Amber Heard voices support for Blake Lively amid her lawsuit against Justin Baldoni. Read on to find out the similarities between their legal woes.
Amber Heard recently expressed her support for Blake Lively, comparing her publicized case to the latter’s filing of a harassment lawsuit against Justin Baldoni.
Heard told NBC News, “Social media is the absolute personification of the classic saying ‘A lie travels halfway around the world before truth can get its boots on.’ I saw this firsthand and up close. It’s as horrifying as it is destructive.”
Lively accused Baldoni, her It Ends with Us co-star and director Baldoni, and producer Jamey Heath of sexual harassment and other abuse, along with defamation, after they allegedly launched a retaliatory smear campaign that damaged the reputation of the actress. Wayfarer Studios, a production house co-founded by Baldoni and Heath, denied these claims and stated that there was no retaliation.
The controversy drew attention because Baldoni hired crisis PR expert Melissa Nathan, who had represented Johnny Depp during his infamous defamation trial against his ex-wife, Heard. Netizens began drawing parallels between the cases of the two actresses.
According to the New York Times, Nathan texted one of Baldoni’s publicists, saying, “You know we can bury anyone.” However, Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, accused Livley of planting “negative and completely fabricated and false stories with media.”
The case seems to be a repetition of what Heard faced while fighting her defamation case against Depp. Although Depp’s London lawsuit at court lost in 2020 as the court labeled a portion of abuse claims ‘substantially true,’ in the 2022 U.S. trial, everything seems different, where Heard eventually lost in front of her jury. She suffered the intense backlash of public opinion.
Many later studies showed that most online attacks that were targeted towards Heard were based on a campaign of bots and arranged lies campaigns. The Independent stated, “The truly shocking revelation…is just how vast and complex the disinformation movement against Heard was. This was not one single campaign, but multiple, hybrid attacks.”
In her statement on Lively’s case, Heard described the destructive power of social media as “horrifying and destructive.” She underscored how disinformation can go viral, drawing from her own experiences.
The parallels between the Blake Lively and Amber Heard cases point out that, long after their stories broke in the news, social media shaped public perception against women in Hollywood who speak out.
