ITS BECAUSE YOU GOT A JENKY ASS PROCEDURE BY SOME STRANGE ASS DOCTOR IN MEXICO!” adding that Baldoni is “truly his own worst enemy and self saboteur”.
The Agency Group
When Justin Baldoni and Wayfarer hired The Agency Group, the team working on the account noticed within days how Baldoni did not match up to his public persona. Breanna Butler Koslow, discussing with Katie Case about being forced to have a meeting with Justin on a Sunday night had strong feelings: “I’m so pissed about this. I’m going to have two screaming kids at 6pm in the middle of dinner and bedtime”. Koslow then points out the contradiction that “he’s so anti patriarchy but then does the most Man thing”.
Case is told the rest of Justin’s team is running late and that she should just go up to his hotel room and not wait for the rest of the team. Case shares with Koslow that “Oh great so I’ll be alone in a hotel room with a strange man on a Sunday night”.
Conclusion
In truth, once you start counting the colleagues who were disturbed by Baldoni’s behavior, you quickly lose track. Many of them were describing his conduct long before Blake Lively ever set foot on his set. None of it came from a press release intended to damage Baldoni’s reputation in the public eye. These are private texts, emails and sworn court documents. Authentic conversations trying to process what it actually felt like to work for him. Together they tell a consistent story of a man who lacked boundaries, professionalism and respect for the women around him. Taking solace in that consistency, validating each other’s shared experience even as they were disheartened that no one at Wayfarer seemed able to hold him accountable or curb the inappropriate behavior making them feel deeply uncomfortable.
Most telling is that this experience is shared by his own PR team, the people who worked with him daily to maintain his image of a man who was humble, empathetic, self-aware and understanding of unintentional harm, even as they also privately mocked, insulted and despaired at his inability to be any of the things they were paid to proclaim him to be. And as long as the checks kept rolling in, they had no problem contacting journalists and content creators to sell and spread that lie anyway, a team dedicated to doing whatever it took to make sure the false narrative was believed and to discredit anyone who criticized him.
All of it was in service of one goal: making sure no one ever took the time to count up the long list of names of those who regretted working with Justin Baldoni, and vowed never to work with him again.
If you enjoyed this article, and would like to show your support, please consider donating to Claire’s Place Foundation in honor of Claire Wineland.
Brilliantly researched.
I always find it so strange that women are so quick to attack and disbelieve Lively. Maybe they’re too afraid to confront the shocking truth - that if a male C lister is able to drag a female A lister’s career through the mud, what chance does it leave the rest of us?
Thank you for gathering all this information. I will put the link to your article anywhere it needs to be. There are so many blinded people defending this malignant narcissist.