In 1969, chaos theory founder Edward Lorenz coined the butterfly effect, where one small action in one area can lead to broader, unexpected consequences in other areas. This phenomenon, based on his research into weather patterns, is a useful metaphor for a storm now gathering steam in Hollywood.
When Blake Lively and her co-star and director Justin Baldoni clashed for the first time on the set of their hit romance in New Jersey. And it ends with usthey undoubtedly did not realize that their careers would be overtaken by the storm. Years later, after paying millions of dollars in legal fees, the dispute will remain an ongoing subject of public record, heading to a jury trial in May in a federal courtroom in Manhattan.
But what’s even more surprising is what happens downwind, thanks to their mutual animosity and origins. The character-driven scene has revealed a secret distortion machine. Her work spans industries and continents, playing an extrajudicial role in recent high-profile feuds involving Rebel Wilson, Scooter Braun, health expert Andrew Huberman and other bold names inside and outside of entertainment. Hollywood Reporter We’ve been connecting the dots and making claims over the past three months.
These revelations began to emerge in court last December, when Baldoni’s former publicist, Stephanie Jones, filed a lawsuit against him, his production company Wayfarer, and crisis communications specialist Melissa Nathan. Jones’ legal team hired a digital forensics firm to examine an offensive anonymous website created about her and discovered it was the work of Nathan as well as a fixer named Jed Wallace, who had a long relationship with Baldoni’s attorney Brian Friedman.
Jones’ forensics firm also found, according to her lawsuit, that her website was linked to “a growing list of attack sites belonging to the same group of conspirators.” The sites mix factual assertions about their targets with baseless conspiracies and defamatory claims of misconduct ranging from extortion, embezzlement, drug dealing and prostitution. Jones’ lawyers say Nathan and Wallace ran a “secret cottage industry of creating false libel websites and social media accounts targeting their opponents and their clients’ opponents,” often in connection with litigation. Her legal team describes the revelations as a “playbook.” Friedman denied Nathan and Wallace were responsible for the sites, which have since gone offline, and took issue with Jones’ forensic data, ridiculing it as “speculation presented as fact.”
Locations — THR I was able to review it via the Internet Archive – it is strikingly banal. This is most likely not by chance. In successful professional careers, they present themselves as the DIY work of amateurs, often fashioning themselves as whistleblowers and speaking their truths to power. Sites are amplified by online bots. The obvious goal is to publicly discredit the accused—and then spread the slander among their social circles—as well as to demoralize opponents amid legal disputes and force quiet settlements on favorable terms.
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The main players and their enemies in this saga are at the heart of the entertainment industry’s matrix of publicists and lawyers. Friedman became one of the most notorious lawyers in entertainment due to his aggressiveness, and was hired by everyone from CAA’s founding defectors to Range to Megyn Kelly, who recommended him THR By making it clear that “once he joins you, he will kill for you.”
Nathan launched her company The Agency Group (often referred to as TAG PR) – whose clients have included Drake, Logan Paul and The Chainsmokers – alongside several of her former colleagues at PR crisis consultancy Hiltzik Strategies. So far, the least known character of the trio has been Wallace, a mysterious Texas-based agent who has been compared to the titular bug fixer on the Showtime series. Ray Donovan. Lively’s legal team claimed in a legal filing that it specialized in “carrying out secret and ‘untraceable’ campaigns” against dissidents. For his part, his attorney describes his work as helping clients “when they find themselves being unfairly attacked, blackmailed, deceived, crushed, deceived, or need help navigating the most terrifying situations.”
So far, many celebrities have been linked to smudging. On March 13, THR He released a leaked recording of Wallace ordering Nathan to confirm – without evidence – that film producer Amanda Jost was a sex trafficker. They were working on behalf of actress and director Rebel Wilson, who was feuding with Ghost over their film The deeb.
“We can’t just say, ‘She’s a bitch, she’s bad,'” Wallace says in the recording. “It looks like it must be very heavy and connected to something that heavy.” It implicates Friedman, who cited Ghost’s unattributed posts, including referring to her as “India’s Ghislaine Maxwell,” in a September 2024 court filing.
Ghost has since filed a defamation suit against Wilson. In his testimony, a Nathan employee described these sites as acting “as a supplement or ancillary to ongoing litigation.” Those who have been targeted and their allies view the practice as a pressure tactic through which reputational damage is weaponized, as well as the legal process itself.
For her part, Wilson denied any involvement in those sites. But Ghost’s lawyer, Camille Vasquez, said so THR Their side believes that Wilson “not only contributed to the malicious sites, but was the driving force behind them. The evidence we presented in court in California supports that conclusion.”
early, And it ends with us A legal maneuvering ensnared Lively’s girlfriend, Taylor Swift, revealed the pop star’s personal texts and positioned her for a time as a potential deposition witness. However, in April, her old enemy, Scooter Braun, was dragged into the wider scandal when a new lawsuit in a related defamation case alleged that one of the music mogul’s business rivals had been anonymously slandered.
Braun’s connection was notable in part because the target of a separate, previously identified defamation was prominent K-Pop executive Min Hee-jin, who worked at Korean entertainment company Hybe when Braun was CEO of Hybe America. (Another Hybe executive said THR That there was no reason for the dispute between the spouses and that they did not interact; Brown declined to discuss these allegations with THR.)
Min posted on Instagram in January that she had met with a lawyer “currently handling lawsuits in the United States to uncover what happened.” [Nathan’s firm] TAG PR has been at a really high level,” he said, adding, “The pieces are starting to come together.” Until recently, Nathan was Brown’s longtime publicist.
Another name linked: wellness podcaster Andrew Huberman. A new lawsuit asserts that his former live-in girlfriend was targeted online in a similar way after being a major source in March 2024. New York Magazine An investigative cover story about what the magazine called “mechanisms of control.” Huberman did not respond THR.
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Other targets of defamation that Jones’s technical analysis initially linked range from a billionaire businessman to a financially struggling consumer goods advocate. Kate Whitman — who accused Manhattan high-society brothers Orrin and Alon Alexander of sexual assault, leading to their recent arrest and conviction — died after being slandered on one of these anonymous websites. (The coroner’s office in Australia, where she is from, has not provided information about her death, taking into account family members.)
Others include former fintech CEO Christian Lange, who alleged in a 2024 defamation and extortion lawsuit that Friedman and his company “hired third parties to create wildly false stories” about him “in an attempt to profit from a higher settlement.” (Lange’s exposition featured Friedman’s law partner sharing an update from “our specialist,” who was not identified, about an acquired website and a plan to “troll” Internet forums that discussed Lange’s firm “and perhaps come up with a meme idea about Chris Tian.”) In court, Friedman denied the allegation, and was told THR It “feels like a CIA spy novel.”
Then there’s actress-turned-activist Alexa Nichols, the former Nickelodeon star Zoe 101 whose damaging website appeared shortly after it published Friedman’s sexual assault settlement from decades earlier, in which he did not admit liability. She also organized a protest in front of the Century City attorney’s office. (Friedman had previously represented her ex-husband after she accused him of sexual assault, a suit she later dropped.)
An attorney has not been identified by Jones’ coroner, and he is not named in her lawsuit as a defendant. But Nicholas sued Friedman for defamation on February 5, claiming that he “was an integral part of a team working to control… [unfavorable] Novels.” He has so far remained silent on the matter and has yet to respond in court. Nicholas’s latest assertions have expanded the scandal to include Brown and Hoberman.
None of this would have been possible without Lively and Baldoni, litigants whose malice and resources forced them to continue pursuing litigation when anyone else in their positions would have quickly settled into the world of covered arbitration. The dark combination of their animosity – and arrogance – has led to this rare bright light shining on a hidden side of the entertainment business.
The battle of the stars turned nuclear in December 2024, when a text message Nathan sent to a colleague in which he promised that “we can bury anyone” was welcomed into an investigation by a team of stars. New York Times. The next fifteen months revealed the clear scope of this promise.
In a preliminary ruling issued in early April, the judge in the dispute between Lively and Baldoni narrowed the scope of the case to a focus on retaliation. “For Blake Lively, the greatest measure of justice is that the people and rules of the game behind these coordinated digital attacks have been exposed and actually held accountable,” Lively’s lawyer, Sigrid McCauley, said in a statement afterward.
